Internal coaching supervision 2: Sam Isaacson

Welcome to the EMCC UK podcast internal coaching supervision series. In this episode, our hosts Catherine St. Jim Brooks and Jeremy Gomm will be exploring internal coaching supervision with experienced coach, supervisor, speaker and author Sam Isaacson. This episode was originally recorded in 2022 when Sam was the head of coaching services at Grand Thornton. Sam has since gone on to hold the role of global director of consulting.

with the digital coaching platform Coach Hope and is now a coaching consultant with CoachTeach as well as a successful author of a number of books on technology in coaching. In this episode, you'll hear Catherine and Jeremy continue their discussion of different definitions of coaching supervision and how organizations can learn from the insights which emerge from internal coaching supervision. followed by Sam sharing Grant Thornton's approach to supervision of their internal coaches.

Hello and welcome to Internal Coaching Supervision with Jeremy Gong and me, Catherine St. John-Brooks. Hi, Jeremy. Hello. Well, I'm as pleased as you are that we have Sam Isaacson as our guest today. Sam is head of coaching services at the professional services company. Grant Thornton, but I've also just ordered his book, actually, How to Thrive as a Coach in a Digital World. It's been on my list for ages, and I finally got to it.

Well, Sam will also be one of the workshop speakers at this year's International Internal Coaching Conference. So I'm really looking forward to hearing his thoughts on internal supervision. But first, we promised to highlight what is meant by the words coaching supervision by introducing some definitions. So we had yours in a previous podcast. And so here's one I like. And it's from Eric Dahan.

Supervision gives the coach a regular time and space for reflection and a partner to mirror, broaden and deepen those reflections. So what do you particularly like about this one, Jeremy? well firstly it's short uh which is definitely a benefit secondly it focuses on reflection which i feel is the single most important thing about supervision and thirdly

It's quite high level, so it doesn't make any attempt to specify the nature of the reflection, and that allows it to be as broad as you want. It also recognises the role of the supervisor, and again without being specific. And again, that allows the role of the supervisor to be what it needs to be in the moment. So what do you think about it? Well, I do like this definition very much, particularly, as you mentioned, the way it highlights the role of the supervisor.

But I know you and I have discussed before, haven't we, about how short definitions, which both of us basically prefer, necessarily have to leave out... One or more aspects of supervision. I mean, I'm a practical soul and I would have liked there to be something about coach development in there, but you can't have everything.

We were thinking, I think, weren't we, that next time we might ask our guests to offer the definition that they work to in their organisation. I think that could work really well.

Meanwhile, of course, you and I have been talking about how organisations can learn from their COPE supervisors and COPE supervision sessions. And I wondered if you had any examples of organisations doing that. Well, only one, I'm afraid. I've heard people mentioning their organisational learning from coaching, but only in one organisation, a UK charity, have I seen a purposeful attempt to learn from supervision.

of a small group of external supervisors who were asked to share themes from their conversations with internal coaches in that charity. those themes were then being taken up and used as guidance for action. But even then, I can't say for sure how that learning was applied.

sorry go on i was going to say how about you yeah well i've got a couple of positive examples from about five years ago though i don't know if they're still doing it uh one was a charity where the themes coming up in supervision groups informed, I think it was the training and support that was offered to employees through the organisation. And another one was a consultancy firm. And the coaches reported in more than one supervision group about...

simmering anger that they picked up from their clients about the vanishingly small number of women who'd been made partner in a recent round of promotions. And the head of coaching did report this back to the senior partner who did take notice. Oh, now, Sam has joined us. Sam, welcome. Hi, Catherine. Hi, Jeremy. Great to be here.

