Quality control for coaches

 

In her paper Group supervision for coaches: is it worthwhile? A study of the process in a major professional organization, Janet Butwell (2005) provides a great overview of supervision in coaching and intertwines the personal experiences of coaches who participated in a supervision group.

Highlighting key references in the field, Janet explains supervision as a formal arrangement where coaches discuss their work in a supportive context that promotes the quality control of coaching. Supervision is therefore "a place to review and reflect on your practice", "to maintain adequate standards" and "to facilitate ongoing learning, support and quality control" (p.47).

Participants in Janet's study also identified personal benefits of supervision as a form of personal benchmarking, a check for one's assumptions, as well as gaining a support network to counteract the feelings of isolation as a coach. Components of supervision that these participants particularly appreciated were learning about new models and coaching tools, case presentations (in which a coach shares a challenging coaching scenario and gets feedback, advice or coaching on it) and discussions about recognizing and dealing with client boundaries.

Finally, Janet explained that supervision provided "the opportunity to discuss a difficult case, to explore one's feelings about a client, or to bounce ideas around on how take a 'stuck' client forward, or to have advice from someone with more experience or a different point of view on subtle boundary issues" (p.52).

Janet pointed out Bluckert's (2003) recommendation that experienced coaches have two hours of supervision for every 30 hours of coaching and that trainees have one hour of supervision for every 10 hours of coaching. However, she also points out that several organizations, including The Association of Coaching and the European and Mentoring Coaching Council, admit that it may be difficult to coaches to find a supervisor! Fortunately, that little piece of information is already out of date! It's no longer difficult to find yourself a supervisor, so this is some research that you can definitely apply to your practice!

A quick google search of "supervision for coaches" leads you to quite a few supervisory options and with the addition of a location, you're even likely to find a supervisor in your area. Sizable financial commitments can deter coaches from participating in ongoing supervision with average prices being at least $100+/hr for individual supervision and around $75+ for group supervision. However, if you're not keen to invest that much in ongoing supervision, that's still no reason not to put this research into practice! ReciproCoach, the answer to financially accessible coaching, mentoring and now supervision for coaches, offers group supervision as well as individual reciprocal supervision (the latter involves giving supervision to one coach and receiving it from another and includes an e-course on how to supervise another coach).

Do you dare to take your coaching to its edge through supervision?

If you need more convincing about the necessity of supervision for any practising professional coach, you can download Janet's complete paper by clicking here.

If you're already convinced and want to try supervision for yourself, click here to find out how the ReciproCoach community can meet your needs.