42-Coaching Supervision

Hello, car chef. This is Cal Habig with The Coach's Mentor, the show where we are focusing on making coaches more effective so that we can help our clients be even more great. To get more information about our coaching and coach mentoring, go to www.valuesdrivenleaders.com backslash coach hyphen mentoring. Let's get started.

This is Cal Habig, and I'm glad that you've joined me today. In this episode of The Coach's Mentor, I'm going to talk about supervision. Um supervision is a topic that is increasingly becoming known in the US. It's a topic and a practice that was very common around the world except for the US and the US is Slowly and kind of begrudgingly, which surprises me, accepting supervision into the world of coaching.

This topic came up mostly because I was thinking about coaching development and developing as a coach and all of the different ways that one can and should do that. But supervision jumped to the top of my list. And so I said, Okay, I need to do an entire podcast on supervision. I mentioned supervision in the podcast where we talked about um having a coaching mindset, competency number two in the more new coaching competencies.

And we talked one of the things that is listed there is supervision as a as a way of developing coaches. And I talked about it some then and and my experience with it. But today I want to do a much broader look at supervision. And its relationship to mentor coaching. As I interact with people

Especially people who are not in the coaching world, who are familiar with supervision, they are confused about what we do as coaches and as coach mentors and as coach supervisors. Because in other practices, The supervisor deals with everything for an employee or for a nurse or for a someone who is under supervision. In the coaching world, it's divided up into a couple of categories. One is the use of a mentor coach. The other is the use of a coaching supervisor.

And so I need to differentiate between the two. Let me speak for just a very quick moment about the separation of the two. It's not uncommon for me to talk with mentors who say, Oh, I do supervision while I'm doing mentoring. And mixing the two practices. I'm cautious to be super critical of those because those are some people I love and admire. However

ICF very explicitly says supervision does not count as mentoring. And so technically any part of the mentoring time that was used for supervision should not count for mentoring. So therefore I think it it is important to keep these two practices distinct from one another. The two words that I use to differentiate between mentor and supervisor is capability versus capacity. That is not necessarily helpful. But the dictionary says that the capability is the power or ability to do something.

In mentoring, that would mean that it is related to the core competency. And it is uh the person who works with someone on that is a coach mentor, working on the power or ability to do something. But the second word in that pair is capacity, and capacity is different. It is the maximum amount that a container or something can contain. The capacity of the freezer is 1.1 cubic feet. Or it's the amount that something can produce. That company aimed to double its electric generating capacity.

In coach mentoring, which I do, we deal with capability, helping the coaches fine-tune their skills in doing the best job of coaching using the core competence. I am not a coach supervisor. I've not taken training in that. I have received coach supervision, but supervision deals more with the person of the coach rather than the skills of the coach. And we're going to be trying to differentiate that as we as we go along. In some ways, I liken it.

to the difference in the ACC and PCC, where in the ACC level, the coach is mostly able to help the client with the what. What is the problem and how do we fix it? But before but for a coach to get to the PCC level, they must be dealing as well with the who. Who is this client? Who do they need to be to move to the next level? What things within them are blocking them from moving ahead?

So in a similar way, those two levels of credentialing could be seen as the difference between capability and capacity.

My own, admittedly homemade definition of supervision was is supervision is working through what is going on in the mental and emotional processes within the coach, both during and between coaching sessions. What is going on working on what is going on in the mental and emotional processes within the coach both during and between the coaching sessions?

And that's a okay definition. But a more full definition would deal with it also examines the relationship between the coach and the client. And my definition doesn't do that. Another definition from Gedison Armstrong in two thousand nine. Uh and I'll put this in the show notes. Coaching supervision involves a process of exploring through experience, reflection, inquiry and or action any personal, relational, professional, or contextual issues arising from coaching practice.

As I said, my own mind which tries to make things not dumb them down, but make them more simple, is it is the difference between capability and capacity, or the what and the who. Let's spend a minute talking about mentoring compared to supervision. And that can help us differentiate the two because there's a lot of confusion between mixing mentoring and supervision.

ICF Mentor Coaching focuses on the eight competencies, the markers, the PCC markers, and how they are adjusted for ACCs and for MCs. Is it is it deals with developing your your skills and coaching at It frankly helps prepare you for the next credentialing level. It is credential oriented that you can demonstrate the skills of the level of coach that you are applying to be.