Do you have any comments on what Gerry and I were just talking about, both from your experience of how supervision works within Grant Thornton, but also what you've seen in client organisations? I mean, is organisational learning routinely gathered? Yeah, I mean it's probably fair to say that it's more common for it not to be than for it to be collected. I think supervision is a great tool to do that.

through you know you send out an employee engagement survey or something like that and you find out some information but it's it's quite narrow in its application whereas coaching you know those conversations that are happening in coaching are so rich you know they really get into what are people experiencing and feeling and thinking about the organization so that sense of getting a

the organizational pulse to do that through supervision to be able to gather those stories at an aggregate level and so it remains confidential to the people that have been telling them and being able to report those back can be very valuable. So within Grant Thornton, I'm one of our coaching supervisors and we meet with our internal business school once a quarter or so.

to share any themes that have emerged across all of our different supervision groups that we've been running again that question there jeremy the comment that you made around you know how is that learning applied I'm not too sure, to be honest. I think when we're drawing out themes that are quite specific to coaching, you know, what does a coaching process look like or what's a coaching needs analysis form doing and how helpful is it? That certainly gets...

generate some sort of change. But when there's a comment around work-life balance or progression, I can't tell you what happens with those messages. So maybe that's a question I should go and ask. Well, it would be very interesting to find out whether it has any impact at all at the CDL. Yes, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I know that coaching is thought of very highly within the firm.

And I'm not sure what those escalation channels look like. If you get a story that says we're detecting that there's a sense that women are not being treated fairly in the promotion rounds, what's... What happens with that message and how is it received and how are people held to account for those messages that are being reported up? Which, like I say, feels like a really good opportunity for any organization to actually see what's happening in its people.

So, I mean, I like Grant Thornton, and so I'm sure they do a really good thing with it, but I'm just not sure exactly what it is. Well, thank you very much for that, Sam. That's really quite insightful.

particularly given Grant Thornton's reputation for being at the forefront of internal coaching in the UK. It's always my example. Grant Thornton is always my example of if you want to know how it's done properly, go to... go there because that you know you've got the stories that uh that i think other people could learn a lot from so how's that come about in grant thorns and where did it all start and what's coming next

Yes, well, I mean, the story is quite a long one. It probably started about 12 years ago now, so I'm not sure if this was the...

specific driver that started the story of it just happened around about the same time. There were certainly a lot of conversations happening around 2011 about the automation of certain jobs. So I think Oxford University did... a piece of research which concluded that something like 95% of jobs in accounting would be fully automated within 30 years or something like that.

led a number of people in the world of accounting to think well we need to do something about this to protect our jobs which feels like quite an odd thought but let's just park that for a moment and a number of accounting firms responded to that by thinking, okay, we need to move heavily into digitization. If we can start to automate the processes ourselves, then it protects the firm. And that's a priority. Discuss.

that the other approach the approach that grant thornton took was yeah we'll look at digital and that's an important thing you know our clients need it and want it so that sensible but the thing that's going to make us stand out as being different is our people and so we're going to invest heavily in our people to make the experience of working with Grant Thornton so uniquely different from any other accounting firm that why on earth would you

opt for a fully automated method when you've got the opportunity of working with real humans. The way that that was then applied was through an NLP practitioner program that was rolled out to the top 200 leaders in the UK, starting from CEO down. So it was really... high level of buy-in from that top level, which is a really good driver for culture change. And over a few years,

There were ups and downs in that journey, but that program developed into a coach development program, which started from an outsourced provider and then got brought in-house. And then we took that through the EQA. accreditation process with EMCC which led to us then having a large number of accredited coaches within the firm and the only driver behind that was as a

a real desire for change in leadership style. So the accounting world is like many others where you tend to get promoted based on your technical competence rather than your ability to lead. And so it was a change in leadership style to allow leaders, give them permission to ask more questions than providing advice. It helps with conversations with clients as well.

As a consulting firm, it's good to be able to ask those questions of a client and discover information rather than trying to drive through some agenda. What that developed into was a fully fledged... quality control and assurance continuously improving ecosystem around coaching which included you know the purpose for coaching development of the internal coach pool

delivery of the coaching and kind of quality assurance and monitoring and that led to us getting the emcc global award for having a great organizational approach to coaching in 2020 and so that was something good to celebrate Something that's probably quite important to note alongside that was that now that we've got all of these coaches in place, we're a professional services firm and so we want to do something with those people's time.

