Thinking?... or just talking?

I continue to enjoy - and get great value from - the Psychology for Coaches programme run by Marie Stopforth. One of the many moments that made me think this week was a brief conversation about coachees who talk so much the coach has no opportunity to contribute much. 

On the one hand, some coaches may feel that they have not added any value in such a situation. Marie pointed out that Nancy Kline, for one, would question that.  Her Thinking Environment is predicated on the assumption that people thinking out loud about their own challenges are likely to come up with better solutions than coaches.

However, we also discussed the possibility that it was a defensive strategy, to prevent the coach from asking questions that might make the coachee have to think... Some people turn up and jus talk about anything and everything, to fill the time. 

My view is that that falls well outside what Nancy is getting at. Her (and my) interest is in people thinking in live time - not repeating what they have already thought. 

Moreover, in my experience, one can quickly tell if a client is genuinely thinking out loud in live time, or simply rehearsing an often articulated train of thought, which again might be a (possibly subconscious) defensive strategy.

So I would challenge such a client, and possibly have a renewed contracting conversation about our mutual expectations of the coaching, in terms of both process and expected outcomes.

Which brings me to another passing comment that really stuck with me: Marie mentioned that in her supervision of coaches, more often than not it comes down to one of two things: either better contracting (or re-contracting), or calling out breaches of the contracted expectations.  I'm not quite happy with 'calling out' but certainly think that we should call attention to any breaches, and have a conversation about them.  

And I agree with Marie, these two things do seem to address a large proportion of the issues that coaches bring to supervision. 

I will doubtless write more about some of the other insights I gained from the Psychology in Coaching programme, but don't want to go on too long now, lest you think it is some kind of defensive strategy...

What's the (implicit) contract?

I have  blogged before about the importance of contracting for coaching; and the fact that as a supervisor of coaches, whenever I hear a disaster unfolding, my first thought (and often my first question) is What was the contract?.

Occasionally, however, one comes across something that sits outside the normal contract, and that is causing the coach some retrospective anxiety: 'This happened, so I said/did this, and now I'm wondering if I should have...' Often, I hear, 'It felt ok at the time, but now I'm not so sure...'

Naturally, I find such cases interesting. One can't contract for everything, and often we can't talk in terms of absolutes, either. The Confidentiality aspect of the contract is a classic example: coaching is confidential except... {safeguarding, supervision, invoicing...} 

So for example, if a coachee decides to withdraw from a coaching relationship halfway through, one probably has an obligation to tell the client organisation, for reasons connected with invoicing.  Is that a breach of confidentiality?  Might it be perceived as such but the individual?  What if the client organisation asks for the reasons? After all, they have a right to know about the quality of the coaching being delivered...

It is here that I think that the concept of the implicit contract is valuable. You may not have contracted for the specific eventuality that has arisen, but it is worth asking two questions of yourself:

If I had contracted for this specific eventuality, what would I have been discussing with my coachee?

Given the contracting that we did in fact engage in, what would my coachee reasonably expect of me in this specific eventuality?

I find (so far) that asking these two questions helps coachees to evaluate their retrospective anxiety, and to decide whether it is well-founded - and if so what to do differently in the future. If not, of course, they can lay it to rest.

And one of the actions that often becomes clear as desirable, is more explicit contracting...

CIAO

Recently, I read Coaching Behind Bars, by Clare McGregor.  It tells the story of the birth, learning and successes of CIAO

CIAO (Coaching Inside And Out) works in prisons and with people convicted of offences or at risk of offending in our communities, as well as with their parents or carers.

It's an extraordinary story of Clare's curiosity and concern leading her to explore whether the kind of coaching that worked so well for her executive clients might be equally valuable for this group of people. 

From that exploration, CIAO has grown into a respected organisation, working alongside, but entirely separate from, the Criminal Justice system, and helping people to work on whatever they choose to work on. 

The offer is simple and quick: a limited number of sessions, to address some simple, but important questions: What do you want to change? Who are you? and How are you holding yourself back.

