Supervision: A route to self-awareness or self-delusion?

Coaching Supervision is increasingly perceived to be essential to coaching best practice, it is widely required by the coaching bodies as a mandatory element of continuing professional development and accreditation, and recent surveys (ICF, 2018) show that there is a wide uptake.?

The definitions of coaching supervision also highlight its role in developing the coach, being a place for reflective practice and where the practitioner can step back and review one’s work.

Recent research exploring coach self-awareness indicated that a key method in developing and deepening self-awareness was reflective practice, in particular coaching supervision.? This is because supervision provides a dedicated and committed space where the coach steps up ‘onto the balcony’ with another professional (the supervisor) to ‘look down, observe and reflect on the dance’ between the coach and their client to gain a meta and helicopter perspective of the work.? This will inevitably enable the coach to gain some new perspectives and thinking.

This can be further deepened with reflective practices that draw on psychodynamic principles to explore the projection, transference and countertransference that maybe happening.? In addition, when one has been working with the same coaching supervisor for a length of time the supervisor is able to identify patterns of behaviour and habits in the coach and shine a light on these. ?It provides a place where we can put ourselves and our practice under the microscope and examine what is emerging.? This very act of stepping back, being challenged, offered reflections and receiving feedback can give glimpses into our unconscious and provide new insights thereby increasing our self-awareness.

However, the research also highlighted that we can only develop self-awareness if we really know what the construct is, are motivated to develop it and can manage our own ‘storytelling.’? Alongside this we choose what to take to supervision, it is a self-reporting process so we can avoid taking what we perhaps most need to work on – and often we avoid taking what we are ashamed of or feel guilty about.? Even if we have a strong relationship with our supervisor and take something we are a little ashamed of or embarrassed about we then must contend with our own ‘ego defences’ in exploring the enquiry.? These ‘defences’ may lead to us shutting down, retreating, justifying, rationalising, intellectualising or any other protective mechanism we have learnt which makes reflection on the enquiry even more challenging.

Therefore, to check in and ensure that self-delusion is avoided spend a few moments reflecting and asking yourself:

• What am I avoiding; ashamed of; embarrassed of taking to supervision?
• What might I need to feel safe enough to focus on this?
• What conversations might I need to have with my supervisor so I can do this?
• What are my patterns of behaviour that may lead me to avoiding what I really need to lean into?

This is a guest blog by Julia Carden, an Executive Coach and Coach Supervisor. Alongside Julia’s coaching and supervision practice she is a visiting tutor at Henley Business School teaching on the Professional Certificate in Executive Coaching, MSc in Executive Coaching and Behavioural Change and heads up the Professional Certificate in Coaching Supervision.