Systemic Supervision for coaches and consultants

Supervision sessions enable executive coaches and consultancy practitioners to get a super-view on their work with clients and the contracts within which this work is embedded, and, through this, to grow and develop in their practice.

Supervision provides facilitated reflecting space for learning which:

  • gives support and challenge and so enhances your performance to be creative from a core of resilience
  • offers an evaluation barometer to check the quality of your approach against best practices
  • sets a moral and ethical framework from which to act thoughtfully and reflexively with clients

Purchasers of executive coaching services will be interested to know that chosen coaching practitioners have supervision. Many require this as essential, others consider this an asset.

Elspeth offers:

  • group coaching supervision
  • one to one supervision

Group coaching supervision

These are closed groups of 4 coaches who work in a collaborative way with Elspeth as supervisor. The advantages of the group method are:

  • many more perspectives for the super-view on the supervisee’s case and coaching practice, to make sense of whats going on
  • enriched possibilities for making wise choices about what to do next
  • knowing your contribution is key as you become co-supervisors with Elspeth
  • developing skills in creating super-view: reflexive thinking, using intuition and metaphor
  • a peer group to call on for ideas between sessions
  • opportunity to meet with Elspeth between group sessions to check progress against your particular objectives for supervision

The constraint is:

  • less flexible in terms of timing as 6 sessions are agreed and scheduled ahead in diaries according to the frequency agreed by group members
  • focus is on coaching caseload and coaching practice, so if you have a portfolio of offerings you would bring to supervision then one to one method is adviseable

One to one supervision

This method enables you to bring caseload from any area of your practice, including the business of your practice itself. We can attend to to the interplay between the coaching you offer and the portfolio of other interventions and roles you perform: how each creates different outcomes and requires different ways of being.

We agree a contract for working which depends on your objectives for supervision. At the beginning of a supervision relationship it is important to meet regularly in order for the relationship to develop. Later, once your internal supervisor emerges, meetings can become less regular and be just as effective.

As a supervisor Elspeth is informed by systemic organisational practice and psychodynamic therapy. The combination develops your skills in helicoptering out to get an overview of whats going on and, simultaneously, being fully present with your client.

Principles of the systemic approach alive in Elspeth's supervision are:

  • creating the felt shift in the room
  • understanding multiple contexts for self, client, supervisor and attending closely to relational dynamics within these
  • working appreciatively with what works well

Principles of the psychodynamic approach alive in Eslpeth's supervision are:

  • making use of parallel process, introjection, projection
  • understanding how early social experiences influence stuckness in the now
  • being mindful of healthy defense mechanisms and working respectfully around these

 

Systemic: There are many descriptions of what systemic means and probably the best way to understand it is through its roots in family therapy where therapists gained insight about how one part of the system affects another and you need to take the whole system into account to work effectively: you can do this through the questions you ask, through the models you use and from teaching yourself a particular way of thinking.