Perhaps the greatest testimony to their work - apart from the many individuals who tell very positive stories about its impact - is that in an environment where one might reasonably expect a degree of disenchantedness, if not cynicism, and certainly suspicion, all the people who engage in coaching do so on a completely voluntary basis, and nearly always because a previous coaching client has recommended the process to them.

What prompted me to read the book is the fact that I have just been recruited to join their team of supervisors: offering support, guidance and oversight to the coaches who are doing the frontline work.  As with all my supervisory work, I am sure that I will learn as much from the coaches I work with as they do from me.  In due course (and always observing confidentiality etc) I will share some of the generic, high-level learning on this blog.  In the meantime, do have a look at their work, and if you are a coach, and interested in supporting them, do get in touch.

The benefits and limitations of models

We had a fascinating CPD event recently at the Coaching Supervision Partnership.  We had decided to explore John Heron's model of interventions, in the context of supervision, and to to that by analysing a live supervision, using the model.

Heron's model, in brief,  suggests that interventions are either Authoritative or Facilitative; and within those two styles, there are three types. Authoritative interventions may be Prescriptive, Informative or Confronting; and Facilitative interventions may be Cathartic, Catalytic, or Supportive.

So one of my colleagues supervised another, with myself and a third observing, using a checklist to record the supervisor's interventions and categorise them accordingly. 

This was an interesting exercise.  For a start, not all interventions were easy to categorise, so rather than the ticks I imagined I would be putting in the various columns, I found I had recorded a series of question marks. But it was also interesting to note that both I and the other observer had seen in the session examples of all six categories of intervention, suggesting a good range of approaches being taken by the supervisor.

But we were all surprised at how few interventions were categorised as supportive; even though we all (and particularly the person being supervised) had felt that it was a very supportive session.

On the plus side, I find models and taxonomies like this helpful: they provide a way of analysing and discussing practice, and in particular spotting patterns, both of usage and omission. For example, many coaches I work with tend very much to the facilitative style, and that is often appropriate.  But it can be helpful to get them to reflect on when a more authoritative approach might be appropriate, and how to gain the skills and confidence to deploy it. 

But there are limitations, of course. One is that looking at an interaction as a series of interventions can cause us to miss the bigger picture: this was a supportive session because of the attention and intention of the supervisor, that was communicated in many subtle ways - but not through a series of 'supportive' interventions. Further, people often experience my approach as challenging; but that is most frequently not because of 'challenging' interventions, but rather because of my use of silence: encouraging people to go further or deeper than their initial responses to questions. Yet this approach might risk missing that aspect completely. 

And, of course, our difficulty in categorising some of the interventions (and indeed our categorising them differently from each other) highlights the problems with describing the subtlety of human interactions in such a reductive way.

Nonetheless, the exercise - and the framework - were valuable, not least as they provoked and enabled a rich conversation about one aspect of our professional practice, and our different approaches to that: not least our different reactions to the benefits and limitations of such models! At least one of us was far less forgiving of its limitations than I was...

Towards a practice framework

 I have been thinking further about the notion of a practice framework for my coaching work (a phrase I found in Hewson & Carroll's book about which I have blogged previously.

This is linked to my reflections on Sandwiches (in another, more recent blog).

In essence, I am trying to map what I believe the essential elements of good coaching are, at least as I see them. The point of this, of course, is to keep learning and improving; as well as to prevent back-sliding from how I am when working at my best.  It informs my reflective practice and my conversations with my supervisor.

And of course, that is the other use for it: when supervising other coaches. My ideal would be for them to articulate their practice framework for themselves; but having mine as a starting point may facilitate that.  And the point is to ensure that over a series of supervisory conversations, as well as addressing whatever arises from the specific issues they bring to supervision, we also review all aspects of their practice in a comprehensive way. Much of that will be done in response to the issues that they bring to supervision; but it may be that something like evaluation never arises in that context.  So I think that there is real value in  having a map somewhere that we can re-visit from time to time, to check if there is anything we have not talked about.

This is, of course, a work in progress: and I'll be interested in any suggestions others may have to improve it.

UPDATE

I've added something about stakeholder and system understanding to the 'supported by' list...  (always a bit of a blindspot for me...)

