coaching supervision

“A regular, protected time for facilitated, in depth reflection on coaching practice” adapted from Bond and Holland, 1998.

We prefer to think of it more as a working alliance between two professionals where coaches offer an account of their work, reflect on it, receive feedback and guidance if appropriate. Supervision should be a safe place where mutual respect creates a trusting professional relationship. It is where coaches are stretched and their experiential learning is facilitated through reflection to make a positive difference in their practice (work).

The main aim of supervision is to encourage a dialogue between coach and supervisor that focuses the coach’s practice on providing the best possible learning environment for the coachee. From a quality view point the discussion is focused on two key areas:

• Ethical practice – does the coach behave in such a way that an external third party, possibly the coachee’s organisation (the client) or an accrediting coaching organisation may view the practice unethical? Examples of this may include conflicts of interest, breach of confidentiality, or competence of the coach to help in the coachee’s context etc.
  
• Coachee focus – is the focus of the coach solely on the coachee, their agenda and how to provide support to the coachee to develop their own thoughts and solutions to the issues at hand. Is the space of the dialogue left free for the coachee to fill or is the coach filling that space with their own agenda?

Coach Support
Coaching is an intensive activity, often dealing with people’s areas of work, behaviour and personality that is providing them cause for concern or even stress. It can be highly rewarding for the coach to work with a coachee that moves towards personal development and has a series of successes. Equally it can be highly frustrating to work with someone who appears to be struggling and not making progress. Either way it is sometimes difficult for the coach to keep a distance and not become emotionally engaged in the coachee’s journey.

Additionally, coaching several coachees at the same time, or within quick succession, can drain the energy reserves of the coach. The supervisor can help the coach identify if these issues are bleeding into their practice to the point that their coachee focus is in danger of being compromised.

So supervision also provides a restorative process for the coach to focus on their own needs, energy and emotions – and to learn to manage these to maintain a professional coaching practice.

Freya Williams has completed Coaching Supervision Certificates with Michael Carroll and is therefore qualified to help other Coaches in their Supervision. If you are a Coach looking for supervision in the North of England please contact Freya.

Case Study 1
A coach was working with a senior executive in a large Financial Services company and brought an ethical issue to his supervision:
The CEO of the organisation had asked to see the coach; he had done this through the HR Director who was demanding the coach not inform his coachee about the request and to see the CEO in secrecy! The coach felt that the original contract had specified that all discussions between himself and the coachee were to be held in confidence and did not feel he could offer any information to the CEO and informed the HR Director of this.

During Supervision we discussed the ethics of trust and reflected long and hard about this. We looked at the organisation focus on this. Words such as ‘scared’, ‘angry’ and ‘fearful’ came up in the discussion. The coach left feeling in control of the situation and decided he would attend the interview with the proviso that he would not divulge any confidential information.

He went to the meeting and refused to give anything away about his discussions with his coachee but did state that he thought the coachee was reflecting well and openly discussing how to change within his team. To his astonishment, the CEO asked if the coachee could be taken off performance report, the coach had not heard anything of this in his briefing by the HR Director; this was discussed at our second supervision!

Case Study 2
An inexperienced coach came to discuss her first coaching sessions with a lady who it turned out was having psychiatric counselling. The coach felt insecure and inexperienced and had suggested her coachee stick with her therapist and have counselling rather than add coaching.

We reflected on her sessions and suggested that she use a contract which gave clarity to the coaching/counselling approaches. We did some role play which helped her confidence and got her back on track for her subsequent coaching career.