coaching supervision Archives

Now this is a tricky question! As you probably know, i) everyone seems to want to be a coach these days and ii) there are absolutely no barriers, other than those self-imposed, to becoming one. So it is perfectly possible to set yourself up in business with no qualifications, experience, supervision, or talent for the work.

It’s also not an unknown phenomena for people in need of help themselves being attracted to the role of supporter /developer/ rescuer. There seems to be a sort of unconscious logic that says ‘If I can help someone fill a whole in their life, that will fill a gap in mine’. And of course it doesn’t work, as the agenda becomes about the ‘coach’ and their needs, not the client. Our clients often don’t know what ‘good looks like’, and there just isn’t enough feedback on practice from robust reliable and experienced sources.

Coaching has a long way to go to become a recognised profession, however we can all start by insisting on professional and ethical practice. Next time, for example, you speak to a coach who doesn’t think they need supervision ask them what makes them so special.

In an ideal world, we would all get on with our coaching clients, however, frankly, there are times when the ‘chemistry’ just doesn’t work. Clearly, if this happens we shouldn’t even consider taking on the relationship in the first place. Tough I know for those of us whose livelihood depends on billing coaching hours and it can be tempting to try to give life to a working relationship in the hope that it will come good. On the whole my advice is simple — ‘don’t’ – a poor relationship at the start is unlikely to get any better without major surgery.

However there are times in an established relationship when we can find ourselves strongly and negatively reacting to the client – I like the term ‘triggered’. It is as if something in the relationship has shifted substantially. This may be as simple as a clash of values – the client holds a perspective that we can’t , or it may be something more subtle or ill defined. At one level this may be useful data that is worth putting (sensitively) on the table for discussion, at another it may indicate we can no longer operate from an appropriately emotionally detached stance.

So if you suddenly find your self reacting to your client, or interpreting their words/deeds in a consistently negative light, it is probably time to take it to your coaching supervisor to sort out what exactly is going on.. and what you can do about it.

If you move in coaching circles it can’t have escaped your attention that coaching supervision is considered the ‘done thing’. All the professional bodies speak of it as an essential element of good practice, and (rightly) refuse accreditation if a coach hasn’t adequate support. Possibly more importantly, purchasers are increasingly insisting on it and see it as a hall mark differentiating the professional coach from the amateur.

So how come the up take of coaching supervision is so poor (if admittedly slowly improving)? Maybe it is the cost, but I have a sneaking suspicion that there is more to it than that and wonder if it is about revealing our practice to another who will potentially find us wanting. (The term ‘supervision’ doesn’t help here! ) So much of coaching happens behind ‘closed doors’ and to let another in can be daunting. Or perhaps it about ‘problematisation’ – I notice many supervisees report ‘nothing to talk about’ when what they actually mean is ‘I’m not stuck with anything’ at the moment and therefore don’ t want take up my time. Interestingly whenever they start to talk about their practice it is always a rich and often developmental conversation that ensues.

I value my time with my own coaching supervisor hugely and find our conversations a vital source of support and continued challenge to my practice as a coach. However, more than that, I feel that if I ask my clients to reveal themselves to me it is only fair that I am prepared to do the same. Perhaps if we called it ‘coaching the coach’ we would be more prepared to take our own medicine?

Where did we get the idea that every coaching session has to produce a magic ‘ah—ha’ moment? These days I meet way to may coaches in my supervision practice who seem to carry around a huge self-induced pressure to produce fireworks in every session – and if they don’t, seem to feel they have failed the client or not done it ‘right’. As a result they push through their coaching sessions without adequate exploration or creativity, in the desire to get their clients somewhere … anywhere.

The therapy world talks about the idea of slow burn change vs fast burn. Fast burn change is where the client rapidly comes to a conclusion or a decision, but may be short lasting or worse, in the wrong direction. Slow burn change is where nothing much seems to happen until one day the accumulated work precipitates a radical change without it being obvious where it came from.

To my mind, our coaching clients take many decades to get to be the rich, exciting and frustrating mix they are today and it is extreme arrogance on our part to assume that a few hours with a coach will fundamentally change them. Often our work is slow and patient, waiting for the tipping point to come. Coaches would do well to remember they can only go at the pace of the client .. and to let themselves off the hook if each and every session is not stellar.