Supervising Mentors

I have been asked by the EMCC UK to facilitate their first Let's Talk session for mentors on International Mentoring Day (which, as I'm sure you know, is 27 October). The session is to be a mix of CPD and supervision, which has set me thinking about the differences (if any) between supervision for coaches and for mentors.

I am more used to supervising coaches than mentors, so it seemed important to give this some serious thought, to ensure the session is as valuable as it can be.  Mentoring and coaching, though closely related, are different in a number of ways, and having been involved in training both mentors and coaches, I am fairly clear about the differences.

Reflecting on this with colleagues, I have concluded that the main functions of supervision, the formative, normative and restorative (which I have summarised here), all apply equally in the context of mentoring. Likewise, the different types of conversations that might be appropriate, characterised by the rooms in Hewson and Carroll's Coaching House, are also relevant (I have blogged about these previously, here).

So I was beginning to wonder if there was any difference at all in the supervision of mentors as opposed to coaches. But there was something niggling at the back of my mind, and it was another colleague who helped me to articulate it. It was to do with context. 

In broad terms, coaches are probably more likely to have more training, and more of a professional identity as coaches, than mentors do. Mentors are typically doing the mentoring alongside other roles, often as a favour; and whilst they may have had some mentoring training, it may well be less than coaches. In the coaching profession, supervision is widely discussed; and most coaches are aware that having supervision is best practice, even if they don't actually avail themselves of it. Whereas I think it is much more likely that mentors may not be aware of supervision and its role.  And of course, in mentoring there are often power issues at play in different ways than in coaching: a mentor is frequently a senior member of the organisation in which the mentee is more junior, and clearly there are supervisory questions arising from that.

So I concluded that there is more context-setting that may be appropriate for mentors, with regard to supervision, and that there are some specific issues, for example in the normative area (contracting etc) that may need particular attention in the supervision of mentors.

And then, checking my assumptions with the EMCC, I learned that in this particular context, the mentors I'll be working with are also all coaches, so some of these considerations may not apply after all.

But nonetheless, it was interesting and useful to chase my thinking down here, and I am sure it will helpfully inform future work.

The Temptation to Complacency

I had a supervision session booked with my excellent supervisor, Ann Bowen-Jones.  I use Ann specifically to supervise my work as a supervisor, and have other supervisory arrangements for my coaching. That is very deliberate, to make sure that my supervision is subject to regular oversight and reflection, and doesn't take second place, as it were, to my coaching in supervisory conversations.   So, as I say, I had a session booked; and as we talk regularly, and due to the way the diary fell, I had only conducted one supervision since our previous meeting. Moreover, that supervision had gone well: I had helped the coach I was working with to think more perceptively about the issue under discussion, to gain some insights, decide what to do, and generate some useful actions.  All in all, I was feeling pretty complacent about it.

But that raised the question of what to discuss at supervision with Ann. We could have looked more broadly at my supervision practice framework, but we have spent some time on that recently, and somehow that didn't feel the most productive thing to do. So I mentioned that I had only supervised once since we last spoke, that it had gone well, and that might be worth reviewing.

For my coaching clients, I rarely think that reviewing successes is a waste of time or self-indulgent (unless that is all that they want to do, ever...). But for myself, it felt different.

And yet this proved to be a very rich session indeed. And it wasn't because it is valuable to affirm strengths and build on them (though there was an element of that) but simply because there was so much more to think about than I had realised. Ann's skillful listening and questioning helped me to identify that there was something I was uneasy about, regarding my client's practice, and then to identify what that was and what I wanted to do about it. 

In turn, that led to consideration of my reflective practice after the session: why had I not identified that unease until now?

We also identified two or three other lines of enquiry, as it were, to explore with my client, none of which I had arrived at in my post-session review with myself. 

And I think that in least in part, that was a result of a certain complacency after the session. It had gone well; the client had made significant progress, and had been very appreciative of my supervision. And in that context, it was just too easy to engage in my private review of the session from a rather self-satisfied stance.   

I think I am not alone in this: that I learn well from my disasters; but my triumphs?... I should pay more heed to wisdom of Kipling, and treat those two imposters just the same.

In my end is my beginning...

