About coaching supervision
The International Coach Federation (ICF) defines coaching supervision as:
“…a collaborative learning practice to continually build the capacity of the coach through reflective dialogue for the benefit of both coaches and clients.
Coaching Supervision focuses on the development of the coach’s capacity through offering a richer and broader opportunity for support and development. Coaching Supervision creates a safe environment for the coach to share their successes and failures in becoming masterful in the way they work with their clients.”
The European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC) defines coaching supervision as:
“a safe space for reflective dialogue with a practicing supervisor, supporting the supervisee’s practice, development and well-being.” It goes on to set out the purpose of coaching supervision as being:
1. To ensure the supervisee maintains appropriate professional standards
2. To facilitate the development of the supervisee’s professional practice
3. To provide support for the supervisee’s well-being”
Most, if not all, coaching professional bodies endorse coaching supervision as an important part of coaches’ professional and personal development and require evidence that a coach is receiving coaching supervision in order to be accredited.
My approach to coaching supervision
At its best, coaching supervision is a shared endeavour in which we engage in a dialogue that opens opportunities for wiser ways of seeing, being and acting in the world. Together, we can begin to understand the interconnected nature of the complex adaptive systems of which we are all a part. Here are my aims for the coaching supervision I provide.
Awareness and insight
My aim in coaching supervision is to build your awareness and insight. This includes helping you become ever more self-aware, able to spot habits and patterns, and uncover blind/deaf spots. It also includes helping you take a meta-perspective on your coaching work, look at it from different angles, and open to new ways of seeing. We will work together to grow our mind-sets and explore our somatic/felt sense to tap into a wider awareness beyond what the mind can access.
Presence and relational capacity
I also aim for my coaching supervision to support you to become more present in your coaching, more comfortable with silence, and more conscious of what you are embodying. Combined with connecting to our sense of our common humanity, this embodied presence helps us build our relational capabilities. It enables us to bring empathy, compassion, and kindness to the coaching relationship, enhancing psychological safety, building trust, and supporting beneficial outcomes in client systems and beyond.
A partner on the journey
My intention is for coaching supervision to grow your resourcefulness as well as your effectiveness. I see coaching supervision as a developmental process for you as a person, rather than simply working on tools and techniques, and as a shared journey rather than a series of transactional sessions. Indeed, I see myself as a partner on your professional and developmental journey, looking to take a collaborative approach to meet your needs and the needs of your different stakeholders and of the wider world. We can step to the learning edge together and see/learn things neither of us could do alone, enabling us to navigate complexity, ambiguity, paradox and interrelatedness.
My coaching supervision integrates mindfulness and Relational Mindfulness (RM) in ways from the subtle to the explicit. If you find it helpful, I can offer mindfulness practice as part of our time together. Whether or not you choose to engage in mindfulness practice, these approaches inform who I am ‘being’ as a coaching supervisor.
My long-time practice of mindfulness and RM has given me a capacity to be present and aware in sessions that shapes how I listen and facilitate learning. It allows me to ‘hold’ challenges and strong emotions with compassion, care, and skill. It enables me to see more clearly, with a wider view, and feel into the embodied nature of what is emerging – and to help you to do the same.