Supervision
‘Coaching supervision is a collaborative learning practice to continually build the capacity of the coach through reflective dialogue for the benefit of both coaches and clients.’
– The ICF
To quote the ICF:
‘Coaching supervision is a collaborative learning practice to continually build the capacity of the coach through reflective dialogue for the benefit of both coaches and clients. Coaching supervision focuses on the development of the coach’s capacity through offering a richer and broader opportunity for support and development. Coaching supervision creates a safe environment for the coach to share their successes and failures in becoming masterful in the way they work with their clients.’
Coaching supervision is an opportunity to:
- Reflect, explore and learn from coaching relationships
- Develop ways of improving your coaching and coaching interventions
- Ensure that you are working to defined ethical standards for coaching and, for those working in organisations, that those standards align with the organisation’s objectives, policies and standards of conduct
- Work on better understanding your clients and their organisational/personal context
- Improve emotional stamina to help you deal with crises in confidence and being emotionally affected by your clients
The ICF encourage credentialled coaches to undertake supervision as part of their CPD. Their research shows that coaches who receive supervision benefit from:
- Increased self-awareness
- Greater confidence
- Increased objectivity
- Heightened sense of belonging
- Reduced feelings of isolation
- Increased resourcefulness
Coaching supervision is particularly important for the internal coach. In addition to assuring the quality of the service being offered, and providing continual support and development for coaches, it also provides a mechanism for feedback to the organisation from the many coaching conversations taking place in the business.
Our approach to coaching supervision provides coaches with the opportunity to reflect on their coaching practices by sharing and evaluating their experiences with another more experienced coach. We also work with your organisation to feed back organisational learning in a way that honours the confidentiality of the client-coach relationship and the coach supervisor.
One-to-one sessions are run remotely (via Zoom, phone), usually for an hour each time although both duration and frequency can be varied by agreement with the coach supervisor.
All our coach supervisors are professionally accredited, have their own coaching practices and meet the ICF standards for coach supervision.
For self-funding coaches requiring supervision, Elizabeth Crosse, our lead coach supervisor, is happy to contract with you on a personal basis and to charge a significantly lower rate. Give us a call and we’ll put you in touch with her to talk it through.
For group supervision of a team of internal coaches, the most popular option is a quarterly half-day group supervision session for a group of up to 6 or 8 coaches at a time.
Sessions can be held face-to-face or remotely.
Subject to the requirements of the group and the employing organisation, the focus is generally on:
- Adding value to the organisation by ensuring:
- Coaching is focused on work objectives
- Coaching is within the boundaries of the coach’s capability
- The client is protected through the delivery of a high quality of service
- The organisational risks of grievances or tribunals due to unethical or unprofessional coaching practices are minimised
- We build a sense of a coaching community and connectedness to other internal coaches
- Adding value to the coach by ensuring:
- They have an opportunity to share experience and have support from colleagues and the supervisor
- They can ‘benchmark’ their own practice and develop confidence by hearing other coaches share their learning experience
- They are better able to recognise boundaries and deal with the ethical dilemmas that internal coaches face by virtue of working and coaching in the same organisation
Objectives
Specifically, the coaching supervision sessions ensure that coaches:
- Deepen the knowledge and skills acquired in coach training and receive constructive feedback on their coaching style
- Clarify and anchor their practice in the coaching code of ethics and uphold organisational coaching standards
- Better understand the coach client interaction and become more aware of their own reactions and responses to the client
- Have support to enable them to deal with the intensity of working with clients without becoming enmeshed in emotions
- Have a mechanism for feeding back learning for the organisation
Format
Our half-day group coaching supervision sessions allow coaches to discuss and benefit from feedback on themes and issues that arise from their current coaching sessions, by reflecting on their own cases. In addition there is the opportunity for skills development and deeper learning.
Each session includes an opportunity to check in, share recent experiences and feelings, and establish the session focus and desired outcome. We agree who wants to ‘present a client’ with other members asking questions or sharing their perspective, using this as a facilitated supervisory discussion to enable learning. In addition there is an opportunity for observed coaching and feedback. Each session ends by establishing learning and commitment to future action.
Structure
Each session has a theme that focuses on core coaching competencies:
- SESSION 1: SETTING THE FOUNDATION – ETHICAL GUIDELINES: This includes agreeing our ‘group contract’, boundaries for confidentiality and how organisational learning will be fed back.
- SESSION 2: THE CLIENT RELATIONSHIP: How we establish coaching presence and develop trust and an effective working relationship. How we remain empathic without becoming entangled in the client’s situation and emotions.
- SESSION 3: COMMUNICATING EFFECTIVELY: How we use our communication style to greatest effect. Working with clients with different communication styles from us.
- SESSION 4: FACILITATING LEARNING AND RESULTS: How do we manage accountability for ourselves and our clients? What has been our learning and what will be our next steps? Agreeing the feedback to the organisation on issues and cultural themes identified during the supervision process.
For more information about supervision, give us a call on 01582 463461. We’re here to help!