This week I had my final supervision session with Jan, with whom I have had a peer- co-supervisory relationship, focused on our respective coaching work, for six years.  It was, as ever, a very rich and fruitful session, and I reached some conclusions about questions that had been live for me for some time, about my coaching identity and my coaching philosophy, which felt particularly timely in a final session. And naturally, we included a retrospective, looking at what we had learned together, and how we had worked together.

That was all very positive; we were both able to identify for ourselves and each other, significant learning and development over the years, arising from our work together; and that included, of course, our supervisory, as well as our coaching, skills.  In part that was because we had both undertaken supervisory training a few years back, so had been particularly attending to that - reading the literature, discussing with colleagues at workshops, and so on. We wrote a blog post on some of our reflections on that learning on the CSP blog, here.

And as I wrote up my notes for the session for the last time, I went back to my notes from our very first session, back in 2015.  And guess what, some of the issues that were alive then have only just been resolved; and some that reared their head in this final session, and felt new, were also foreshadowed in that very first session. 

We shall not cease from exploration. 

And the end of all our exploring.  

Will be to arrive where we started. 

And know the place for the first time.  

T S Eliot knew a thing or two, didn't he...

Coaching Evaluation

I attended a very interesting webinar on the evaluation of coaching by Louise Emerson, hosted by the Association for Coaching, this week. I find a lot of things are still buzzing around in my head as a result, so this post is a bit of a 'think-out-loud' as it were, about those.

One is the issue of solely relying on the coachee's perspective when evaluating the value and outcomes of a coaching relationship. Clearly, the coachee's perspective and feedback on his or her experience is very important: necessary but not sufficient.

Louise pointed out that a coachee is not wholly unbiased, nor necessarily the person with the most insight.  In terms of bias, the coachee may well have formed a positive relationship with the coach, which may well colour both what the coachee thinks, and what he or she wishes to say to the coach.  

In terms of insight, coachees are not experts on coaching: it is conceivable that coachees might rate as excellent (because helpful to them) a coaching process that was (from a professional point of view) flawed in various ways. 

At the simplest level, I have, more than once, had the experience of listening to people while they sort out a difficult issue, prompting them with occasional questions, and being awe-struck at the solutions they have created - and then been told 'Thank you!  I always find your advice so useful!'  Whilst I am happy to take the credit, advice is not perhaps the most accurate word; but the process is not important most coachees and they may not attend much to it: it is the outcomes they want.

And there's something else here. Sometimes when coachees have a particular insight, or a shift in attitude, it is easy for them to forget, after a while, that they ever saw the world differently. So whilst the new learning is valuable and embedded, the fact of its being new learning is forgotten. 

So that all suggests that other reference points are needed. One such point may be other people in the coachee's system: colleagues, boss etc.  In some instances that might be appropriate; but of course that needs contracting for (ideally at the start of the process). So that is making me think more about my contracting meetings, and discussing in more detail at that stage how we will evaluate the coaching, both as we go, at the end, and some time afterwards. I already do this, but I think I could do it with more rigour, and in particular, asking who else the coach thinks we could or should include in that evaluation. 

Another reference point is myself, of course. I do have quite a thorough process of reviewing and recording my reflections on my work after each session; so it is about ensuring that I continue to engage with that as an exploratory, learning conversation with myself, not allowing it to slide into a superficial from-filling exercise.

Related to that is supervision. Clearly, this is one of the purposes of my meeting with my various supervisors: to continue to evaluate the effectiveness of my professional practice. However, what I am adding to that agenda is reviewing my approach to evaluation itself, on a regular basis; as well as evaluating the effectiveness of individual sessions or coaching relationships.  That then leads to a rather expanded supervision agenda; for it is not only evaluation, but also things like contracting - and in fact my whole practice framework - that could usefully be reviewed explicitly and regularly.

Something else that occurred to me is that sometimes, at the end of a series of coaching sessions, I am (to be honest) a little disappointed at the coachee's summary of what he or she has learned. I sometimes think they are missing or forgetting learning that seemed really valuable or important. So there is a place for my offering that evaluation at that stage; both as a way of brining it back to the coachee's attention, which is valuable as a learning process; and also as a way of honouring and affirming the work the coachee has done.  Again, I think I could be more rigorous here, and I think that would spring from better note-taking, after each session, so that I can quickly review progress with specific examples to feed back to the coachee.