And so we partnered with Cranfield Business School to offer executive coaching as part of their MBA program so that we were then using our coaches as part of a revenue generation approach. as well and that was very popular and then because our clients were interested in the whole world of working with The programs like the MBA, they work very well because they can be funded by the apprenticeship levy. We were working with them from a tax perspective in terms of how to use that levy money wisely.

combination of our clients being interested in apprenticeship and in emerging coaching styles of leadership and our passion for coaching and knowledge of the apprenticeships world led to us starting.

the coaching apprenticeship trailblazer and so that's the that's the thing i suppose that we're then best known for nowadays wow that's quite a history and uh In the middle of all that history, all your coaches are employees, aren't they, of doing other roles? There are no full-time coaches in Grant Thornton.

That's right. Yes. So I suppose a point of clarity, we do use some external coaches for when there's a specific need, particularly around people going through the partner process or if they're a particular sensitive.

coaching needs where we feel like it would be more sensible to have somebody from outside the firm where if there's a particular specialist interest that we can't source in-house because we're not kind of career coaches as a general rule we're accountants or tax advisors or somebody else who's a coach on the side um but yeah our approach is that we've got an internal coach pool of people who have got a you know a real job and then they do coaching as well it's tremendous

Well, and thank you. And how many coaches do you have now? The number is always changing. Let's say it's about 150 or so in the UK. That's a lot of coaches too. to manage, to match, to just the administration of that number of coaches is quite a big exercise, I imagine. Yes, it's crazy. No, but it's very good, you know, because a lot of it happens by itself because it's internal people and it's senior internal people, actually.

there isn't that sense of, or I don't feel it anyway, there isn't that sense of constantly chasing. So the, actually there's the impetus is with those individuals. So I was actually, I was having a conversation with a client not too long ago where

We'd had this initial conversation around which coaches would we match. And I said, oh, you know, it'll be, I don't know, you know, Fiona and Alex and George. I'll send you their email addresses and then we can just... send those to the coaches and they can go off and have their conversations and the client was quite surprised and thought why why wouldn't you want to be involved in the matching process and then make sure that those meetings are happening and i think well the

For another coaching provider, because they're most likely an independent coach, and so there's a risk associated with using that individual for us. that's that's three partners in our firm you know it's in why on earth would they sabotage our process for their own selfish gain it doesn't really work like that so it that is that's helped a lot in terms of buying and

I suppose, you know, the ability to keep it moving. I bet it has. And so with that many coaches, tell us a bit about your arrangements for supervision. Yeah, so... when we first introduced the coaching then we used external supervision which was successful in some cases and not so successful

in others for a variety of different reasons mainly probably to do with just a lack of understanding as to what supervision was meant to be achieving and then a few years ago then there was a cohort of us got trained as coaching supervisors and there's since been a second cohort that's gone through so we've probably got 15 or 20 trained supervisors in-house now and as a general rule all of our coaches are then supervised by

that group um there's one exception we've got one person who works with us from an external perspective who was with the firm for a long time actually before she went um independent and And she supervises particular coaches for particular reasons, which is not very interesting, to be honest. But as a group, then we do the supervision, which happens as a general rule once a quarter in groups of three or four. And then those coaches...

Sorry, those supervisors then also meet each other in small groups to supervise one another so that we've got that peer supervision group going. And then... I want to say it's once every six months, but it feels actually like it's more often than that. Maybe it's once a quarter that we have an external supervisor of supervision who sort of gives us the independent kicking the tires. And that happens.

it feels like we do a lot of meetings around this where we have our supervision groups we have our peer supervision we have the meetings with the business school which is at least once a quarter it must be once every six months we have this external supervisor And then we also have a peer supervisor moan, you know, where all of the supervisors get together and just talk about what it's like being a supervisor, but the business school aren't present.

or they're not present in their capacity as the business school. One of them actually is one of the supervisors, but it's got a different hat on for that. So there's quite a lot of activity that goes on, I suppose. Clearly, yes. I mean, you mentioned that the supervision groups might be three or four people. Do you manage to keep those groups the same and the same membership of each of the three or four people groups?

stuff in the research around supervision, of the importance of a safe space and people getting to know each other so that they feel that they can reveal their vulnerabilities and so forth. Do you manage to keep those individual groups?

