Lifting the Lid on Coaching Supervision

In this episode, Clare and Steve muse about hiding in supervision. Steve confesses to hiding himself when tiredness got in the way and he chose to coast and take a ride on the back of the tandem instead of driving his own bike! Hiding by not bringing issues creates inequality in groups, where vulnerability is so key. Hiding behind the story, rather than focusing on themselves, prevents us from ide...

Clare and Steve chat with Steve Chapman in a rich, content-packed journey of exploration into the world of not knowing. Tethering fear and permission, our podcasters explore answers that offer only more questions, the fallacy of misplaced concreteness, leaping then looking, presentations to dandelions, the erratic behaviour that comes with stuckness and much more. This episode is so packed with cu...

Clare and Steve discuss the challenge of feedback and knowing how we are doing as a coach, when all our work is confidential and only witnessed by ourselves and our clients. They explore internal and external referencing and ask two of the biggest questions - who am I as a coach and why am I here? They suggest that understanding ‘self as instrument’ provides the framework against which we can meas...

Clare and Steve discuss ways we might work with our clients - face to face, telephone, virtually and some other slightly more experimental ones! What assumptions and biases are in place when we have a favourite or familiar method? What has the pandemic changed? What happens if we blend methods? Could we be more experimental, more curious? What role might supervision play in testing the boundaries...

Clare and Steve discuss working with story and how story shows up in coaching and supervision. Story is old thinking, often the story the client has told, and continues to tell, themselves. What we are seeking to do is create new thinking and mostly the story doesn't serve this well. Our podcasters explore how storytelling is fundamentally human, but how as supervisees we might become entangled in...

Clare and Steve start with a discussion about what internal coaches might need from supervision, as coach and employee. Then they talk about how to meet the need with quality and cost in mind. Confidentiality and contracting for the boundaries of supervision are important internally. There are different complexities for internal coaches that make it harder to coach there, so it is even more import...

Clare and Steve meet with Peter Hawkins for a wide ranging and provocative discussion about where supervision has come from and where it needs to go in order to keep the coaching profession fit for purpose in an ever changing world. They discuss ‘decolonialisation’, and moving away from individualised development towards the wider system, through team coaching and the inclusion of ecology in the r...

Clare and Steve discuss a scenario about the future of coaching using AI, where AI augments what the human can offer rather than replacing them. They look at how AI can spot patterns and join dots that coaches might miss and that the learning can be live in the moment rather than sometime later, so useful for the Thinker in the session. They also ponder on how the coach would stay present with the...

Clare and Steve talk about energy, how we have more energy (sometimes) for things that are new (like the first lawn mowing of the season) and how energy can get trapped in our body and need an outlet (like dancing). We talk ebb and flow, push and pull, bulldog clips, drains and radiators, kites and anchors, whirlwinds, owls and larks, phases of the moon, jetlag when the clocks change, going, going...

Clare and Steve discuss coaching the person not the problem. Maybe it’s our patterns of learning through education and organisational working that leads to us as coaches trying to fix the problem, resolve the issue, help achieve the goal? But what might we be missing by not fully noticing the person in front of us - how they show up, their baseline state, what is meaningful for them, how we experi...

Clare and Steve explore note taking and record keeping. They discuss best practice with regard to notes taken during a session; notes taken after a session about the session; reflexive notes about ourselves as a coach; records for accreditation. They also discuss how we store those notes, whether they are locked away or password protected, and the risks such as ethical or even criminal implication...

Clare and Steve explore the question coaches in supervision often ask. “Am I good enough?” Our podcasters unpack uncertainty, self-doubt and ‘comparisonitis’. Whether it be as a newly qualified coach or an experienced practitioner, we all have self doubts sometimes. Often this arises from comparison. Comparison to our coach trainer, our peers. Comparison to how we perform in other skills. Comparis...