A reflective coach supervisor, however, focuses on deep reflection about client cases and your personal interaction patterns with them. It works on enhancing your self-observation capacity. It works on boosting your reflection capacity before, during, and after a coaching session. And then it continues to develop your professionalism. There are all sorts of lists of the benefits of coach supervision. Ram S. Ramsaran from Coachira.com

I don't know, sixteen, seventeen different benefits of coaching supervision. The first is just the obviously the continuous improvement of the coach. Um second the coach has the opportunity to walk the top. The coach is working on their own learning, which both feeds their level of feeling and int and integration, but also teaches coaches ways of helping their clients to learn better. Third, it just provides a reflective space for coding.

to learn from the coaching work they do. We are to be reflective practitioners with our clients, but we must learn to do that with ourselves as well. We must learn how to reflect in an honest and transparent way. Fourth, to help practitioners identify their strengths and areas for development. Part of supervision is sharing strengths and celebrating successes and good work.

Fifth, to keep up to date with professional developments and coaching, supervision is not primarily training, but it is a form of sharing contemporary issues that affect our work as coaching. Sixth, to sensitize coaches to ethical areas of their work and to ensure that they are following the guidelines of the code of ethics. Many times we have blind spots in ethics. and we don't see those spots but a supervisor will point them out for us.

Seven to be aware of the impact of professional coaching on one's personal life, just dealing with the stresses of the job. Eight, to offer a third person perspective of feedback for learning. If the coachy is the first person The coach is the second person, then supervisors offer a perspective from outside that coach-coachy relationship.

Nine, to understand blind, deaf, and dumb spots in our practice. Supervisors help coaches notice what they cannot see, what they cannot hear, what they cannot speak. ten. To monitor and find ways through impasses and critical moments in coaching. eleven. To be open to the distinction between intention and action in our work and how we judge ourselves differently than we do.

twelve to continue to learn from practice. thirteen, to understand the mental models or maps from which we work as coaches and be able to critically evaluate them when necessary. fourteen, we learn to read organizations, their culture and its effect on the coaching programs and on individual coaches. It uh fifth fifteen we step back from the heat of practice, slowing down in order to think, see, explore more.

sixteen refreshing our skills and extending a range of interventions, and the seventeen sustaining best practice over time, ensuring that staleness and burnout are avoided. We could also add some benefits for the client, for the coach to be getting coach mentoring. The client will be get the best of what they pay for. It's a long-term quality assurance program for the client and his organization.

It's a third eye looking over the shoulder related to ethical and professional boundaries, unconscious biases, conflicts of interest. W what is the next level of listening I'm doing with my clients? What level of support do you I need to go to to bring that next level of I don't know if you caught those words there, coaching quality control, but I think it coaching supervision keeps coaches honest.

I just read a couple of coaching journals as as well as press releases, but two coaching journals that I regularly dip into. One is Choice, uh the Journal of Professional Coaching by Gary Schlieffer, uh who serves as the editor. I used to read The Coaching World when it came out, but I believe that's been discontinued. That was a journal put out by ICF

But the other one that I read and read fairly closely is the International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring. And they are academic articles. In an article in the International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring, boy I wish I had a shorter way to say that. In an article called Group Supervision for Coaches, is it worthwhile? Janet Butwell says this, and this isn't this was written in two thousand.

Supervision provides quote the opportunity to discuss a difficult case, to explore one's feelings about a client, and to bounce ideas around or how to take a stuck client forward. Or to have advice from someone with more experience or a different point of view or s on subtle boundary issues. Now, let me say again, I've said it before, but let me say it again. I am not a coach supervisor. I am not trained as a coach supervisor.

but I have taken coach supervision and through that I've learned that there are a number of models in which supervisors are trained. They all seem to focus around the number seven though. There's the seven eyed models. The seven question model, the seven conversations model. But the the eyes and the questions and the conversations are all a bit different, even though they have similarities. So what happens in a supervision session?

The supervisor begins with a model. and begins to ask questions or help the coach reflect. And the seven the seven in the seven conversations is what was the coach's reflection before the dialogue? What was the client's reflection? thinking or reflection before the dialogue. What was the coach's internal unspoken reflections during the dialogue? What was the spoken dialogue? Fifth, what was the client's internal unspoken reflections upon the dialogue afterwards?

Sixth, what was the coach's reflections after the conversation? And then last, what was the client's reflections after the dialogue? Out of those seven, I'm just going to deal with the four that deal specifically with the coach. Um as a non-supervisor, I don't feel comfortable speaking with uh to the ones uh regarding the client. But the first is the coach's reflection before the dialogue, the preparatory thinking.

before the coach's conversation. Some questions that might be asked are what is the big picture for this client? What metaphors might I use to describe the client's situation? What metaphors does the client often use? Do I understand what drives this client and Who else is present in our conversations and in what way? Avoidance. What issues or emotions is this client avoiding? What issues is the coach avoiding? What collusion may be happening between the coach and the coach?

