Regular supervision is the single biggest factor that supports a coach’s ongoing personal and professional development.
Use it as an investment that will greatly benefit:
- You as the coach: for your coaching professionalism and expertise
- Your individual clients: they will hugely benefit from the new perspectives and insights you gain from supervision
- Your client organisations: they can be reassured that you are receiving excellent supervision
All coaches should be undertaking supervision. A condition of membership of reputable industry bodies such as the Association for Coaching is that you commit to undertake regular supervision.
Supervision is provided for coaches in both 1:1 and group settings and is based upon Procter’s three principles.
- Normative: ensuring the coach is working appropriately and safely
- Formative: as a means of ongoing personal and professional development
- Restorative (supportive): to help coaches if / when they are feeling ‘stuck’ with their clients. As a coach, perhaps there are occasions when you have felt stuck over how best to work with your client. Or you are feeling uncertain or have been affected through your interactions with the client. (Technically, this also helps coaches deal with transference and counter-transference issues.)
And Keith adds a fourth principle to benefit his supervisees:
- Affirmative: supervision affirms you are on the right track; it affirms you work professionally and responsibly; it affirms you are the type of coach that will work safely and effectively with clients.
Personal (1:1) supervision sessions usually last for 1-2 hours and you, as the coach, introduce the topic(s) for supervision. Coaches usually leave the supervision with greater clarity, renewed energy and strategies for working with their clients. Many coaches find that supervision is the most powerful part of their ongoing professional growth as coaches.