What is supervision?

Supervision can be defined as the process by which a coach or mentor can transform their work and develop their coaching and mentoring skills, understanding and capabilities with the help of a supervisor. It is a process of helping you to step back from your work so that you can take a broader view of your coaching and mentoring.

The main functions of supervision are:

Developmental. This includes developing the skills, understanding and capacities of the coach or mentor. This is achieved by reflection on and exploration of the coach's or mentor's work with their clients. This will help the coach or mentor to understand their clients better, to become more aware of their own reactions and responses to their clients, to understand the dynamics of how they and their clients are interacting, to look at how they intervened and the consequence of their interventions and to explore other ways of working with these and similar client situations.

Resourcing. This includes responding to how the coach or mentor are allowing themselves to be affected by their clients and how they need time to become aware of how their clients have affected them and to deal with their reactions. This is necessary to help the coach or mentor not to become over full with emotions. These emotions may have been produced through empathy with their clients or have been re-stimulated by their clients or be a reaction to their clients.

Qualitative. This provides a quality control aspect to the coach's or mentor's work with clients. A coach or mentor may want a quality control aspect to their work or the coach or mentor may be required to undertake supervision by the organisation they are working for.

The main areas for supervision to focus on are:

1. To provide a regular space for the coach or mentor to reflect upon the content and process of their work.
2. To enable the coach or mentor to develop understanding and skills within their work.
3. To enable the coach or mentor to receive information and another perspective on their work.
4. To receive both content and process feedback from the supervisor.
5. To be validated and supported both as a person and as a coach or mentor by the supervisor.
6. To ensure that as a person and as a coach or mentor one is not left to carry unnecessarily, difficulties, problems and projections alone.
7. To have space as a coach or mentor to explore and express personal distress, re-stimulation, transference or counter transference that may be brought up by their work.
8. To plan and utilise the coach's or mentor's personal and professional resources better.
9. To be proactive rather than reactive as a coach or mentor.
10. To ensure the quality of the coach's or mentor's work.

For more information on supervision please refer to the following books:
-'Supervision In The Helping Professions' by Peter Hawkins and Robin Shohet.
-'Coaching, Mentoring and Organizational Consultancy' by Peter Hawkins and Nick Smith.
-'Reflective Practice and Supervision for Coaches' by Julie Hay.
For links to these books please visit our website Books page at http://coachmentorsupervision.co.uk.

If you would like supervision for your coaching or mentoring please refer to the Makin It Happen – Supervision & Support for Coaches & Mentors website at http://coachmentorsupervision.co.uk or contact Liz Makin at http://www.blogger.com/Liz@makinithappen.co.uk.

This article first appeared in the July 2007 edition of the Makin It Happen – Supervision & Support for Coaches & Mentors newsletter. Please click here to Sign up for our email newsletter.