It is so easy to form a snap judgement in coaching. We form impressions of our clients – often without knowing it – and all of a sudden those impressions become ‘truths’, somehow fixed in our minds. We then start to act on those ‘truths’ and look out for further evidence to compound our beliefs.

I was working recently with a novice coach, John, who fell foul of this phenomena. He’d started to pick up signs that his most recent coachee wasn’t fully committed to the coaching relationship, and as he was irritated by this wanted to give his new coachee strong feedback about this. However, in supervision it became apparent that what John had actually experienced was a slowness to return emails, and some delay and confusion around setting up their first meeting. When he finally met his new coachee, the coachee was full of apologies – he’d had to have extra time off work due to a family crisis. John’s irritation evaporated.

Peter Senge* calls this tendency to move unawarely from objective evidence (e.g. slow return of email) to unwarranted belief (e.g. the coachee is uncommitted) the ‘ladder of inference’. Like everyone else, coaches are prone to build assumptions and beliefs based on what they see and experience of the client. The difference for me is that coaches should know the difference between an observation and an inference, and they should know the difference between one piece of data and a genuine pattern. More grist for supervision!

Senge, P. et al ( 1994) The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook: Strategies and tools for building a learning organization, London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing, pp242-246

I attended the 3rd International coaching supervision conferences at Oxford Brookes University yesterday – and very good it was too. There was a real range of speakers from all over the world, and it struck me that coaching supervision was now becoming much more of an mainstream activity instead of an peripheral add-on. Coaches now get that having supervision is part of the deal if you expect to practice and there is now much more of a pull for services.

However, I also think there is a way to go to help coaches understand how to use a supervisor effectively – a bit like there is often a journey to help coachees understand how to use a coach. Here I don’t think the word ‘supervision’ helps us – it smacks too much of the autocrat overseeing and inspecting a minion’s work. The trouble is nobody seems able to come up with a better word. As Prof Peter Hawkins quipped – there is a case of champagne waiting for someone who can think of a better descriptor.

Coach supervision is of course, in part about quality control, but it is also about support and development for the coach. Great supervision should be about helping the coach to see more and be able to do more in service of their clients. Now why wouldn’t you want that?

Ever had a slightly weird feeling that someone talking to you is not actually dealing with you but with someone else. If so, you probably been on the receiving end of some ‘transference’. Its a term that cover a myriad of situations, but refers in essence to when someone plays out a past relationship or way of relating in the present situation. So for example, its the phenomenon that explains why grown men suddenly start behaving like school children in the training room, just as if they were suddenly back at school. They are taking how they used to behave and transferring it into present situation – usually inappropriately!

Counter transference is when you start responding back – ie playing the role that has been assigned you. So if you have ever seen a trainer get all ‘school-marmy’ on you,then they are probably in the grip of some counter-transference.

Why does this all matter to coach? Well if you are interested in keeping your communication clear and open then you can easily see how this stuff could murky the waters. So if your coachee suddenly starts putting you on a pedestal .. and you would quite like them to … check out if there isn’t something else going on and take it straight to supervision.

Ok picture the scene – you go to visit a new client/ customer or set up a meeting with a new senior manager. Instead of being your usual relaxed, poised and self-assured self you find you have regressed a couple of decades. Instead of speaking with your normal surety you find yourself babbling and tripping over your words. Nobody is more surprised than you.

This a sure sign that your ‘deference threshold’ has been tripped – instead of relating adult to adult you find yourself operating from a one down place in the face of this awesome (and possibly scary) human being. We all have a deference threshold – I recently asked a very experienced coach this week who triggered hers and she replied “I once had to work with an Army General … that did it for me!” Usually the awesome being reminds us of parental or other authority figures from childhood days and has nothing to do with the reality of who they are. Sometimes we get entangled in other’s power plays and it is everything to do with them.

Coaches have to learn to work with a wide range of people – including very senior people. It is therefore well worth finding out who sends you over the edge and what it is about them that triggers you. Good material for coaching supervision.