As a general rule, yes. I mean, I think with the population the size that it is, then there's a natural... turnover and so people do leave the firm and more coaches are getting developed um continuously the groups are formed while the group while the coaches are on their coach development programs and then stay the same afterwards they're trained together

Yes. So I know there's a case to be made for having coaches of different levels of experience in a group. And so you sort of have that reminder of what it's like to be an early coach and being prompted on some of the... I was going to use the word basic, and that's not really the right word, is it? More fundamental aspects of coaching and having the foundational level coaches, seeing what's happening for somebody who's been a coach for five, 10 years.

But I suppose for logistical purposes, we've gone for just keeping those groups as consistent as possible. And then when there is a group where a couple of people have left and so. is just becoming inefficient, then we do a review. The review happens once a year, but it's not like every group changes. It's only the ones that need to. Right. And if somebody does want one-to-one supervision, can they make that happen?

Yeah, so the recommendation is that every coach has supervision once a quarter and that once a year you should have one-to-one supervision, but that's not mandatory. And we expect coaches to attend three out of four. Okay. And do you monitor it, whether people are showing up or not? No, we don't, actually. No. I mean, it's monitored informally in that the supervisor, if...

So I'm trying to make names up off the top of my head. I'm not very good at that. So I'll just use Catherine. If Catherine hasn't turned up my group, you know, three sessions in a row, then that's the sort of thing that I would report to business school.

would you give me a ring and take it up with me or would you oh well yes you know if you haven't turned up i'll tend to especially if you've not um given me a reason then i'll just find out you know what's is everything all right do you do you not want to be a coach anymore because that you know is valid it's not part of your day job um and then yeah if it's something where i feel like somebody seems to be going awol

and you know i'm not really sure what to do then at least telling the business school feels like a good next step what do you know about the emcc uk member benefits There are so many reasons to join the EMCC UK. In any one year you can expect to have access to over 100 events, networking opportunities, CPD, special interest groups, a dedicated program to building your own business, as well as links to the EMCC Global and their events, discounts on books and magazines and much, much more.

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It sounds like supervision is absolutely integral to the coaching that goes on in Grant Thornton, which is really great to hear because it so often is not even present in other organisations. I'm just wondering, you mentioned the apprenticeship scheme and you're chairman, as I know, of that coaching professional level five apprenticeship scheme.

I wonder if you could just tell us a little bit about that so that the listeners understand what that is. And to what extent or in what way has it influenced your thinking about internal supervision? Well, so yeah, I'm chair of the Trailblazer group that developed it in the first place. And I sort of retain that role for when there needs to be a revision of it, which I'm sure will happen at some point.

And it's simultaneously probably the most exciting and the most dull professional activity I've ever engaged in, really. It's a group of more than 100 employers of coaches. the big professional bodies plus a number of training providers which is a challenging group to chair as well as having the institute for apprenticeships in there which if anything is true the idea that that world thinks very differently from the world of coaching that's an important message to take away

So the fact that we got it through is a minor miracle, I think. So yes, it's a really good standard. And for those listeners that don't know, the organizations that employ... people where there's a large wage bill have to pay a proportion of that into the apprenticeship levy which they can then draw down on to fund apprenticeship programs so it's a good

It ends up being a cost effective way of doing training after you've sort of made the payment at some cost. And if you don't pay into the levy, then you're able to get those same programs at only 5% of whatever the cost is. The coaching professional apprenticeship standard has got a budget of £5,000. So unsurprisingly, every training provider charges £5,000 for it. And so if you're not a levy payer, then you can get a full...

