Peer Supervision in Coaching and Mentoring

A Versatile Guide for Reflective Practice

Tammy Turner, Michelle Lucas, Carol Whitaker

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351668255
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Betriebswirtschaft
• Subtopic: Business allgemein

Supervision is increasingly required for a coach's and a mentor's professional development, and engaging in reflective practice with peers can be a valuable way of meeting these needs. Peer supervision brings unique challenges though, including the possibility of collusion or stagnating at a shared developmental level.

This book is written by practicing professional supervisors who engage in peer supervision themselves and train communities of coaches and mentors. It guides practitioners to develop and integrate their range of individual and group reflective practice activities alongside professional supervision. It draws upon essential theory and methodology, explores challenges and ethical dilemmas faced within peer supervision, and provides concrete guidance, useful techniques and helpful templates.

This practical guide will be vital reading for individual coaching and mentoring practitioners and peer learning groups including within communities, universities and/or training programs. It will also support professional supervisors and organizations developing coaching cultures.

1

Defining peer supervision

Definition: Peer supervision is a collaborative learning environment created between fellow coaches, mentors or other professionals (practitioners). It is of mutual benefit to the practitioners involved as well as being of service to their clients and the wider system. Peers often have comparable levels of expertise and are without supervision training. It is a self-managed arrangement where typically the major exchange is time rather than money. What’s significant is that it is reciprocal, generates the power to reflect on practice together, and peers share vulnerability and support in equal measure.

What we mean by peer supervision

As coaching and mentoring has spread globally and many practitioners are exceeding twenty years’ career experience, we’re making the case for supervision in all of its forms to be part of the industry’s continuous professional development (CPD). The scope of this book is to offer guidance to those who are new to supervision as well as those who want to deepen their peer supervision practice. Given the scope and application of this book, we are limiting ourselves to the more practical applications of peer supervision.

We start this chapter by providing a reminder of some existing definitions of supervision for coaches and mentors. The central purpose of this book is to enable “peers” to engage in supervision and therefore we also consider exactly what we mean by the term “peer.” We report back on how practitioners use peer supervision. This leads us to question what differences exist between “peer supervision” and professional supervision. We identify two key differentiators, the presence or absence of underpinning supervision knowledge and the reciprocal nature of the relationship that in turn impacts on how power is experienced in the relationship. From this base we explore other activities often mistaken for peer supervision and explain why we see them as different. We consider how different geographies and different contexts might impact on the use of peer supervision. By way of summary we list the most common reasons why practitioners see peer supervision as a positive choice and also offer some words of caution.

Defining supervision within a coaching and mentoring context

There are plenty of definitions of coaching supervision to choose from. Here is a reminder of the most commonly referenced ones:

• “Coaching supervision is a formal process of professional support, which ensures continuing development of the coach and effectiveness of his/her coaching practice through interactive reflection, interpretative evaluation and the sharing of expertise.” Bachkirova, Stevens and Willis (2005).

• “A working alliance between two professionals where coaches offer an account of their work, reflect on it, receive feedback and receive guidance, if appropriate.” Inskipp and Proctor (1993).

• “Supervision is the process by which a coach/mentor/consultant, with the help of the supervisor, who is not working directly with the client, can attend to understanding better both the client system and themselves as part of the client-coach/mentor system, and transform their work.” Hawkins and Smith (2006).

• “Coaching supervision is a co-created learning relationship that supports the supervisee in their development, both personally and professionally, and seeks to support them in providing best practice to their client. Through the process of reflecting on their own work in supervision, the supervisees can review and develop their practice and re-energize themselves. It offers a forum to attend to their emotional and professional wellbeing and growth. Through the relationship and dialogue in this alliance, coaches can receive feedback, broaden their perspectives, generate new ideas and maintain standards of effective practice.” Hodge (2016).

• “Supervision is an opportunity to bring someone back to their own mind, to show them how good they can be.” Kline (1999).

• “A Supervisor is a mentor’s mentor and allows a mentor a place where they can bring their mentoring experiences to be supported and engage in reflective dialogue and collaborative learning to aid development. It is often seen as a safety net to overcome or avoid potential stumbling blocks and roadblocks with minimum repercussion and risk.” (OCM, 2017).

Summarizing these established definitions, we see an emphasis is on the collaborative nature of the supervision relationship. Interestingly, these definitions are generic and could equally apply to supervision from a professional supervisor or to supervision among peers. A common assumption is that a professional supervisor will have greater or deeper experience than those they are supervising. However, there is nothing within these quoted definitions that require this to be true. Therefore before we proceed to define peer supervision, we provide the following definition of professional supervision – and this will be explored more fully in Chapter 9.

