What do you get from a supervisor,

that you don't get from a coach? 

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Any skilled coach can help you reflect on your practice, can offer feedback, help you reality check your experience. 

 

But in the same way as a coach offers a different kind of support than a friend, a qualified coaching supervisor provides additional tools and processes, beyond the normal scope of a coaching relationship.

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Here are six ways coaching supervision is different: 

 

1. Supervision focuses explicitly on your clients: This allows you to step back and reflect on each client, examine what might best serve them, and explore your experience of being in relationship with the client. 

2. Supervision focuses on relationship patterns: Invites reflection on relationship patterns which can muddle and disrupt the partnership between clients and coaches. These include parent-child dynamics, projection, parallel process, dual relationships, drama triangle, and many more. 

3. Supervision focuses on your experience of your client: Invites you to bring your attention to what is happening for you, as you coach your client. Your own reactions, feelings and impulses are data that can illuminate what is happening. 

4. Supervision expands range and versatility: What techniques or approaches will best serve your client? How do you prevent your coaching becoming rote and habitual, and stay open to a wider range of possibilities?

5. Supervision can help you navigate complex challenges: Untangle and unpack complex, multi-party contracts, confusing confidentiality boundaries, or ethical grey areas. 

6. Supervision broadens your perspective by inquiring about the contextual and cultural influences on coaching relationships, and the systems (family, organizational, cultural) in which they occur.