While Coaching Supervision is well known in Europe, it is just emerging in North America. Fundamentally, supervision for coaches provides increased self awareness of the coach-in-practice. Three very practical aspects of coaching are addressed:
- Continuing professional development through disciplined reflection and feedback.
- Reinforcing professional standards and best practice through attention to ethics, boundaries, methods.
- Restorative support by stepping into a safe space away from the stresses of coaching.
One of the leaders in coach development in the United Kingdom puts it this way:
“I am able to control only that which I am aware of. That which I am unaware of controls me. Awareness empowers me. No two human minds or bodies are the same. How can I tell you how to use yours? Only you can discover how, with awareness.” Sir John Whitmore
I love to help coaches achieve their own greatness in service of their clients. While I won’t promise to know what is best for you, I do promise to be your partner in helping you be the most effective coach you can be. My role is to help re-generate your own internal supervisor and your own self-reflection capability. Experienced coaches who undertake supervision tell me their understanding of self and of coaching is greatly increased.
If we decide to work together, we are likely to talk about the following areas of coaching:
Equilibrium: As a coach, you are in a helping profession and you must relate to your clients and build an environment of trust, openness, safety, and curiosity. At times, this can be challenging and, if you have a substantial client portfolio, tiring. Ever had a client with whom you struggled—where you anticipated some meetings with a hint of reluctance? My assessment? You are human. In supervision, we work together to help surface these issues so you can navigate through your feelings and distinguish them from those of your clients. How is your energy for coaching these days? Being in good personal equilibrium is essential for good coaching.
Ethics: Coaches often get caught between conflicting roles and expectations, especially when they work in organizational settings. Sometimes we over- or under-identify with clients; and sometimes the limits of your responsibilities as a coach are challenged. It is not unusual, for example, for a coach—even an experienced one—to slide into confusing her/his objectives and standards for the client’s. Are you aware of when that happens? Political situations and relationships impact the coach and the coaching relationship. How do you manage it all? Ethics is more than appropriate physical and financial boundaries; it has to do with on-going distinctions about our roles, our responsibilities, and our emotional boundaries.
Effectiveness: Are you succeeding as a coach? Are your clients getting the results they desire? There are many ways of assessing overall effectiveness; all of them depend on the quality and clarity of your contract. Another consideration is effectiveness in the moment. What do you do when something doesn’t go well? When you don’t know what to do? Supervision offers the opportunity to reflect on coaching sessions in a disciplined, learning-oriented way to address these and other issues. You might ask yourself who is working harder, you or your client? If it’s you, it might be time for a tune up.
Experienced coaches in supervision report increased confidence, more ability to handle challenging moments, and greater clarity of the issues facing their clients. Issues brought by supervisees have included:
- Managing the coach’s own responses to challenging clients and client situations.
- Ensuring clear contracting and on-going contracting—staying present in the conversation.
- How to develop EQ with brilliant, but low EQ, clients.
- Supporting the coach to be patient, when patience is necessary.
- Coming back to presence—coming home to coach’s own thinking.
- Combining theory with intuition—valuing the coach’s own understanding of their clients.
- Developing coaches’ confidence and competence.
- How to work with clients who are facing major life changes: loss, change, and death.
- Enabling the coach to recognize and access their next level of competence.
- Self care for the coach—protecting the instrument of the work.
- Matching clients’ intensity as a way to avoid disengaging.
- Suggesting interventions.
- Teaching the coach about unconscious factors in coaching and how to ensure that coach is not caught in unuseful “games.”
- Supporting coaches’ observations and ensuring that coaches use them to intervene usefully.
- Building and valuing the coach’s Internal Supervisor.
- Clarifying complex multi-party conversations and re-contracting in light of this.
- Working with “armored” clients.
- Unraveling parallel processes.
Coaching supervision can look like:
Individual sessions by telephone or in person. Contracts are generally for six months, one session per month. After building a partnership, supervision-on-call can be arranged in which we address recent or upcoming coaching that presents a challenge.
Group supervision in person. Groups of up to eight coaches meet on a regular basis to review cases and explore coaching challenges. The supervisor guides the conversations, but, as the group develops, more and more support is obtained from colleagues.
In house supervision for organizations with internal coaches. Contracts for supervision can be arranged for scheduled work much like group supervision and on a retainer basis to support the overall coaching effort in the organization.
“We understand another person in the same way we understand or seek to understand ourselves. What we do not understand in ourselves, we do not understand in the other person.” C.G. Jung
“Supervision is an opportunity to bring someone back to their own mind, to show them how good they can be.” Nancy Kline, Time to Think.
“Supervision is like coming home to ourselves and turning on the lights so we stop bumping into things in the dark.” Sam Magill Sr.
If you are interested in working with me in Coaching Supervision, I invite you to read through my Getting Started with Coaching Supervision page.
