Are you looking for a (new) coaching supervisor? Do you need Continuing Professional Development to maintain your credentialed coach status? Do you want to share your developmental journey with like-minded coaches? Stay safe and resourced by joining a Coaching Supervision Group.
I lead virtual and face-to-face group coaching supervision programmes for experienced coaches:
Virtual: ideal if you mostly work virtually and therefore need supervision that models good parallel processes for the work you undertake, or if you are time-crunched and would prefer not to travel.
Face to face: a chance to slow down and take time to reflect in a beautiful New Forest, Hampshire location.
If you’ve never had coaching supervision before, you likely have some reservations around cost, value, the number of clients you have. In my experience, those who have supervision wouldn’t be without it; the value to their own sanity and to the safety of their clients far outweighs the investment of time and money. But I’d be happy to talk through your reservations before you commit. Call me on +44 (0)7775 817 344.
My approach to supervision
Supervision, as I practise it, attends to who you are inside and outside of your work, more than to the techniques you used or the client problem you brought. Because, as Murdoch and Patterson put it “who you are is how you coach”. Mentor coaching reflects on what you did. Supervision reflects on who you are.
I host these groups with love. Before each session, I settle into three words: see them, hear them, hold them. I see you in all your complexity. I hear what you carry before you’ve spoken. I hold you in love. That is the quality of presence I bring to the room, and the quality I invite you to bring to one another.
This is an invitation into the fullness of who you are. You don’t leave parts of yourself at the door: your righteous anger at injustice, your grief about the state of a system, your joy, your uncertainty, your half-formed sense that something in a session went awry. These are the substance of your humanity and your capacity to coach with love. Supervision becomes an act of love when you bring the unsanitised version of your struggles: the session that unsettled you, the challenge you keep avoiding, the moment you performed instead of meeting the person in front of you.
To be deeply witnessed like this is something many of us rarely experience. Deep listening brings a quality of attention that makes you feel that you matter, that you are worth hearing fully. That is what I hold the space for: your voice materialising, an unfolding from the inside out.
Matthew Fox’s four pathways
I draw on Matthew Fox’s four pathways because supervision asks us to hold all of them, both for ourselves and for the thinkers we serve.
Via Negativa, the path of difficulty, confusion and the unwanted. We make room for the sessions that went wrong, the doubts you’d rather hide, the grief and frustration you carry from the systems you work inside. Meeting reality as it is, rather than as we wish it to be, is where the real learning starts.
Via Positiva, the path of awe, wonder and delight. We notice what is alive and beautiful in your practice, the moments of contact that moved you, the joy of being trusted with someone’s becoming. A fierce relationship with reality holds both the breakdowns and the beauty. When I gaze at a coach in this work, there is awe and wonder at the mystery and magnificence of this person.
Via Creativa, the path of breakthrough and new birth. I draw on creative methods to access your different intelligences: movement, the body, image, metaphor, and materials you can work with your hands. Annie Murphy Paul writes in The Extended Mind about how we think through our bodies, our environments and our relationships, not just our brains. Supervision honours that range. New thinking often arrives when we stop efforting and start playing.
Via Transformativa, the path of being altered. Supervision changes you. And it changes me.
These paths open us to seeing everyone as equally precious. Everyone is born equal. Everyone remains equal. Everyone equally deserves love.
What supervision attends to
There are three strands running through every group:
- Supporting you to coach in ways that are courageous, skilful and ethical, asking honestly whether this is the best work you could be doing.
- Growing your practice through feedback, role modelling and reflection, and building your capacity to self-supervise between sessions.
- Holding you when doubts and insecurities arise, giving you a space to process what you’ve absorbed from a thinker or their system.
How the groups work
Each group has five participants, so everyone has airtime to bring their wonderings for consideration. You learn from your own case and from everyone else’s. You’ll discover you are not alone in your fears and hopes; that becomes clear the moment coaches share honestly with one another.
In our time together, you will:
- Work through real ethical dilemmas and gain perspective on your next steps.
- Be challenged to do your best work, for yourself and for your thinkers.
- Practise live, to sharpen your edge.
- Meet creative methods you can use straight away.
- Build your capacity to self-supervise in between sessions.
- Have space to decompress and resource yourself, as a coach and as a human being.
Some questions to help you get to the stuff you’d prefer to avoid, perhaps before your next supervision session:
- What would I not want thinkers to know about me?
- What would I not want thinkers to say about me?
- What haven’t I brought to supervision because I fear judgment or ridicule?
The willingness to bring exactly those things is where supervision earns its place in your practice.
