In some professions, attending supervision is mandatory if one wants to keep practicing with a licence or an accreditation. This is particularly true in the field of mental health, where counsellors and psychotherapists are bound by their professional organisations to engage in regular supervision with a trained/accredited supervisor.
This practice of looking at one’s work through supervision is becoming more and more common in coaching. The European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC) makes it a requirement for their credentialing process and even has a Supervisor accreditation (ESIA), while the International Coaching Federation (ICF) supports it as a continuing professional development activity. In this article we are going to look at what coaching supervision is and what its purpose is.
Coaching supervision is a collaborative learning dialogue that allows the coach to better understand themselves, their client’s, their own system, and their clients’ system. It raises awareness on how and why the coach reacted (as opposed to responded) to some clients or some topics that were discussed.
In their book Supervision In The Helping Professions, Hawkins and Shohet (2012) describe coaching supervision as:
“A joint endeavour in which a practitioner with the help of a supervisor, attends to their clients, themselves as part of their client practitioner relationships and the wider systemic context, and by doing so improves the quality of the work, transforms their relationships, continuously develops themselves, their practice and the wider profession.”
Supervisors agree that coaching supervision has three functions for the coach: it supports them as a coach, as a person and as a professional. These three functions have been explored by a few authors:
Both authors offer a similar approach:
As you can see, coaching supervision is much more than discussing coaching cases, even though you can always bring these to your sessions. Supervision can be the starting point of a deeper reflection about yourself as a practitioner, and a way for you to look at your practice with some distance.
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Hawkins, P. & Shohet, R. (2012). Supervision in the Helping Professions. Open University Press.
Hawkins, S. & Smith, N. (2006). Coaching, Mentoring and Organisational Consultancy: Supervision and Development. Open University Press.
Proctor, B. (1986). Supervision: a co-operative exercise in accountability. Enabling and Ensuring: Supervision in Practice National Youth Bureau Agency. Pp.21-23.
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