Professional supervision is a reflective learning environment where the supervisor is hired by the supervisee and is specifically qualified to look at the entire system in which the work is being undertaken. Although the reflective space is co-created, the professional supervisor is purposefully of service to the supervisee and their clients and the wider system. What is significant is that the supervisor’s intention is to develop the practitioner’s competence, capability and capacity to become a reflective practitioner of their own work.

Defining peer supervision

So what exactly is “peer supervision”? In our research for this book we attempted to find definitions that specifically explain this term, and we discovered that such definitions are hard to come by!

We located the following explanation in Standards Australia (2011), which formed part of an exploration of the benefits and limitations of peer supervision:

In peer supervision, two or more coaches seek to assist each other in reflecting on their practice including both case specific and coach specific reflection.

We also discovered a form of peer learning used in Holland and Switzerland, which is useful in our context:

Intervision: A supervision process involving a group of peers with the same professional focus, who cooperate in a goal-driven process towards finding solutions within a shared structural design. Mutually accountable volunteers give and receive learning and teaching without compensation.

Epprecht (2011) citing Lippmann (2009)

There are certainly parallels between the concept of intervision and the emphasis of the individual’s responsibility for reviewing their own work in an unregulated market. According to two Dutch management consultants, Bellerson and Kohlmann (2016, p. 9):

Intervision is based on the idea that you alone are ultimately responsible for your own behavior. You learn to look differently at yourself, at what you do, and search for things to improve. In Intervision you take charge of your professional development, your expertise in your field, the way you work with others, and your personal performance.

The process Bellerson and Kohlmann (2016, p. 13) describe for Intervision echoes the techniques that we outline in our chapter on group peer supervision. “A group of five to eight participants unravels a problem submitted by one participant, the case provider. … The participants try not to come up with solutions, but by asking questions, encourage the case provider to think up their own answers and solutions.” They continue: “Intervision makes you aware of your individual style, and your personal views of your work … at intervision sessions you help each other to uncover and clarify hidden drivers, so that you can find and make improvements.”

It would seem therefore that intervision, as described by these authors, has a primary focus on the effectiveness of a practitioners work. In comparison, peer supervision as outlined below has a broader intent and impact than this.

What was interesting in our research for this book is we did not find any definitions of “peer supervision” specific to coaching and mentoring. Let’s start from first principles and consider for a moment what we mean by “peer.” The Oxford dictionary definition is “A person of the same age, status, or ability as another specified person.” However, in the context of coaching and mentoring it is unlikely that two coaches will be exactly the “same.” Typically each person will have accumulated their own specific experiences, which inform their work. Additionally it is quite difficult to compare “ability” as so much of a coach’s performance is linked to the capability of their clients and the context in which they are working. What is perhaps more useful in the context of this book are the synonyms “equal,” “fellow,” “co-worker.” These give a sense of the collegiate nature of the relationship. This feels much more useful. When two people work together as “peers” their professional profiles could be very similar or very different. We talk about the benefits and difficulties of pairings along this spectrum in Chapter 5.

How do professional supervision and peer supervision compare?

Given the similarities outlined above, it leads to the question of whether or not “peer supervision” is any different from professional supervision? Hawkins and Smith (2006) acknowledge that there are typically three central reasons for supervision, described as Developmental, Administrative and Resourcing elements. Previously Proctor (1986), who worked in the fields of counseling identified three elements: Formative, Normative and Restorative. You will notice that throughout this book we will use these terms interchangeably. In 2015 Lucas built on this with her notion of the “House of Supervision.” As Figure 1.1 below illustrates – these three pillars of supervision rest on the practitioners chosen code of ethics and are held together through the activity of guided reflective practice, which fosters our capacity to deliver the work.

In our research for this book we asked a number of practitioners to describe what they used their peer supervision relationships for.

Peer supervision occurs when we speak about challenges that we may have in our coaching sessions and we get the feedback of our peers. We may sometimes pick a topic and each person will contribute their knowledge and experience on the topic, the challenges encountered and their strategies. They [the peer supervisee] then benefit from the varied perspective of their peers.

Lola Chetti, Change Consultant and Executive Coach, Holding Space Coaching and Consulting, Hong Kong

This is about working with my colleagues and seeking and delivering feedback to ensure we are always performing at our best. This can be informal or formal and is a continuous part of what we do as coaches and leadership experts.

Liz Rider, Business and Coaching Psychologist, Sweden

Figure 1.1 The House of Supervision

Developed by Lucas (2015)

I see peer supervision as a co-created partnership with a coaching colleague(s) where the focus of the relationship is to offer a supportive and reflective space for each person to explore their client work and personal development.

Sarah Hammond, Coach, Supervisor and Mindfulness Teacher, UK

My international virtual peer supervision group is a very accessible way to feel in touch with the coaching community, listen to questions that I could ask myself to raise my self-awarene...