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Who you are is how you supervise
By Edna Murdoch
‘Supervision is an opportunity to bring someone back to their own mind to show them how good they can be.’ N. Kline ‘Time to Think’ 2002
This succinct definition underlines the fact that professional super- vision is far removed from the old fantasy that supervision is a way to police and manage people. It is so much more than that. It is a developmental practice which ensures that practitioners and business leaders have an environment in which they learn much more about how they are operating in their workplace, develop skills which will enhance their working practice and get support and clarification for those critical moments which are common to every office or consult- ing room.
The work that supervisors do, happens within a relationship; who we are is a key element in building and sustaining that relationship and in giving our skills the best environment in which to flourish. It is important therefore that the supervisor has a significant level of self and ‘other’ awareness and that they can use their whole self in their work with others. Supervisees benefit from working with a supervisor who will confidently explore with them who they are in their work and how they relate to their clients and their business colleagues. The premise here is that who we are affects the success of every professional or business conversation that we have - and also the outcome of a session, a contract, or of a team/business meeting. Long experience of supervising coaches and leaders, tells me that effectiveness is less about using tools or applying models and is more about the robustness of the relationship we are able to make with ourselves and with our colleagues.
Who you are is how you supervise. The personal qualities of the supervisor are crucial in the supervisory relationship. These are important because the supervision relationship holds all aspects of the supervisees work - with honesty, clarity and care. This is a conversation that requires trust and integrity. When I work with my supervisor, I want him or her to create a safe place for me to explore fearlessly everything about my work that requires some attention. It might be a contractual situation which has become muddled or difficult and which needs revisiting. It might be a work- based relationship which is tricky and one where I cannot see the part I am playing or how to move forward. It may be that I need to have a broader look at my professional/business life and that the time has come to make changes. In the learning environment of supervision, I need to feel comfortable, not ashamed to say what is really occurring for me in my work. The personal qualities of the supervisor are key to enabling me to trust in this learning dialogue.
‘Work is the place where the self meets the world’. David Whyte
The ‘place where the self meets the world’ is invigorating, stimulating, demanding and complex. Supervisors work with leaders, OD, coaches and HR, in a VUCA world - one of volatility, uncertainty, complex- ity and ambiguity. This complexity demands that supervisors have the capacity to work consistently, humanely and intelligently within
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an ever-shifting framework. Barrett C Brown illustrates how much leaders need to develop in order to meet this 21st century context and the supervisors who work with them, must be trustworthy, mature, flexible and highly skilled:
Leaders who develop themselves…..have access to enhanced and highly-attuned mental, emotional, and relational capacities that others don’t…They sense more connections, nuances, perspectives, and possibilities…. this strengthens their ability to effectively respond to the challenges of 21st century leadership.
A supervisor may be skilled in using supervision models, but without key personal qualities like balance, humour, care and psychological understanding, the impact of supervision will be lessened.
Full Spectrum Supervision Full spectrum supervision attends to ‘who you are’ as a supervisor - and as a supervisee. The Full Spectrum Model of supervision (www.
coachingsupervisionacademy.com) highlights the core relationships in supervision - relationships between supervisor, supervisee and client. A supervisor must be able to bring into focus the dynamics between our supervisees and ourselves, supervisees and their colleagues and also the key dynamics in the wider system of every business/profes- sional conversation. In this way, supervisors look beyond content to context - relational, organisational, economic contexts; these subtly and powerfully influence every conversation. This level of relational awareness and understanding supports professionals to move from transactional, functional conversations to deep and transformative ones that acknowledge the impact of the living, relational, systemic field of work. So, who the supervisor is, in these conversations, mat- ters; we need to model our practice.
‘When a supervisee comes to supervision, both people will be changed by the relationship and the conversation that happens between them……(sup) is a place for everyone in the system to be thought about or held in mind. ‘Joan Wilmot Supervision as Trans- formation Ed Shohet 2011
Edna Murdoch Co-author (with Jackie Arnold) of ‘Full Spectrum Supervi- sion’ Panoma Press 2013
LEADERSHIP
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