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1 What is coaching supervision?
This chapter is intended to clarify what we mean when we talk about ācoaching supervisionā. We start by offering a simple explanation of what coaching supervision looks like āin practiceā. We then consider how this practice has evolved from the disciplines of other helping professions, and what some of the differences are now that it is applied to the coaching community. We then turn to the four key professional coaching bodies, to outline what they believe coaching supervision is and how it should be utilised. Against this more conceptual background, we then pull together recent research to identify how much coaching supervision is carried out in practice. We look at effective coaching supervision from the point of view of both supervisee and supervisor in later chapters. Towards the end of this chapter, we have invited some well-known practitioners to articulate what they understand coaching supervision to be, as well as captured some anecdotal comments from coaches who are actively engaged in a coaching supervision relationship. The chapter closes by offering a summary of what we believe coaching supervision āisā and āis notā. In keeping with the style of this book, at the end of the chapter, you will find a summary of the main learning points, some questions for your reflection, and we pose some questions for further research as little has already been written in this field.
Coaching supervision explained
At its simplest, coaching supervision is the practice of reflecting on your client work. If we focus on the element of āvisionā, then this highlights the fact that the activity enhances your ability to āseeā your work from an expanded perspective. By examining how you practise, you can illuminate the subtle choices you make in client conversations. Through reflection it becomes possible to celebrate your strengths, uncover your blind spots and explore the potential for unconscious bias.
Where does the practice of ācoaching supervisionā come from?
The notion of āsupervisionā originates from the helping professions, especially counselling and therapy, where it has been established for decades as a mandatory practice. As coaching began to emerge as a separate discipline, the early writers on coaching supervision, such as Peter Hawkins and Robert Shohet (1989), started to reframe what happened in these regulated professions to the unregulated world of coaching.
Many people, however, are most familiar with the term āsupervisionā from its use in business/organisations. In this context, it is used to depict the role of a line manager where they oversee someoneās work or as a process of guiding a less experienced person. Given the mandatory nature of supervision in the helping professions and the authoritative role of the line manager, it is easy to identify how supervision may be perceived as having a monitoring and regulating āpersonaā.
Additionally, given that we work in an uncertain industry, it is perhaps inevitable that some people see coaching supervision as a necessary ācalibrationā vehicle to ensure quality. Others focus on the developmental perspective and therefore see it as primarily needed for novices. However, we see it as part of our overall continuous professional development. Coaching supervision provides you with a unique opportunity to individually develop your skills and provides an enhanced understanding of how you work, regardless of your level of coaching experience.
Why might you need supervision?
A common misconception is that coaching supervision is only needed āwhen you get stuckā. Even when your coaching is going well, there is benefit in analysing what it is that is working. Specifically, what you as a coach are doing within the process, so that you may use this learning and understanding to grow your own capability. Coaching supervision can also help you gain a better understanding of your clients, their different backgrounds and personalities, and encourages you to be more aware of the dynamics of the relationship.
Each of the main professional coaching bodies has defined their codes of ethics or good practice to help guide coachesā work. However, the reality of client work is often much more āin the greyā than these codes would suggest. A supervisor can help you explore tricky situations and navigate a path that helps you maintain ethical and professional standards. Importantly, our āgut reactionsā can often feel like they are the only credible course of action for us. However, through entering into a supervision discussion, we find that supervisees will almost always come up with additional and different perspectives. As a result of this wider examination, a quality assurance element on behalf of your clients and their sponsoring organisations may also result.