So, as I said, lots of thoughts to turn into action here: I will discuss these with my supervisor, as I find that one of the helpful ways of holding myself accountable and turning good intentions into action.

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With thanks to Júnior Ferreira  Charles Deluvio  Aaron Burden for sharing their photos on Unsplash

Disclosure Remorse

Sometimes, when someone finally finds someone (say a coach) who is prepared to listen to them... and then listen some more... and then listen some more... without interrupting, without sharing parallels from their own experience, without judging, and without offering advice... well, sometimes they pour out their heart and their soul.  That can be particularly true if there are things that they have been unable to talk about or process in any other forum: so the confidentiality of a coaching relationship makes that particularly likely.

I have experienced that, as a coach, on many occasions, and very frequently in the initial, introductory conversation. Once someone has established that it is safe to talk - that confidentiality is guaranteed, and (I assume) having judged that I can be trusted - it can be a huge relief finally to tell someone just what they are thinking and feeling. At times they cry, or shout. And that is all OK.

And then a curious thing sometimes happens.  At the next meeting, they turn up much more guarded, or sometimes even noticeably uncomfortable. That is what I term Disclosure Remorse.

Interestingly, I don't remember reading anything in any of the coaching literature about this; nor has it been discussed on any of the coaching courses, workshops or masterclasses that I have attended.

I began to wonder if it was just me...

And then I discussed it with one of my supervisors. He comes from a therapeutic background, and recognised what I was describing instantly. Indeed, he also told me that he often discusses this with his clients at an early stage, and invites them to think ahead: 'what will you think, do you imagine, when you look back on this conversation, and think how open and honest you have been - how vulnerable you have allowed yourself to be?'  He reassures them that this is both normal, and valuable in the context of the conversations that they will continue to have together.

That was hugely helpful (and exemplifies one of the many benefits of supervision). So now I have a strategy to address this.

And of course, Disclosure Remorse is completely understandable.  We all have boundaries in place, and often for good reason; and when we cross those boundaries (as, I realise, I reflected towards the end of this post when I had done so) we feel vulnerable, and possibly even some sense of shame. Sometimes that may be wholly appropriate, of course; without wishing to over-indulge in self-disclosure, I can recall times as a student, say, and involving alcohol, when I was quite right to be ashamed the next morning of things I may have said...  But clearly in the context of coaching (and even more, therapy) such shame is misplaced.

So I am pleased that my supervisor helped me to develop an appropriate strategy - and I look forward to trying it out, and seeing if it is, in fact, as helpful as I expect.

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With thanks to Tom Pumford  Kyle Glenn and  Christian Erfurt for sharing their photography on Unsplash

Working with metaphor

I am increasingly interested in the value of working with imagery and metaphor. In a recent supervision, for example, the coach I was supervising (let's say Sam as that was not the coach's name) was thinking about a particular client (whom we can call Alex, on the same basis). 

Sam wanted to think about how to support Alex's growth and development, following a very difficult time at work. Rather than get into the complexities of Alex's situation, I asked Sam to hold the questions she had in mind lightly, and think about a metaphor. Sam thought that might be difficult, but in fact one came quite quickly. It was of a chrysalis, with a butterfly struggling to emerge from it. The environment is adding to the difficulty; leaves or twigs or something making it all harder. And it has been pouring with rain, so everything is wet.  The sun needs to come out.

We played with this quite a lot and added the wind as another potential help in the environment, as it might dry things more quickly.  I invited Sam to consider the wind and the sun as elements over which Alex might have some agency, and that proved a helpful line of thought.

Finally I asked what new story might be coming to mind, and Sam answered: Even aware of the fragility and vulnerability of the butterfly, Alex takes off.   Sam said she was finished at this point so we moved on to review the process.

Sam had found it 'really lovely – refreshing.' Sam now had a much clearer sense of how she wanted to work with Alex in their next meeting, and was able to hold that lightly.  And Sam was clear that the metaphor, and the way we developed the story together, had brought all the salient elements to the fore, far more quickly than just talking about the situation would have done.

