The idea that all coaches should undertake regular supervision doesn’t have much evidence to support it, say Paul Lawrence and Ann Whyte, in the final part of our special report on coaching supervision
Part 3: How do coaches and clients in Australia and New Zealand address areas for which supervision could have been a useful intervention?
If coaching providers are so sure supervision is an essential activity, as Humphrey and Sheppard (2012) and others suggest, why don’t all coaches undertake it?
Grant (2012) identified cost and the absence of suitably qualified supervisors as key barriers, while Passmore & McGoldrick (2009)
suggest coaches don’t understand why supervision is so important.
To explore the subject further, we spoke to 29 clients (organisational buyers of coaching services) and 33 executive coaches in Australia and New Zealand.
The coaches included 20 ICF members, eight registered psychologists and 13 members of their national psychological association. All had an average eight years’ experience as an external executive coach.
Instead of asking coaches why they did or didn’t undertake supervision, we asked what activities they undertook to address four areas for which supervision is cited as useful (Moyes, 2009):
1. Skills development
2. Helping the coachee become ‘unstuck’
3. Supporting coach wellbeing
4. Protecting the client
We asked them about two aspects of client protection: how they monitor their activities with reference to their coaching ethics, and how they monitor the extent to which they considered themselves to be acting in service of their client’s goals, versus the goals of the client/organisation.
Findings
Supervision was the most frequently mentioned intervention when it came to helping clients become unstuck (mentioned by 79 per cent of coaches), supporting the client’s wellbeing (76 per cent), and skills development (36 per cent).
Supervision was mentioned by only 27 per cent with reference to ethics, with most coaches saying they felt their ethics were “ingrained”, and by just 6 per cent when it came to navigating client and coachee needs. However, although supervision was mentioned most often with regard to ‘becoming unstuck’ and ‘wellbeing’, it wasn’t used very frequently for these two purposes. Some 21 per cent of coaches said they never, or rarely, got stuck or felt the need for support. Others talked about using supervision in this context only on an as-needs basis.
In the second part of the interview we asked about supervision. Coaches again emphasised skills and personal development. We also asked coaches about the nature of their supervision. Some 85 per cent undertook some form of ‘formal’ supervision, ie, that the intervention is specifically undertaken for the expressed purpose of being supervised. There were three popular forms of formal supervision:
1. Regular one-to-one (33 per cent)
2. Ad-hoc one-to-one (18 per cent)
3. Regular group (30 per cent)
When we correlated the form of supervision undertaken with years’ experience as a coach, we found that:
Less experienced coaches were more likely to undertake group supervision (average experience 6.3 years)
Coaches undertaking regular, paid, one-to-one supervision were more experienced (7.3 years)
Those undertaking ad-hoc, paid, one-to-one supervision were more experienced still (9.8 years).
Just 21 per cent of clients said they insisted on supervision, with most respondents placing more emphasis on the coach’s experience and qualifications and word of mouth referral in their decision-making.
Conclusions
For coaches, the most important function of supervision appears to be developmental, according to our research. Formal supervision however, is not the only such intervention available to a coach. Coaches talked about the courses they attended, events, reading and research. It is possible for coaches to be committed to professional development without undertaking formal supervision, so why should all coaches undertake it?
Some coaches talk about the psychological aspects of coaching. However, as Childs et al (2011) point out, the boundaries for coaching are not universally agreed. Some suggest coaching should focus solely on behaviour change and performance, while others argue the necessity of working with deeper psychological and emotional issues. Moyes (2009) differentiates between coaching supervision and coaching psychology supervision, defining the latter as explicitly addressing “the psychological nature of the coaching process, as well as the application of psychological theory and methods within the coaching process”.
Other coaches talk about the supportive aspect of coaching, but others would concur with Moyes’ (2009) suggestion that the supportive aspect of supervision may be more important in therapy.
Bachkirova et al. (2011) and Hawkins & Schwenk (2011) suggest the systemic perspective of the coaching supervisor is of primary importance, and is a critical difference between a coach and a coaching supervisor. However, if it is important for the coach to be aware of the importance of environmental factors in facilitating sustainable change, why is the systemic perspective flagged as an attribute of an effective coaching supervisor, but not a coach per se?
Other approaches are more contingent. Passmore & McGoldrick (2009) say that new coaches may benefit particularly from group supervision, and more experienced coaches may benefit more from the use of learning logs and peer mentoring.
Our results support the idea that relatively inexperienced coaches may be more likely to undertake group supervision, and that relatively experienced coaches are more likely to seek out supervision ad-hoc. Several of the coaches in the latter group were quite particular as to who they sought as a supervisor, often contracting with supervisors based overseas.
The results of this study may go some way to explaining why there may be tension within the coaching community as to the appropriateness of seeking to effectively mandate coaching supervision. It may also explain why even in Europe, where Bachkirova et al. (2011) suggest that having a supervisor is regarded as essential, coaching supervision may be more spoken about than actually practised (Passmore & McGoldrick, 2009).
The idea that all coaches should be undertaking regular coaching supervision doesn’t have a great deal of evidence behind it. Valuable though it may be, there are other forms of intervention available to facilitate ongoing development – which appears to be its primary purpose. The drive for everyone to undertake supervision seems to come from practitioners in related professions, from systemic practitioners, and from those seeking to provide assurance to the market that they employ similar standards to established professions.
Paul Lawrence heads Whyteco’s research practice and is director of the Centre for Systemic Change.
Ann Whyte is managing director of Whyteco. In 2010, she chaired the working party that created Australia’s first national Guideline on Coaching in Organisations.
References
S Humphrey and L Sheppard, “Supervised Behaviour”, in Coaching at Work, vol 7, issue 6, 2012
T Bachkirova, P Jackson and D Clutterbuck, Coaching and Mentoring Supervision: Theory and Practice, Maidenhead, Berkshire: McGraw-Hill/OUP, 2011
R Childs, M Woods, D Willcock and A Man, “Action learning supervision for coaches”, in J Passmore (ed.), Supervision in Coaching: Supervision. Ethics and Continuous Professional Development, pp31-44, London: Kogan Page, 2011
A M Grant, “Australian coaches’ views on coaching supervision: A study with implications for Australian coach education, training and practice”, in International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring, 10(2), pp17-33, 2012
P Hawkins and N Schwenk, “The seven-eyed model of coaching supervision”, in T Bachkirova, P Jackson and D Clutterbuck (eds.), Coaching and Mentoring Supervision: Theory and Practice (pp28-40). Maidenhead, Berkshire: McGraw-Hill/OUP, 2011
B Moyes, “Literature review of coaching supervision”, in International Coaching Psychology Review, 4(2), pp162-173, 2009
J Passmore and S McGoldrick, “Super-vision, extra-vision or blind faith? A grounded theory study of the efficacy of coaching supervision”, in International Coaching Psychology Review, 4(2), pp145-161, 2009
Coaching at Work, Volume 8, Issue 5