14 month level five accredited coach development program for oh gosh i work in an accounting firm and i can't work out five percent what 250 pounds which which is You know, very good value, isn't it? So it's a very cost-effective way of training people to be... coaches and if you've already spent this money on the levy you probably want to spend it anyway and so organizations are actually driven to want to train people as coaches which i think is a good thing and the fact that we've had

The ILM and the CMI, the ICF, EMCC and Association for Coaching and British School of Psychology, I mean, lots of different bodies involved in the development of this standard and have agreed that it's a good thing. means that actually the baseline level of quality you get for somebody who's on that apprenticeship is very good. It's significantly higher than anything else out there that's certainly of a similar price.

very low and supervision is something that we wanted to include in there as a fundamental part of it you know obviously it's very important for the professional bodies and It's good practice anyway, and it's a sensible thing. And particularly as an organization, if you're employing people to be doing that in their role, then you've got a duty of care to make sure that they're doing it professionally and that they're cared for throughout the process.

There's a practical element to it in that we had a bit of a conversation as part of the development of the standard to question whether we should require those coaches. the people who are being trained as coaches through that program, to have to be supervised by an accredited supervisor.

Gosh, that was a long sentence, wasn't it? I had to think about every word I was saying. And the conclusion that we drew is that actually the level, the supply and demand... would topple quite quickly in the wrong direction meaning that people wouldn't be able to receive supervision and so in order to be pragmatic then we had to go down the route of just saying

We recognise that accreditation is there and clearly valuing the role professional bodies have to play. I mean, you can't escape from that in the standard if you read it. But that actually the act of being supervised, including things like peer supervision. even though it hasn't got that same quality assurance management around it, it's still important to be engaging in that sort of thing. So when you think about...

where they go from the apprenticeship scheme and into their organizations how do you know that that supervision continues well that's the responsibility of the employers when i think if somebody is

I know as much as I say the apprenticeship scheme, there isn't a financial cost associated with this, and there isn't. There is a time cost. So in order for it to qualify as an apprenticeship, those learners have to be in a role which is... aligned to the apprenticeship, so they have to be a coach as their job, and they have to spend 20% of their time during the apprenticeship in off-the-job training.

So it is quite a big investment of time, really, which is worth it, of course, because if you want to have coaches working in your organization, then why wouldn't you use that as the option? It does mean that if you're an organization that wants to invest that amount of time and those people in doing those roles, you ought to then be thinking about, well, what do we need to have set up as an organization to allow this to continue to flourish?

We can't just have a bunch of coaches just going off and running things the way that they would like to. And the fact that the apprentices have gone through that program and have learned that this is what they should be doing means that there's that sort of top down and bottom up driver.

at the same time and particularly if they're taking it through to accreditation which they all really ought to from a good practice perspective and i'm not sure that why they wouldn't just from a logical perspective you put all this effort in why wouldn't you want a bit of paper at the end

they're going to have to maintain that supervision somehow. And it seems sensible to me that if the employer has put them forward to be doing that in the first place, that they would be taking responsibility for it. So, yes. I mean, that's a demonstration of the enlightened view that exists in Grant Thornton and that you would hope existed elsewhere. And I'm just wondering if...

Is there anything from the Grant Thornton experience which could illustrate the benefits of supervision for the internal coaches? I think probably the biggest benefit... is actually for the coaches themselves, which I know feels a little bit self-referential, and so it doesn't feel like it justifies it very well, but it does matter because...

