In this three-part special report on coaching supervision to celebrate its 10th birthday in the UK, we look at where we’ve come from, where we are and where we’re going. We examine internal coaching supervision, as well as research from Australasia which asks: is it all it’s cut out to be?
Part 1: Gil Schwenk and Rosalyn Jack review coaching supervision’s history and current status, and forecast what we might expect over the next decade.
Coaching supervision has had a rapid ascent in the UK over the past decade, and there are a number of definitions for it.
Peter Hawkins and Myles Downey helped make the term coaching supervision more popular when they explored ways to enable coaches to reflect on and develop their coaching practice.
Then, in 2003, Hawkins and John Bristow facilitated the pioneering coach supervision training, adapting Hawkins and Shohet’s Seven-eyed model of supervision to coaching. This evolved into the first Coaching Supervision Certificate by Bath Consultancy Group (BCG) and the Centre for Supervision and Team Development.
Meanwhile, some coaching professional bodies were beginning to focus on supervision. The European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC) issued Guidelines on Supervision stating that all members should have regular supervision. It acknowledged possible initial shortages of appropriately qualified supervisors and outlined criteria on finding one. In 2004, the Association for Professional Executive Coaching and Supervision (APECS) was created, with supervision as a key principle.
By 2006, coaching supervision was gathering pace. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development commissioned BCG to conduct the first coaching supervision research. A key finding was that supervision, though widely advocated, had low uptake. Some 88 per cent of organisers of coaching and 86 per cent of coaches believed coaches should have regular ongoing supervision of their coaching. However, only 44 per cent of coaches regularly received it. Moreover, 58 per cent of the coaches receiving supervision only started in the two years prior to the survey.
That year also saw the first book published about coaching supervision: Coaching, Mentoring and Organizational Consultancy: Supervision and Development by Peter Hawkins and Nick Smith. There has since been a proliferation of coaching supervision books in the UK and in Germany.
Oxford Brookes University introduced the first Coaching Supervision postgraduate certificate in 2007 and an MA in Coaching and Mentoring Supervision in 2009. Oxford Brookes also held the first international conference in Coaching Supervision in 2011.
Current status
All coaching professional bodies operating in the UK have included supervision as a requirement for coaches. Unsurprisingly, we see considerable variation in its quantity and frequency:
Association for Coaching (AC) specifies a minimum average requirement of at least one hour of supervision a month for each of its four levels of accredited coach and a corresponding minimum ratio of supervision: coaching hours ranging from 1:15 to 1:40 for Foundation and Master Coaches, respectively. Guidance, too, is given on the time in supervision, number of supervisions and consistency of supervisor at each accreditation.
The EMCC requires one hour per quarter for Foundation and Practitioner level coaches and one hour of supervision for 35 hours of practice, with a quarterly minimum for Senior and Master Practitioner levels.
British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) – Coaching Division takes a similarly quantitative approach, requiring accredited members (counsellors and psychotherapists) to have at least 1.5 hours supervision a month.
APECS, in contrast, consciously resists a formulaic response to the question of amount of supervision, and instead emphasises more qualitative aspects, ie, its added value. Members are required to submit a supervisor’s report and to fully evidence the added value of supervision in relation to their coaching practice when seeking annual re-accreditation. An annual APECS survey found members accessed supervision on average once every 6-9 weeks, according to need.
British Psychological Society Special Group in Coaching Psychology (BPS-SGCP) also advocates a needs-based approach, as determined by the coach practitioner. Its Guidelines on Supervision state: “All Society members who provide coaching psychology… should receive regular supervision for their coaching activities. Whilst it is not mandatory, it is expected that coaching psychologists will have some form of supervision that best supports their practice. There is no one prescriptive model and it is left to the supervisor and supervisee to negotiate an appropriate contract.”
UK International Coach Federation (UK ICF) states that the pattern and frequency of supervision needs to vary according to the amount and nature of the coaching work. Mentor coaching is a temporary and time-defined activity to deepen and extend coaching capability in the 11 core competencies as an individual prepares for accreditation. Supervision is an ongoing means of development for a coach and ensures client safety.
Common forms of supervision include one-to-one, group and peer. Initially, these tended to be face-to-face or by telephone, but now are increasingly also done by audio-video, eg, Skype.
Choosing a supervisor
The EMCC offers criteria to support choice of supervisor. This encompasses the experience of the supervisor, their theoretical framework, its relevance to the coach’s own practice, their self-awareness and capacity for self-regulation and commitment to CPD and abiding by the EMCC Code of Ethics, irrespective of membership.
In a similar vein, the AC covers areas relating to professional membership, training, experience and accreditation, etc.
For APECS, the idea that one supervisor is the fount of all knowledge is not in keeping with its developmental approach. An experienced coach may see one supervisor regularly, but this
is often supplemented by peer dialogue.
Since BACP coaches are also counsellors/psychotherapists, there is a diverse range of practice. Consequently, the BACP sees it as helpful for the coach supervisor’s background to span both coaching and counselling/psychotherapy.
Similarly, BPS-SGCP recommends that supervision is obtained from Chartered Psychologists who have relevant experience and training.
