we need co-design supervision

TLDR: Regular supervision can sustain and improve co-design practices and practitioners. While leading co-design is a relatively new job, organisations and funders have a responsibility to support staff leading co-design. Co-design facilitators and coordinators can benefit from structured support to learn, manage and stay ethical.

Co-design is a team effort and there is significant behind-the-scenes work that co-designers and others involved in co-design might not be part of.

How do we manage the demands of leading and coordinating co-design while holding space for ourselves and others?

As a co-design facilitator, supervision sustains me and keeps me accountable to my values, ethics and the people I work with and for.

Here I share a framework for non-clinical co-design supervision.?

From the people I supervise, I hear it's important to have someone in your corner (ideally external) who understands the demands of co-design from the day-to-day coordination and messy power dynamics, to the work of methodology, strategy, funding and influencing change. Despite being surrounded by people, I hear many co-design facilitators feel isolated and overwhelmed due to under-resourced projects and too few people in their corner who understand the demands of leading and coordinating co-design.

My positionality: I’m a non-clinical co-design supervisor with training in professional supervision, coaching, trauma-informed care, social science, design practice and theory. I access monthly external supervision, therapy, spiritual and peer support to sustain myself. I’m a white, trans, queer and neurodivergent person based on stolen land in Australia. I’ve led co-design for 14 years and listened to many practitioners about what’s hard and helpful as leaders of co-design. I offer paid individual and team supervision for co-design at Beyond Sticky Notes and I'd like to see growth in the field of co-design supervision.

Big thanks to Rachael Dietkus, LCSW for their feedback on my first draft. ????

supervision isn’t new?

Clinical supervision and peer supervision are well-established practices. While there’s many definitions (Carroll 2014, Hawkins & Shohet, 2000) supervision is a generally defined as a relationship that includes:?

• Taking time out for reflective practice?
• Identifying what we know, our strengths and learning needs
• Exploring ethics, accountability, impact and learning from our experiences ??
• Debriefing, pre-briefing and getting support to better support others
• Growing professionally and personally
• Processing thoughts and feelings about our work

Supervision isn’t therapy or mediation. In this context, supervision isn’t your boss or manager. In some professions (for example, psychology or social work) regular supervision might be required or encouraged. Co-design makes big demands and involves ethical decisions. So where is our reflective practice??

supervision is one kind of reflective practice?

There are other reflective practices and culturally-specific ways to process, reflect and support each other. Harlene Anderson (2011) writes that ethics is something we do together:

?“To ensure and maintain an opportunity to be ethical, ethics must be continuously open to review and question by each community of concern - visible: our clients, our colleagues, our professional communities, our societal communities, and ourselves. This is all part of maintaining an opportunity to be ethical.”?p 5

In co-design it can help to take time out to:?

• Strengthen our advocacy for the resources, boundaries, time, authority and care needed to do co-design well.
• Explore different dimensions of the work, for example, planning, coordinating, strategising, influencing, communicating, advocating, designing, making or repairing relationships. And, explore our roles in each of those dimensions.
• Explore and grow confidence in transferring existing skills to leading and coordinating co-design, for example, from using creative practice one-to-one as a clinician or peer worker to creative practice with a group in co-design.
• Tune into our intuition and many ways of knowing (for example, through Ancestral knowledge) which might contradict the ‘status quo’ of design methods, our managers or colleagues advice.
• Name and communicate our ethics, values, unique approaches and resources that we can draw on for strength and guidance.
• Develop a scope of practice (McKercher, 2023) to revisit regularly to assess new work demands, potential partnerships and learning needs.
• Process and learn from failure, moments of defensiveness and approaches that didn't work as we'd intended.
• Process disappointment, frustration and rage, for example, when projects aren't implemented after serious hard work.

functions of co-design supervision?

Building on Rod Baxter and Trissel Eriksen's functions of supervision (2022) I focus on four main functions (shown in Figure 1):

1. Learning?
2. Supporting and restoring?
3. Exploring and managing?
4. Noticing and naming?

Across all functions is a commitment to ‘shouldering each other up’ in the work (Reynolds 2012; 2019).?I'm in it, too.

