Coaching Supervision Tips | Coach Supervision | Mentoring

Coaching supervision
tips for Internal buyers

In the last few years, as coaching has expanded as an industry and the likelihood of regulation in the future has grown, supervision has become more to the fore. This document is aimed at showing the importance of supervision for coaches.

What is Coaching Supervision?

Supervision is a word that has different connotations within different areas and sometimes it is not liked for that reason. In corporations, it is often seen as a managerial function.

If you split the word supervision into two, you will see that it is actually quite an apt description. “Super” can be defined as going beyond, transcending to a higher level or being superior in quality. “Vision” is when things come into view or having imaginative insight /wisdom.

Therefore supervision provides a coach with the space to reflect on their own practise. The supervisor can be said to be acting as a mentor, although this depends on the type of supervision, which we explore later.

The purpose of supervision is largely:

Key part of CPD and action learning of the coach, mentor or consultant.
Helps the coach to develop their internal supervisor and become a better reflective practitioner
Provides a supportive space for the coach to process what they have absorbed from their clients and their clients system
Helps keep the coach honest and courageous, attending to what they are; not seeing, not hearing, not allowing themselves to feel, or not saying.
Looks at where and how the coach may need to refer the client on to more specialist help.

Difference/similarities with:

Mentoring - supervision for coaches is often referred to as coach mentoring because essentially that is what it is. The supervisor/mentor is a more experienced coach and can help to use their own knowledge and experience to guide and advise. It is therefore not the same as coaching another coach, as the focus is usually on client work rather than on personal issues i.e. profession centred learning. (Although not always; see CPD later)

Facilitation – if the definition of facilitation is to help, then supervision does use these skills particularly if it is done in groups as the supervisor is facilitating the content, process and dynamics of the group.

Coaching – usually about the performance or skills needing to be developed in the person “sitting in front of you” i.e. it is performance centred learning

Action learning - can be like group supervision however supervision groups may not always be problem centred and short term depending on the focus/contract of the group

Counselling – person centred learning and focusing on the past to help a person to uncover how problems have arisen, to heal “damage” and bring them to a point of functioning whereby they may then move on to a more coaching style of taking action for the future

However all the above definitions are extremely flexible with lots of grey areas and overlaps. Supervision could be said to encompass all of the above!

Who is it for?

Supervision has originally developed in therapeutic circles where it is a compulsory part of professional practise. It has started to grow in importance in coaching but remains voluntary until regulation. Various coaching bodies like the ICF and AC ask members undertaking coaching, to subscribe to supervision and a code of ethics, and it is a good way of differentiating able coaches from “cowboys”.

Some of the following scenarios give examples of where supervision can be used:

You are a coach working with a client who has a personal issue that he wants to discuss but this same situation has happened to you?
You are helping another coach/colleague when you discover that you both know the same “problem” person you are discussing
You are a consultant doing lots of group work e.g. training, facilitation or action learning sets, but you often work alone and have no one neutral to debrief with or process the day’s events.
You are a HR manager and feeling burnt out by dealing with individuals everyday on personal and competence issues that are too confidential to share in house.
You are a manager who does not get the managerial support and supervision you need because your own manager won’t do it, doesn’t know how to, or works in a different field
You are an internal coach/consultant who struggles to be taken seriously within the organisation because they see you as part of the furniture?
You are right at the top of your organisation and do not have a “boss”; where do you go to for help?

Who does it?

The Association for Coaching advises that a supervisor should be someone who is not only experienced in coaching but also holds a recognised coaching qualification. As yet there are too few qualifications for coaching supervision although this is rapidly changing and therefore the advice may change in the future.

Like coaching anyone can set themselves up as a coach supervisor. However buyers of coaching and supervision need to be aware of the quality they are accessing and although qualifications are no guarantee of quality, because they are not compulsory they do indicate the professionalism and commitment of the coach/supervisor towards their craft.

Also supervisors undertaking group supervision require greater facilitation skills and ability to cope with group dynamics and systemic work that one to one supervisors do not.

Who supervises the supervisors?

Everyone who supervises others should also be in a supervision relationship themselves. This means they have access to expert help not only for their own coaching clients but also for the people they are supervising. It creates extra checks and balances for all parties

What to look for in a supervisor?

There are different types of supervision so this will affect what to look for.

Tutorial supervision – a supervisor who takes on a tutor role as part of a coaching training programme
Training supervision – also an educative function as above but this supervisor may have some responsibility for the work being done with clients
Managerial supervision – where the supervisor is also the line manager of the supervisee and has some responsibility for the work being done with the client
Consultancy supervision- supervisor is neither the trainer nor manager and the supervisee keeps responsibility for clients but consults with supervisor when needed
Peer Supervision – supervisees are at the same level either organisationally or in experience.

For example those still undergoing a coach training programme will want to find a supervisor who is more experienced and is qualified as a coach. They may even have experience within the training/education field.

If someone is already an experienced coach they may still want someone more experienced or someone who works at their level and/or field.

How is supervision done?

Supervision is just like coaching there are various methods for carrying it out.
One to One supervision:

Face to face – Good for longer, in depth sessions if geography is not an issue
Telephone- most popular as it is time efficient and often costs less. Disadvantage maybe in that some information is lost to the supervision from not being able to see the supervisee.

Group supervision:

Led by a supervisor- good for learning from the group and the supervisor has control over the facilitation. Can mean less time for each person or session can focus on one supervisee’s issue only.
Led by the peer group- whole group acts as supervisor. No one person controlling process and group dynamics may get in the way of good learning.

