Karyn Prentice’s session on working with our shadow – and our supervisee’s shadow – was fun and enlightening at the same time. Here’s what I took away:
I learned (or re-learned)….
- …that we sometimes need to remind our supervisee that they are enough for their coachee. They sometimes don’t see their own gold
- …every virtue is made valid by its opposite
- …our shadow can be something forbidden, taboo, or unwelcome…and it can equally be our talents, ways of being, artistry, intellect, athleticism
- …shadow may make a person revert to a different time in their life…so a great question might be “how old are you when you walk into that room?” and see how enlightening that can be.
I was surprised that….
- …you can have a collective shadow…in your family, colonialism, by country, homophobia etc
- …organizations have their own shadows…workaholism, collusion, scapegoating, bullying, the elephant in the room in meetings, groupthink, the external face we put on compared with our internal dynamics
I am wondering….
- …what is in me that I don’t want to own?
- …what makes me unique, compared to other coaches?
- …what would I not want my clients to know?
- …what haven’t I brought to supervision?
- …what are our organization’s shadows?