Why do coaches engage in supervision and what are the benefits?
This question was posed to a small group of coaches at a recent meeting of the Bath Consultancy Supervision Network. Those present felt that in relation to their coaching practice, supervision helped them:
Gain a wider, deeper view
Identify blind spots (what was not being seen, heard or noticed)
Identify repeated blind spots (thereby directly contributing to the coach’s self-development)
Protect stakeholders in the coaching relationship from the impact of their blind spots, minimising potential development of collusive relationships
Enhance quality by having the perspective of someone outside the client system
Bring added value to the client through greater insights from the supervision process
Model a commitment to self-development
Gain greater choicefulness by being aware of the choices held by the coach, since practice can narrow over time into routine and comfort
Secure a differentiated position in the marketplace (given that some organisations buying coaching services are now asking the coach to evidence what they have derived from supervision and how they have applied it to their own practice).
The added value of supervision as a vehicle for ‘facilitated reflective practice’ was the overriding imperative for engaging in this process, as opposed to merely meeting professional body requirements – a response which, interestingly, was lacking.
Hawkins asserts supervision is a collaborative endeavour with the potential to create greater value for all stakeholders. Specifically:
Supervision should be measured in terms of the difference it makes rather than overly concentrating on inputs.
What emerges from the supervisory dialogue is something more than the thinking brought into the room by supervisee and supervisor.
The supervisee leaves with insight and embodied learning, creating a shift in the room.
The future
The future looks bright. Based on conversations with spokespeople from the professional bodies and thought leaders in coaching supervision, we predict the following over the next 10 years:
1. With all of the coaching professional bodies advocating coaching supervision, it will increasingly be a requirement for all coaches to have tighter monitoring.
2. Coaching supervision uptake will increase and become more diverse.
Recent trends indicate that peer supervision is becoming more common. Katherine Tulpa, CEO of the AC Global notices the emerging trend of ‘collaborative economy’, in which supervision can be offered more openly with the safety of a likeminded community to reflect on practice.
To ensure appropriate rigour, this needs to be more than a chat with a colleague or a group of colleagues. For example, according to Sarah Corrie, 2013 chair of the BPS-SGCP accepts peer or co-supervision if the peers are experienced coaching psychologists and both are competent as coaching supervisors. The EMCC also acknowledges peer supervision.
3. Coaching supervision training and accreditation will become more significant.
In recent years there has been significant growth in organisations offering coach supervision training. To quality-assure such training, EMCC piloted its new European Supervision Quality Award in 2012. So far, seven organisations have achieved the award.
Accreditation of coach supervisors is also accelerating. APECS has accredited supervisors from the start. The AC will shortly introduce a Coaching Supervisor Accreditation Scheme, which has been developed and piloted over the past 18 months. The EMCC is also planning Coach Supervisor Accreditation.
Such schemes will give greater assurance that coaching supervisors have appropriate experience and training.
4. Coaching supervision will gain momentum internationally.
Coaching supervision is quite well-established in the UK and in some Western European countries. David Clutterbuck, co-founder of the EMCC, says “there are probably more trained supervisors in the UK and Germany than the rest of the world combined”.
Coaching supervision seems to trail the development of coaching by a few years. So we could anticipate supervision becoming more prominent across Europe, Australia and Asia.
Interestingly, the US is an exception, where uptake has been relatively low. This appears to be due to less emphasis by professional bodies and less demand by clients and client organisations that coaches are supervised.
What are the obstacles?
Potential obstacles that could impede the future of coaching supervision include:
The fragmented, diverse world of coaching and supervision This is a major obstacle to coaching and supervision. It has taken more than five years for the professional bodies to embrace coaching supervision, but there are still significant differences regarding purpose, frequency, supervisor training and experience, etc.
This is confusing for coaches, their clients and organisations and supervisors. Perhaps the next decade will result in more professional body consistency.
The cost of supervision While most counsellors and psychotherapists in the UK accept supervision as integral to their practice, many coaches do not share this expectation. In a challenged economy, supervision can be seen as an unnecessary cost. Interestingly, many coaching supervisors complain that the price they charge for supervision is a fraction of what they charge for coaching.
The psychological capability of supervisors There is an ongoing debate concerning the psychological underpinning necessary for supervisors.
Get involved
It will be interesting to see how coaching supervision continues to thrive in the second decade. If you have views on this, please get in touch.
Relatedly, Eve Turner is updating supervision data on multi-stakeholder contracting. Links will be available soon through Coaching at Work, and some leading professional bodies.
Gil Schwenk is an executive coach, team coach and supervisor. He co-leads Bath Consultancy Group’s Coaching capability. gil.schwenk@bathconsultancygroup.com
Rosalyn Jack is an independent coach, coach supervisor and HR consultant.
With thanks to Jo Birch, Lynne Cooper, Gilles Gambade, Jeremy Ridge, Tracy Sinclair, Tatiana Bachkirova, Jane Saunders, Eve Turner, Maggie Woods and members of the Bath Consultancy Group Network Group.
Coaching at Work, Volume 8, Issue 5