Typically, we take for granted that most of our coaching clients will be āfully functioningā individuals, which is less likely in the fields of counselling and therapy. Nonetheless, being the āconfidanteā on difficult and challenging human issues can be emotionally draining and burdensome at times. Coaching supervision provides the space to share and discuss difficult or challenging clients and to gain support for the emotional impact on you. Conversely, when you have an effective and positive relationship with your client, supervision helps to ensure the work is not just a cosy conversation and enables you to challenge them effectively too. Many practitioners find that coaching is quite an isolating profession. No one is there to help or give feedback as you work with the client, and we know from our own experiences that parallel processes are, all too often, hard to spot in the moment. What is more, having contracted with your client for a āconfidential relationshipā, you are then ethically bound not to share the conversation outside another āconfidential relationshipā. For independent coaches this is coupled with the pressure of running their own business without immediate access to the peer support that they once enjoyed in their previous organisational lives. Coaching supervision therefore provides the opportunity to stand back, within the setting of a confidential relationship, to help you reflect and better understand what supports or damages the client work you do.
What is coaching supervision intending to achieve?
Borrowing from the literature of its āhelping professionā roots, there seems to be a common pattern of a āthree-prongedā explanation of why engaging in this kind of reflective practice might be useful. You will notice that each author chooses labels that reflect their different context and yet the content is broadly similar.
If we look to the field of counselling, Proctor (1986) developed a definition for the nature of supervision:
1 Normative ā the supervisor accepts (or more accurately shares with the supervisee) responsibility for ensuring that the superviseeās work is professional and ethical, operating within whatever codes, laws and organisational norms apply.
2 Formative ā the supervisor acts to provide feedback or direction that will enable the supervisee to develop the skills, theoretical knowledge, personal attributes and so on that will mean the supervisee becomes an increasingly competent practitioner.
3 Restorative ā the supervisor is there to listen, support, confront the supervisee when the inevitable personal issues, doubts and insecurities arise ā and when client issues are āpicked upā by the supervisee.
When we look to earlier work from the world of social work, Kadushin (1976) also offers three key roles or functions of supervision:
1 Managerial ā concerned with the correct, effective and appropriate implementation and adherence to policies and procedures.
2 Educational ā concerned with developing skills and encouraging reflection and the exploration of the work.
3 Supportive ā concerned with maintaining harmonious working relationships and developing an esprit de corps.
As mentioned earlier, Hawkins and Smith (2006) have applied these definitions to the world of coaching:
1 Qualitative ā this function provides quality control in work with people and to have someone to look with us at our work.
2 Developmental ā this function is about developing the skills, understanding and capacities of the supervisees through reflection of the superviseesā work with their clients.
3 Resourcing ā this function is a way of responding to how any workers who are engaged in the intensity of work with clients are necessarily allowing themselves to be affected by the emotion of the client and how they need time to become aware of how this has affected them and to deal with any reactions.
More recently, Lucas and Larcombe (2015), also taking a coaching perspective, considered whether these definitions were complete from the perspective of the independent coach. They noticed that the emphasis a coachās business development has, within the supervision dialogue, could be better represented by adding a fourth āprongā. As follows:
1 Ethical ā focusing on the congruence or dissonance between espoused philosophy and ethical codes with actual practice.
2 Technical ā focusing on matters relating to the superviseeās coaching client work, e.g. techniques, competence, skills, the process of coaching.
3 Personal ā focusing on the coachās energy (however caused) for their work, and how this is impacted by their clients and vice versa.
4 Commercial ā focusing on matters relating to the superviseeās coaching business.
Translating this into practice here, Table 1.1 demonstrates the kinds of things you might discuss within each of the three areas.
Table 1.1 Mapping practical supervision topics to the different areas of supervision
Different supervision areas | Some example practical supervision topics |
|---|
Normative. Managerial, Qualitative | Dilemmas to work through and ethical issues to discuss |
| Your concerns with maintaining professional standards and ethical practice |
| Benchmarking your coaching practice against good practice |
| Opportunity to gain a perspective on the quality of your coaching practice |
Formative, Educational, Developmental | Helping you challenge your blind spots and offering new perspectives |
| Increasing your range of interventions, including new tools and techniques |
Restorative, Supportive, Resourcing | Looking at the parallel proc... |