If as an organization, you're wanting to, as Grant Thornton has said, you want to develop a coaching culture and want to have coaching as our leadership mindset or default mindset across the firm. If the coaches aren't that bothered about it or because of the stresses of the day job, just keep forgetting that this is what I'm meant to be doing, then that doesn't, it just means you've spent money or invested time in this program.

on what you know on people to have had a nice pleasant time and i know that we do it online now but you know we used to do it you know you'd go off site you spend a night somewhere it'd be a nice experience but turns into nothing well what a waste of time however if you put the supervision in it means that for us you know once a quarter i know i've got to have a conversation with my supervisor when i reflect on

the way that i've been applying coaching skills in the way that i lead my team or the way that i do performance reviews or of course through our coaching engagements you know more formal coaching engagements that are going to be happen and often then there are coaches that turn up to those supervision sessions where they'll say oh i haven't been doing much coaching and it gives them a

bit of an awkward moment where we have a little conversation about it and they reflect about it and then in three months time they have to come back for another conversation about it so even if In two and a half months time, they still haven't done anything and they go, I really should do something. I'll at least prompt a new conversation with somebody that's going to be positive.

then, you know, then we're getting some sort of benefit from it. And of course, as you then go through it, that sort of conscious incompetence leads through to ultimately unconscious competence. And that's kind of where we're hoping to... get one day as a firm is continuously learning isn't it so oh yes that's what that sounds like is a is is a real benefit for the coaches themselves um and in an organizational sense

it helps them to maintain the momentum of their coaching. I'm just wondering if there's anything more than that. You mentioned that you... had conversations as a group of supervisors and wondered what happened to some of the information that went from there. Is there anything else about the quality of the coaching that the organization recognizes?

that supervision maintains or adds to? Well, I think the other thing that happens is that I suppose it's quite easy to then juxtapose it against what we see in other organisations. Coaching as a general rule... tends to be led from i'll call it l and d i think you know it have different names in different places but that's

People know what I'm talking about, I think. So it sits in L&D. There's a particularly passionate person who sits in that team, and they like coaching, and so coaching happens. And maybe it's that that person leaves or maybe that there's just a hard time for the organization. So things are needing to move around. And coaching is just seen as this thing that happens in the background that's quite annoying and just takes people's time up.

And the people who really get the business don't need to be bothering with all of that soft, fluffy stuff. And at Grant Thornton, that isn't really an option because with... So I'm just trying to kind of run through the list in my head. I think it's only one exception. Yeah, I think it's only one exception. Everybody else.

is not in the business school as far as supervisors is concerned sorry so one of our supervisors is in business school and the rest of them all are senior people perhaps in client facing roles and so they're business consulting director or something like that or london head of audit is one of our coaching supervisors the uk head of risk

partner in the firm she's one of our coaching supervisors and so in terms of just ownership of what coaching should look like in our firm is it's it's out there and you've got that continual checkpoint that keeps people accountable for it and improves that quality and and it isn't just sort of from the textbook of

And so this sounds quite disparaging. I don't intend it to, but you know, somebody from L&D who doesn't get the business, that's the perception, isn't it? Sometimes come and sit down for these conversations about this thing that has only ever existed for you in a textbook. Well, you haven't got that excuse when the supervisor that you're facing is the London head of audit. Do you know what I mean? The supervision questions that they're asking is about.

How are you applying coaching skills in our business to make it better at what we're meant to be good at? It's got quite a different dynamic to it, which I think is exciting. I absolutely agree. And it's putting the business need. Integrating the business need into the coaching activity absolutely anchors it in the way in which the organization functions. So I can see that.

And that explains a great deal of why Grant Thornton is so good at it. Catherine. Yeah, that was really interesting, Sam. Thank you. And I know you have a big interest in the digital aspects of. coaching. I mentioned at the top of the podcast, your book, How to Thrive as a Coach in a Digital World. How do you see these new tools and techniques applying to supervision?

Yeah, so I think there's probably two broad ways that it will get pulled out into supervision as far as technology is concerned. And one of those is through... Well, the simple capturing of data. So I mentioned that little hypothetical situation of an individual in L&D who owns all of coaching in their head. It's not uncommon, right?

