For those who still haven’t embraced coaching supervision, it offers many benefits, including helping you flourish and grow, says Lorenza Clifford
Each year, as more people take up coaching, more coaches take up coaching supervision.
The primary initial benefits of a supervision relationship, from research carried out in 2019 (https://bit.ly/3uZVlo4) with coaches and supervisors are:
- Holding time to think, safe from judgement
- A focus on them and their practice
- Opportunity to address issues and discuss situations arising.
The work of a coaching supervisor is to direct attention to areas and concepts relating to coaching practice and to invite awareness, explorations, reflections and insights to emerge, including how to work appropriately with these in different contexts, enabling resourcefulness and responsibility, and empowering action.
It may be tempting to use co-coaching as a substitute but to carry out this work well requires a strong understanding of the areas and concepts relating to coaching work, and how they interrelate with the essential humanity of the practitioner, client and client system.
This requires rigorous training, several experience cycles and the relational and dialogue skills to bring into conversation the elements, exercises and enquiry practices. These allow constructive development to occur and change to emerge for coaches that can be applied with clients in their next conversation.
The outcomes of these benefits from the research are so valuable that coaches often continue in regular supervision after experiencing it. Coaches report feeling they are safer in their practice, because none of us know what is in our blind spot or what we don’t know. We also can’t think about what we are not yet equipped to think about. That has to come after the wondering, stretching in conversation, reflecting, experimenting and applying development.
Nick Bolton of the International Centre for Coaching Supervision, Animas Centre for Coaching and community strategy lead for Association of Coaching Supervisors, has trained thousands of coaches over time. Recently he told coaches who are looking to become transformative coaches that it’s a responsibility to be in supervision: if you’re potentially changing someone’s psychological model of the world, you’d better be participating in regular supervision to be aware of yourself and your own frame of reference, and how it might enter the conversation, where that is appropriate and where it is not. It’s not just important for transformational coaches but gives benefits for all areas of coaching practice. I highlight it for those I train as a key and valuable part of their ongoing developmental practice.
Likewise, supervisors stay in supervision to continue to gain these benefits for their supervision and coaching practice. Many have discovered the process of supervising others is also a good path to create reflection and insight about their own practice.
As the positive impact of these ways of working gains traction, we see more professional bodies and coach trainers point out to their members and clients the relevance of coaching supervision for our times. As more people introduce wholescale coaching into their organisations, whether internally or externally sourced, the quality assurance implications of coaching supervision are also coming to the fore, indeed some procurement processes now include it as a baseline requirement.
In fact, the emphasis is not only on supervision being essential for coaches, but on what other roles could benefit from that gentle, constructive, developmental scrutiny. For example, Doug Montgomery and Liz Nottingham, in a previous supervision column (Coaching at Work, vol 16, issue 1, 2021), looked at the potential for supervision in the human resource arena in their article on how supervision can be a valuable resource for HR leaders.
Once you have experienced the benefit of supervision personally, you not only develop a better set of coaching skills, but you also develop your way of being; where reflecting on your practice is a regular life-enhancing activity you look forward to. The ripples of the positive outcomes reach far and wide.
So where do you go to get started?
The Association of Coaching Supervisors has a global directory of supervisors from across the different professional bodies, who are promoting their practices and are keen to find you.
- You can find a supervisor who you trust and respect, who can help you learn and grow
- You can seek someone local to you, who will understand the legal, cultural and political landscape you work in
- You can look for a supervisor with similar modalities and approach or with experience in your field, who will ‘get’ your way of working, or
- You can specifically go with someone who has different perspectives to offer, who may challenge you through their different frame of reference.
Other professional bodies have their own directories of member supervisors too, for example, the Association for Coaching also offers a global directory of supervisors.
What new shoots might grow for you and your clients this year through the supervision you take part in now?
About the author
- Lorenza Clifford is an AC accredited Master Executive Coach, an accredited coaching supervisor, and a member of the Climate Coaching Alliance. She is also Chair for the Association of Coaching Supervisors Limited, and Winner of the Coaching at Work 2021 Editor’s Award for Contributions to Coaching Supervision.
- www.associationofcoachingsupervisors.com/supervisors/profiles/lorenza-clifford
FIND OUT MORE
- AoCS is an international community of coach supervisors and source of good practice, where you can easily find an experienced, qualified and often accredited coach supervisor to work with:
- www.associationofcoachingsupervisors.com
Figure 1: Valuable outcomes flow from the coaching supervision relationship over time
The outcomes of these benefits from the research are so valuable that coaches often continue in regular supervision after experiencing it. Coaches report feeling that they are safer in their practice, because we none of us know what is in our blind spot or what we don’t know. We also can’t think about what we are not yet equipped to think about. That has to come after the wondering, stretching in conversation, reflecting, experimenting, and applying development