Clare and Steve explore the search to go deeper, the hunt for the killer question, the desire to turn a lightbulb on for our client. They explore, with stories, how some of the best coaching comes, not from trying too hard to do those things, but more from the depth and quality of our listening. From the space we create for our clients, our thinkers, to do their own thinking and for us to be witne...

Clare and Steve welcome Josh Connolly to explore resilience. Josh speaks from personal experience and works with organisations to explore what resilience is and what it’s not. Josh describes resilience, not as toughness, because plastic is tough, but eventually reaches a breaking point. Instead, we need to be elastic, able to return to our form and intended purpose. Together the three podcasters e...

Clare and Steve explore the various ways we might access different intelligences so as to harvest new awareness and new learning. They share some of the approaches they use in supervision. These include use of the environment and nature. Use of imagery, drawing and metaphor. Using physical, somatic approaches such as Constellations; or movements around the room to stand in the truth of what is, or...

Clare and Steve explore scenarios when our clients go missing and how this topic arises in the supervision space. They discuss the space we hold as coaches for our clients when they are not present for a longer than expected period. Space that might simply be logistical or might also be deeper in our psyche. Our podcasters reflect too on how often in supervision the supervisee appears to have give...

Clare and Steve explore coaches coming to supervision seeking a ‘how to’. Our podcasters reflect on how often supervisees see the supervisor as the mentor, the guru, the experienced one, the wizard even, who can offer them an idea or a solution to their stuckness. They explore approaches they use in supervision to build reflexivity. To support supervisees in developing new ways of seeing their stu...

Clare and Steve explore how to choose a supervisor or change our supervisor. What might be part of your process? Do you have a process? Do you know where to look and how to find a supervisor? Steve and Clare offer some tips and insights from their own experience and process. Make your choice a conscious one - don’t become lazy or look for an easy option and don’t choose one for the wrong reasons....

Clare and Steve explore endings. They reflect on the challenges coaches sometimes have with endings and how maybe that reflects the coach’s own experience of endings in their life more broadly or reflects directly on their own needs as a coach. Our podcasters explore timings in sessions, knowing when to end and maybe when not to. They explore programmes of work and challenge the idea of long coach...

Clare and Steve explore contracting. Focusing on the contract in supervision they discuss the procedural, the professional and the psychological aspects of the contracting process. They explore some of the differences you might consider between working in a group or one to one with a supervisor and also the other watch-outs when the contract is more complex, for example working within organisation...

Clare and Steve explore chemistry sessions. Something our training sometimes overlooks but something that presents a great opportunity for reflection and self learning as we will likely do many of them. It helps us, in supervision to explore our signature presence, the values and beliefs that shape who we are and how we show up as our clients meet us for the first time. Our podcasters explore how...

Clare and Steve are joined by Julia Menaul for an exploration of grief, loss, death and bereavement in coaching and supervision. Julia, a master coach, supervisor, director of AoCS and an author, explores with Clare and Steve the story that lead to her co-authoring a book on this topic, to be published in 2022. Together our podcasters and guest explore our personal, societal and cultural relations...

Clare and Steve explore what they mean when they refer to the system as it might show up in coaching and supervision. They explore the hidden dynamic and architecture of relationships, not just between people but between individuals and abstract constructs such as the future. They discuss nested systems, family systems, professional and organisational systems and how to bring awareness to the unco...

Clare and Steve continue to build on the lockdown series of podcasts by exploring the nature of vulnerability and its place in supervision. Our podcasters explore the negative connotation that comes with being vulnerable and, using Brene Brown’s work, explore how the need for connection and the fear of disconnection drives us to hide vulnerability or fear being truly vulnerable. They discuss how t...

Clare and Steve build on the lockdown series of podcasts by exploring emotions and how they might surface in supervision. They discuss what emotions are, how they are distinct from bodily feelings, and their purpose - why do we have emotions? They explore how social and group culture, be it organisation, family, friends don’t encourage exploration of emotions and how we seek to move on quickly or...