In a mature environment, that individual will have a spreadsheet where they are recording the names of the coaches and maybe even who they're coaching. They might even know. that they have had an initial coaching session or something like that. But it's quite unlikely that they're going to know how many sessions have happened across all of those different coaches and whether those conversations are still ongoing. You know, often then they sort of finish after.

i don't know two three four one session you just don't really know what's happening it's not criticism it's just observation that's just one person can't do all of that themselves As soon as you put a piece of technology in there that says, oh, well, we're going to manage that process. And so all of the coaches profiles, for example, could appear.

on that platform and all of the coaches will then get matched across and you're sort of tracking your sessions then that individual goes from being somebody who has to maintain their spreadsheet and matches coaches based on who they had a conversation with most recently it turns into well we could automate that process and match people a little bit more well responsively to coachee's needs we become a coachee led

process where a coachee can browse the profiles choose a coach and maybe even book a session live there that individual in lnd doesn't even have to be involved unless there's some sort of approval process needed What that does for supervision is it gives an important data input that says, oh, well, these people have been coaching this number of different people with these sorts of roles.

You don't need to break confidentiality or anything, but by restoring things like coaching goals in the system and maybe aligning those to... corporate values or any strategic goals or something like that, then you're able to draw out this theme of, it seems that in your coaching sessions, you're coaching everybody about their wellbeing.

now maybe that's indicative of as an organization that's an issue that people need a lot of coaching around or it might be that everybody else seems to be coaching about all sorts of different things and for you you just seem to cotton on to this

Something about well-being. Well, I know how to coach about that. So I'll dive down that rabbit hole. And maybe that's a good piece of insight to bring. Sorry, the way I've positioned that sounded quite directive. You know, this is what we should be doing. But, you know, the concept, I think, is there.

yeah yeah yeah and i think you know that's that's good isn't it you know more information more accurate information into a supervision session changes it from being pure perception although the difference between perception and truth is uh an interesting one to play with another podcast but i like the sound of it sorry carry on the and then the second way to apply technology is then sort of live in the supervision conversation itself

to enhance it and change it from being a pure face-to-face conversation. And just for clarity, the face-to-face conversation is where the value is.

So I think sometimes then you use a piece of technology and the technology is the thing that's doing the coaching and the coach is sort of sitting there as a passenger who will become, I don't know, the driver somehow, you know, becomes technical support rather than a... coach i'm not a big fan of that but i think some pieces of technology that are particularly creative and generate something in the moment

So I can't remember if I've mentioned this to you previously or not. I've certainly told some people about it. Magnetic poetry. When I was a kid, then I had a little box of words that I could stick on the fridge and make little... nonsense poems with well you can do that digitally go on to magnet i think it's magnetic poetry.com and you can play the game online and so if you share your screen with a with a coach in a supervision session

and you've got just a bunch of random words and you can say come on then coach write me a poem using these words that summarizes your coaching practice as it currently is and then let's just Just see what happens. It's going to be a unique poem in the moment. It's going to mean nothing at all. But for that session, it's going to carry a lot of meaning and is going to sort of break those sort of cognitive processes that go and get in our way sometimes.

And that, for me, feels like an exciting and fun way to enhance our coaching that's using technology to its best. I agree. I mean, it sounds like a great thing to introduce into supervision, but you're obviously quite... you know about all sorts of lovely digital exciting things uh do you share it with the other supervisors i mean is it integrate is is the use of interesting sort of digital possibilities

shared with the other supervisors within Grant Thornton or is it something that you tend to do just yourself? So we've got a Microsoft Teams channel and so we share some ideas on there and that could be anything from an article that we've seen that looks interesting or or anything like that and i have shared you know some tools and i've demonstrated them in different places

I think it's good to keep on top of technology because there's a tendency for organizations to adopt technology and then you've got individuals within that organization that are... quicker than others to adopt that for themselves yeah um so i mean teams is a good example actually where i know there's a move in a lot of organizations to try to take communication away from email and put it onto teams

for all sorts of good, positive reasons. And of course, those that are most used to email are the ones that are trying to disrupt that. So everything, if you put something on Teams, then they will...

shift it to an email to reply to it because they want everything stored in their email inbox because that's what I've done for the last 20 years. And so no judgment on those people. You know, we're all humans. We don't like change. But as a... supervisor you're going to have coaches that are at different points in that sort of adoption journey and in order to generate the right level of rapport with them you need to be flexible enough to use technology on their terms

And so as supervisors, we've kind of got a responsibility to know their preferences. That's right. And to keep up to date with the technology so that, you know, these are two real examples that have happened. I've had people where I've had a Zoom conversation with them and it's their Zoom and I try to share my screen and I can't because they're the host and they need to enable screen sharing.

