Two and a half years ago, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust shared how its internal coaching and mentoring service was improving patient care, among other benefits. In this series, we look at the Trust’s latest steps towards developing a coaching and mentoring culture. Part 2: Introducing a peer coaching supervision programme. Hannah Datema, Elaine Patterson and Karyn Prentice report
In 2013, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust launched an internal coaching service to train and develop an internal register of coaches to coach staff, supporting their personal and professional development and performance.
By 2016, 300 staff had been trained internally as coaches and more than 500 staff had accessed a coach. A coaching culture was unfolding across the Trust.
However, I (Hannah Datema), was mindful that formal supervision arrangements had not been agreed or put in place, as per recommendations from professional bodies such as the Association for Coaching (AC) or the European Mentoring & Coaching Council (EMCC), and the opportunity to support the development of the Trust’s internal coaches was being lost.
Karyn Prentice had presented at a Trust CPD event for coaches and mentors in 2016. She was really impressed with the commitment of coaches, and what the Trust had achieved, and very kindly offered to pilot – free of charge – a peer coaching supervision for some of the Trust’s internal coaches with colleague Elaine Patterson via their creative consultancy, PattersonPrenticeDesigns.
Both Karyn and Elaine were senior faculty at the Coaching Supervision Academy, specialising in international training and supervision of coaches, leaders and people professionals worldwide, which was already EMCC accredited and ICF recognised.
So in 2017, a pilot programme was designed, which contributed to an action research project to understand participants’ experience of the pilot and the value they derived from their participation. A working definition of peer supervision was developed:
“A peer coach supervisor hosts and co-creates a learning space for peer coaches to ‘super-see’ their practice and themselves as they work, with the purpose of ensuring safe, ethical and professional practice, attend to their CPD and stay fit to practice.”
The pilot aimed to:
- Share and teach peer supervision processes, approaches and methodologies to enable the coaches to peer supervise themselves by the end of the pilot programme
- Attend to the wellbeing, resourcing and mutual support of the coaches who were also giving their time for free
- Create a sustainable community of practice, which could be developed and expanded to include other NHS Trusts and public sector organisations.
Fourteen Trust coaches from a range of roles and departments across the organisation participated in the pilot programme. Coaches were selected on the basis of experience, availability and willingness to participate.
Design
The programme began with a one-day launch event, introducing participants to core principles of supervision and skillsets of relational presence and listening wholeheartedly. Following this event, the cohort was divided into two peer supervision groups, supervised by either Prentice or Patterson, using techniques such as the Basket and Harvest™ and Hawkins’ Seven-eyed Model of Supervision, to stretch reflective and supervisory muscles.
Once foundational competence had been achieved, other creative approaches like the Magic Box, Journaling, Metaphor Cards and Three Chairs, were introduced. Resource materials were specifically designed and distributed to everyone as the year progressed. The last quarter of the programme focused on consolidation and integration of participant learning, links to practice and the impact on the Trust’s wider OD and culture change agenda.
A ‘Harvest event’ was held in December 2017 to bring both groups back together to mark the learning and journey which everyone had been on, as well as evaluating the programme.
Evaluation
Through evaluation processes, participants reported a deepening appreciation of the value of peer supervision over the course of the programme. The more peer supervision they received, the more they appreciated its added value to their own personal and professional support, development and resourcing.
Participants also reported increased competence in the skills of self-reflection, which enabled them to more openly and courageously embrace their own vulnerability and not knowing, as the route to connecting through their shared humanity to explore the issues which they choose to bring to peer supervision.
Participants appreciated how learning not to judge, to release attachments, and to let go of assumptions or fixed mindsets opened them to appreciating different perspectives or ways of seeing which they could then apply in their own contexts.
Participants realised through the process of peer supervision that the wisdom they needed already existed through how they choose to generously and respectfully pay attention to each other. With this there was a greater acceptance of others and an emerging questioning of their own contribution – through, for example, their own reactivity or assumptions – to the problems they choose to present which they felt empowered to address.
Participants completed a self-assessment against the 7Cs qualities for Being Fully Human and showed both an increase and a better balance across all the seven capacities of: care, courage, curiosity, compassion, connection, creativity and contemplation (see 7Cs figure below).
Further information
Further to the qualitative data, data analytics showed an annual sickness rate saving for participants of £48,000, compared to peers not participating in the programme, as well as a return on investment rate of 4,852% (for every £1 invested in staff time attending the programme, £48.37 is returned to the Trust).
Fourteen coaches from across the Trust took part in the first cohort. Their learning directly shaped the work of a further 200 internal coaches, their clients, colleagues and patients. The multiplier effect means that at least 2,500 people have benefited through a culture where staff can better connect with their thoughts and emotions, and can articulate these in a safe, conversational style where they can bring their best selves to work, which reduces stress and encourages a culture of wholehearted kindness, generosity and support – paramount for the NHS.
The pilot was shortlisted for ‘Best Training Partnership’ in 2017 at the TJ Awards, winning Gold for ‘Best Coaching and Mentoring Programme’ in 2016 and 2018. It also won bronze in ‘Best Training Partnership’ in 2018.
Final Thoughts
Overall, the programme was found to have inspired a curiosity, resilience, resourcefulness and enthusiasm with a positivity, optimism and hope in the participants, which they took into their day-to-day work.
Participants appreciated the approach and intention of the programme facilitators to co-create a programme nested in the culture of the Trust and flexibly designed to meet the learning needs of the cohort.
Some sadness was expressed that after the Launch Day the cohort was split, but this was logistically unavoidable given the stated aims of the programme.
Year 1 was so successful that discussions led to the design and delivery of a supervision training programme in Year 2 for six graduates from Year 1, who supervise a further 30 coaches from within the Trust, and from five other NHS Trusts.
The aim is to create a pipeline of supervisors, with further roll-out in Year 3 to ensure ongoing sustainability for the coaching service, both within the Trust and within the wider NHS.
- Next issue: reverse mentoring
- Hannah Datema is the former coaching and mentoring manager at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust and Elaine Patterson and Karyn Prentice are from PattersonPrenticeDesigns
References
- E Patterson, ‘The 7Cs of A Shared Humanity’, in C@W, 13.4, 2018
- Journaling: G Bolton, Reflective Practice Writing and Professional Development, London: SAGE, 2010
- ‘Basket and Harvest’™ – PattersonPrenticeDesigns, The Harvest and the Basket: Group Supervision Methodology, Unpublished, 2017
- Hawkins’ seven-eyed model – P Hawkins and N Smith, Coaching, Mentoring and Organisational Consultancy – Supervision and Development, Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2006
- The Magic Box – K Prentice, in Murdoch, E & Arnold, J, Full Spectrum Supervision: Who You Are is How You Supervise, Ch 7: ‘Invitation to the music: The transpersonal note in coaching supervision’, St Albans: Panama Press, 2012
- Metaphor Cards – M Lahad, Creative Supervision – The Use of Expressive Arts in Supervision and Self-Supervision, London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2000
- Three Chairs – A Meier and M Boivin, Counselling and Therapy Techniques: Theory and Practice, Ch 4: ‘The Gestalt Empty-Chair and Two-Chair Techniques’, London: SAGE, 2011