Either of the above can be face to face meetings or the use of teleconferencing facilities.

A good supervisor will work to a formulate a contract on how to get the best from sessions. They should be asking about types of clients and also what models and theories of coaching are being used.

They should discuss boundaries of the work. e.g confidentiality, naming names, possible conflicting relationships.
And practicalities ie Venue for meetings, costs of calls, who phones who?, cancellation agreements, advance dates, contracting for a set time period, length of sessions and intervals between sessions.

When?

Some advice suggests 1 hour of supervision for every 10 hours of coaching when you are in training and 1 supervision hour every 30 coaching hours when experienced (experienced being defined as more than 250 hours of coaching).

The AC now recommends 1 hour of supervision per month irrespective of how many hours coaching performed. It is useful to bear in mind that in supervision your focus will not be solely focussed on the client, and a good supervisor will help you to look at your self and your own habitual patterns of behaviour within a number of different settings which may even include group work if you are a facilitator or consultancy work with regular clients.

What are the key models in supervision?

The most famous and often used model is the Seven Eyed Model (Shoet and Hawkins 2000)

The Seven Eyed model looks at the different relationships involved when you are a coach, mentor or consultant.

There are seven modes or “eyes” within the model. Not all will be appropriate in one supervision session and also not necessarily in sequence.

The diagram attached shows the different modes:

Mode 1 discussing the client and their problem plus “bringing them into the room”
Mode 2 Coach’s interventions and what are the alternatives
Mode 3 Relationship between coach and client “naming the dance” between them
Mode 4 The Coach – what is being re stimulated in them through working with this client
Mode 5 Parallel process – what is being played out with supervisor that occurs in client/coach relationship?
Mode Supervisor – what are they picking up unconsciously that sheds light on the client/coach relationship?
Mode 7 Organisational context – role of stakeholders, contracting, PESTLE, etc

The skill of the supervisor is therefore to be able to “hold” all these different elements in the room and be able to utilise them, as and when seems appropriate.

What is the cost of not doing supervision?

There are now some first cases of litigation filtering through from the USA from the coaching field. Based on other social trends, the UK tends to follow suit where the US leads. This means that even from a purely legal standpoint, coaches and supervisors are vulnerable to being sued. Being members of coaching bodies helps but it is much more useful to have quality supervision so that these unfortunate circumstances do not crop up in the first place and are nipped in the bud early on.

Regular supervision helps a coach to develop their own “self supervisor” which means they are less likely to fall prey to unethical practises and serious dilemmas with awkward consequences.

Leaving aside the legal aspect, many coaches after training do not have anywhere to gain valuable feedback on their practise in order to become better at the art of coaching and can fall into bad habits.

Supervision has been said to have normative, formative and restorative properties.

Normative refers to quality standards to ensure that coaches are offering the best they can to their clients. It is qualitative and helps to uncover blind, deaf and dumb spots in the coach and keeps them psychologically safe.

Formative is the developmental aspect and creates better practitioners through the reflective space of a supervision session. i.e. CPD

Restorative is the supportive or resourcing side which gives time to process things that coaches have absorbed from their clients and their clients system. E.g. during difficult redundancy coaching a supervisee may collect the clients “own stuff” subconsciously and over a period of time this can lead to burnout.

What are the implications of supervision for internal coaches versus external coaches?

Internal coaches are in a unique position in that they may know the people well they are coaching and all the related stakeholders around their coachee. They understand the culture too. However this can also make them blind to certain scenarios (and deaf and dumb!)

Because they are part of the system themselves they will not be aware of how elements in the system are getting in the way for themselves and their coachee. An external supervisor does not have this problem and can ask the penetrating questions that would be difficult for others to see.

This can be doubly difficult if the supervisors themselves are also internal and makes it even more necessary for these supervisors to have an external supervisor too.

Confidentiality will also be an issue and may affect the quality of conversations either with Coachees or with supervisors. Internal coaches may not be able to talk to anyone in the organisation because of keeping confidentiality.

However one of the benefits of internal supervision is that data can often be harvested within a group supervision session that protects confidentiality but allows the organisation to pick up overall themes that are emerging from numerous coaching conversations around the organisation. Without a group outlet of some sort this would not happen and important information may be lost.

Measuring success in supervision.

A good supervisor should contract at the start about what a supervisee is looking for overall from supervision and this should be reflected on in individual sessions and also more globally at regular intervals. Feedback can be shared both ways. If and when the supervision relationship ends then these original measures can be used for evaluation in the same way as happens in coaching relationships.

Julia Menaul BA (Psychol), FCIPD, FITOL, MAC is a qualified and experienced executive/ management coach.
She is an Accredited Coach with the Association for Coaching.
Julia has worked as a coach since 2000 and a supervisor since 2005. She has a Post Graduate Certificate in Supervision from the Bath Consultancy Group/Oxford Brookes University and trained with the world renowned coach and supervisor, Dr Peter Hawkins.
She is now completing her Diploma in Supervision with the Coaching Supervision Academy.
Julia has also continued to work as a facilitator within the field of training & development for nearly 20 years. She specialises in training managers in coaching skills as well as one to one performance coaching with senior managers and leaders within the private, public and charity sectors.

Click for more tips on coaching supervison

Spark Coaching and Training Florence House 1 Lindale Avenue Heaton Bolton Lancashire BL1 5EF UK

t 01204 497 221 f 01204 497 001 m 07973 924 224 e julia@sparkcoachingandtraining.co.uk