I don't use Zoom as my primary. I'm much more used to Teams. And so I don't really know where the button is. And either they are such a whiz kid at Zoom that they will do it so quickly that I don't really know what's happening. And that makes me feel a little bit discombobulated. Or they are actually less competent at Zoom than I am. And therefore, that simple process of just going, allow screen sharing becomes this.

slow, frustrating action that then breaks any sort of momentum that we had in our conversation. And by the time that I've got the ability to share my screen, I've forgotten what I wanted to share. in a supervision session you want it to be just a nice smooth human experience and so if the other person is slower then we need to slow down to sort of match their

pace as far as the technology is concerned so that rapport isn't broken. And if they're really good, we need to be prepared to not frustrate them with our slowness.

Yeah, so there you go. Sorry, that's one of my little high horses that I get on. But yes, it's interesting, and I think we should do more about it. Very good. So you share it anyway with other supervisors. It sounds as if the jury might be still out, but the extent to which they actually... deploy what you've been sharing yes there is within grant thornton there's no sort of mandated or even heavily suggested this is a good

tool to use in your supervision. I think there are some organizations where they have a particular preference for a particular sort of technology that they will use specifically to do coaching with. And for me, and I think it's fair to say for Grant Thornton as a whole, to say, you know, you should be using so constellations you know there's a you know the systemic constellations tool there's a digital version of that it's a good tool right they're very helpful but to say to coaches

or to supervisors, this is the tool that we would like you to use in supervision. It suddenly restricts every sort of conversation into being the same.

Yes, I understand. You're treating them as adults, basically. You're making an offer. You're offering stuff to them, but it's up to them how they deal with it. I do love the sound of sorts of things that you've been identifying, I must say. You've issued a challenge to me, Sam, about keeping up with technology. I'm already feeling totally inferior, so I'm going to have to work hard at it, I'm afraid.

But fascinating, all fascinating. So it's been some wonderful insights today. Thank you very much for that. I'm hoping that our listeners have learned about internal supervision in this podcast and hopefully they'll let us. They'll let us know we're organising that, which Catherine will tell you about. Catherine, what have you learned more than anything else from Sam today? Well, I think there are two bits I was particularly impressed by. I was really impressed by the degree.

to which supervision has penetrated Grant Thornton. To have regular supervision of the supervisors feels like real three Michelin star stuff. And, you know, a great thing to... to try to deploy in other organisations as well, and I hope they do. But I'm also really interested in the role of the apprenticeship scheme in the development of coaching within Grant Thornton. I think many organisations could benefit from exploring.

their options there. So thank you for telling us more about that. Yeah, I'm with you all the way on that in terms of the supervision of supervisors. It's something that in the independent world of of supervision, it's perhaps a little easier to do inside an organisation where time is so difficult to organise. I think it's quite a feat to be doing that.

and to be doing so much supervision that um actually you can't remember how many times you've done it in a year that's really impressed me that's i mean that's something else And that final challenge to me personally of I've got to keep up, you know, I've got to keep up with this younger generation that is teaching me how to use technology. That's a big challenge which I'm...

I'm not going to say I'm happy to rise to, but I am determined to rise to. So thank you very much for issuing it. Thank you for listening to this podcast from the EMCC UK. Together, our aim is to promote good practice and the expectation of good practice in coaching, mentoring and supervision across Europe. To learn more about the EMCC UK and to find out about membership, accreditation...

events, CPD opportunities and learning resources, visit emccuk.org. And remember to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss a future episode.