Attitude. How the coach feels generally about this relationship can have a major impact on the subsequent conversation. Useful questions to ask include Am I looking forward to this meeting? If not, what's the issue and what should I do about it? What are my responsibilities in the relationship? There are many, many other powerful questions that a coach could ask.

But the second of the s four that I'm going to highlight out of the seven is the coach's inner dialogue during this the coaching conversation. Now, this is difficult because all of our focus is going supposed to be on the client and on what the client is communicating. But we also can reflect on some things as we're doing that. For example, what is the quality of my listening? Am I fully focused on this client? What am I observing or hearing? What am I missing here?

Is my intuition turned on? What assumptions am I making? How might these act as a filter on my listening and my understanding? Am I spending too much attention on crafting the next question? Is this affecting or how is this affecting my ability to be present in the moment? Then we have the the there's the the spoken conversation as as well. Is there consonance between what is said and our, the coaches and the client's body language? Is there a logical pattern of development to the conversation?

Are we exploring issues from multiple perspectives? Who is doing the most talking? Who is coming up with most of the ideas? Who is asking most of the questions? Is the pace sufficiently varied? Is there space for quiet reflection and rapid building on ideas? Are we both engaged in the conversation? Are we exploring issues in sufficient depth?

Even if one can't think of these questions in the moment or shouldn't think of these questions in the moment, that's the benefit of taping your coaching sessions and then going back and re listening to them. And so you can posit these questions to yourself. as you listen to the tape. Then after the meeting is done is the the coach's inner conversation after the meeting.

How I helped? What insights did we create together? What did I do to enhance the quality of the client's thinking? Was I appropriately directive and non directive? Did we create a quote bias for action in our conversation? Secondary is what choices how I helped, but then what choices did I make? What insightful questions did I ask? What might be useful in other learning conversations?

What questions did I withhold? And why? Was I sufficiently challenging? Did I give the coachi sufficient time to think? Third area is what did I learn? What patterns can I discern from this? And previous conversations. What would I do differently another time? And last area for the coach's inner conversation after the meeting, where did I struggle? What negative emotions am I aware of? Am I still looking forward to the next meeting?

Now these are done in a meeting with the supervisor because the supervisor is able to draw these things out.

Well the podcast is going on um longer than I expected it to be. So I'm going to kind of conclude with the ICF and supervision. The ICF has an odd relationship with supervision. They were the they are continue to be one of the world's holdouts. On supervision. They would not say anything for it, they wouldn't speak against it, but the ICF held a no position, while most of the rest of the world embraced it and found it helpful. The ICF has slowly melted their opposition to it.

And you see that kind of reflected in their hands off attitude still towards supervision. The ICF says at this time there is no specific training requirement for a coach to provide coaching supervision. ICF recognizes that coaching supervision is sufficiently different from coaching, so training to provide the knowledge and opportunity to practice supervision skills is needed. As such, ICF strongly encourages all coaching supervisors to reflect coach supervision training.

The ICF allows supervision hours to be used for core competency hours and up to ten core competency hours in continuing education. can be from coach supervision hours and and that's helpful. What about finding a coach supervisor for Uh that can become challenging. I did a quick Google search on coaching supervisor.

And there were a whole bunch of them that had nothing to do with ICF or ICF credentialing or th and and so the way that I would go about it is go to the which is not a perfect But go to the credentialed coach finder on the ICF website. I think under the website it says find a coach. And so you click that and it takes you to the credentialed coach finder on ICF. And then on that you put in supervision in the keyword filter.

I checked both PCC and MCCs. They also have you can check ACC supervisors, but I I can't imagine an ACC having the experience and training really to be a supervisor. And then I searched for supervisors with a either at MCC or PCC. Only twenty-five came up, and six of them were in the United States. So that that did surprise me. I also recognize I know several supervisors who are not on that list here in the Pacific North.

So there are other supervisors. It may be asked those in your training school who they know who does who is trained in coach supervision and who can can do that. As I've said, kind of my caveat is I am not a coach supervisor, but I have taken coach supervision and found it incredibly helpful. And so I would recommend it to you.

Uh I would be interested to know what your experiences are with coaching supervision. If you have that, um put that down, uh send me a note or uh put it in the comments on this blog. I would love to hear what your reactions are to coaching supervision. But for now, this is Cal Habig from the Coach's Mentor signing off. I hope that you'll join us here next time for the coaches mentality.

To find out more information, drop me a note at mentoring at values drivenleaders.com. If you like what you hear, please subscribe and tell other coaches about it. That allows us all to journey together. Again, thanks for listening. Drop me a note. This is Cal Habig. Coach on.