Download the diagram here. Access a text-only version of the diagram here.

Co-design supervision can include all the functions in Figure 1 at different times, for example, a session might focus on learning about something (e.g. prototyping services, creating participatory activities), planning for an upcoming activity (e.g. designing a workshop) and also validate your feelings about your work. As a designer I like to bring drawing, collaging, making and cards into supervision.

External supervision. While we might be supported by our colleagues, boss or manager, we often hold back for fear of career or relationship damage if we get too honest or too vulnerable. The issues we bring to supervision might be about our colleagues. While we can't choose our manager, we might be able to choose an external supervisor who aligns with our values and may share an identity.

meeting you where you're at: developmentally-appropriate co-design supervision?

Different styles of supervision (Heron, 2011) can be useful as we move through different levels of competence - from unconscious incompetence, to conscious incompetence, conscious competence and finally, unconscious competence (Gordon Training International & Noel Burch).?

?? Check out Emma Blomkamp’s co-design maturity model.?

New practitioners (for example, young people or professionals from other fields) often benefit from an informative approach (Heron, 2011) where the supervisor gives information (frameworks, theory, examples) and might set homework for the person being supervised. When we start a practice there’s often gaps in our knowledge, language and toolbox. A supervisor might notice us taking ethical risks, damaging relationships or making poor project decisions that we don’t yet have language for or awareness of.?

For experienced practitioners, facilitative (Heron, 2001) co-design supervision may be better, where the supervisor holds space for realisation, reflection, interrogating and experimenting with new and existing methods. With experienced practitioners there’s still a place for sharing information.

two examples of co-design supervision?

I focus on external individual and team supervision. I ground my work in working from your strengths, embracing many ways and many worlds, challenging oppressive systems and practising Design Justice.

While I know things and take seriously the responsibility of my expertise, you know your context best. We can be in the expertise together [*].

Meeting with you one-to-one regularly (such as bi-weekly or monthly) or when you need it. 1 or 1 ? hour virtual sessions usually start with checking-in using a ritual we’ve agreed to (for example, celebrating something big or small, connecting with Country) before revisiting the functions of co-design supervision (Figure 1) for you to direct the session to what you need.?It's your session so it's okay you talk a lot. I listen and ask questions. I might offer resources and will often re-frame something you told me in a different way. I'm in your corner.

Being an external supervisor across a co-design project or project involving/ aspiring toward co-design. This usually involves establishing agreements up-front, supporting you to scope and right-size co-design and then taking your lead on how regularly and where you/the team would like support (for example, in learning a new role). Some teams opt for weekly support, while others monthly or quarterly. Generally, it helps to check-in at key transition points (for example, submitting ethics, planning for a first gathering, planning for co-analysis, naming insights). We might meet more regularly in some project phases and less often during quiet times.?

If you’d like to explore non-clinical co-design supervision with me, reach us at [email protected]. Due to timezone differences I usually can’t support practitioners in the UK.

References and further reading????

Anderson, H. (2001) Ethics and uncertainty: Brief unfinished thoughts. Houston Galveston Institute. Taos Institute. Journal of Systemic Therapies, Vol. 20, No. 4.

Baxter, R & Eriksen, T. (2022) Supervision Scrapbook: A resource for youth workers. Third Edition

Carroll, M. (2014). Effective Supervision for the Helping Professions (2nd ed.). London, England: Sage.

Heron, J. (2001) Helping the client: A creative and practical guide. Sage.?

Hawkins, P. & Shohet, R. (2000). Supervision in the Helping Professions (2nd ed.), Buckingham, England: Open University Press

McKercher, KA (2023) Why (co)designers need a scope of practice.

Reynolds, V. (2012). An ethical stance for justice-doing in community work and therapy.

*Being in the expertise together was advice from Rod Baxter in a workshop with the Project Team Aotearoa focused on skills for professional supervision. I valued the re-framing immensely.