And that strikes me as fairly typical of how metaphors work. Sam's choice of metaphor, and then the consideration of how the environment might help or hinder, and where Alex's agency lay, all cut straight to the heart of her thinking about this relationship.

So now I am wondering how to take that further.  I mentioned in a previous post that I am currently learning a poem a week. And poetry, of course, is rich in metaphor. So I am considering how to use more poetry in my work. And in discussing that with my supervisor, she reminded me of the work of David Whyte, a poet who uses poetry in organisational contexts.

So I am not quite sure where this will take me: I am thinking of running a workshop on Poetry and Leadership, starting with some reflections by me on a couple of improbable poems that I think (by analogy) might stir up interesting and valuable insights in leaders (or coaches or leaders), and followed by a small group discussions of the possibilities of this idea.  Let me know if you are interested.

And in the meantime, here's David Whyte:

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With thanks to Bankim Desai for sharing butterfly photos on Unsplash

Philosophy, Purpose and Process

 A colleague and I were discussing 'hurt' the other day, and (it being a supervisory conversation) we drew on the model proposed by Jackson and Bachkirova, in Eve Turner’s Heart of Coaching Supervision.

So we started by discussing our philosophy of hurt; what we believe about it. We recognised hurt as part of the (fallen) human condition; and the fact that we can choose the power it has over us: we can feed it, or not. It may require us to forgive – both ourselves and others. We can support and hold others experiencing hurt but cannot rescue them from it. We may be able to help them to change the context. 

We also discussed the issue of attributing intentionality to it – which may make it worse. But recognised that meaningless suffering was also intense. So Viktor Frankl's ideas arose as so often… The opportunity for hurt to be transformative and redemptive, and for it to be an opportunity for learning and growth – the relevance of the famous Serenity prayer: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference...

In terms of our purpose in working with people in their hurt, we discussed awareness and learning: our common humanity and the associated responsibilities… compassion, improvement, action….

Awareness is foundational, perhaps; admitting and acknowledging hurt, using it to become more self-aware and to reflect on the impact of one’s own behaviours; becoming more compassionate in judgement of others; thinking about the power we are giving to hurt, and seeing the continuing impact on us and our relationships.

We moved on to discuss the processes we might use in working with hurt, and noted how well grounded in our philosophy and purpose these turned out to be – and how helpful it was to make those links explicit in this way.

We started by discussing the basics: being there, holding, listening, psychological safety; and then some of the other tools: stories, systemic visibility and understanding, re-building confidence and competence, time perspectives, resource anchors, resilience self audit, challenging binary (good/bad) thinking, picture cards to access feelings and futures, assumption hunting etc. And also the importance of the coach being the guardian of hope in the system, the issue of timing in all of this, and the importance of support, and how to encourage people to identify and access the support available to them.

All in all, we found the structure a very resourcing way of provoking a rich conversation on this theme, which left both of us with several practical ideas for ways in which we can better work with our clients.

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With thanks to Tom Pumford,  jurien huggins and Marc-Olivier Jodoin for sharing their photos on Unsplash

The Coaching Supervision Partnership

For the past few years, as I have been developing myself as a Coaching Supervisor, I have worked with a small group of coaches who were on the same journey. Initially some of us knew each other through a supervision group where we came together to practice supervision and be supervised; and eventually we formed a learning cohort and designed our own learning journey to meet both our own needs and interests, and also the standard of the ILM at Level 7. Not all of us were seeking ILM qualification, but most were, and some of us (including me) have also completed our practical and written work and got through the first-marking process, awaiting only external second-marking to claim our certificates.

Having worked so well together and realised how our different skills, approaches and experiences provided a real richness to our joint learning, we decided to continue to work together. So we have established the Coaching Supervision Partnership, both as a continuing learning alliance, and as a vehicle to offer supervision, and eventually training in supervision, to organisations and individuals.

A number of us are currently working on a pro bono basis as supervisors of coaches who are (also pro bono) supporting senior NHS leaders addressing the COVID crisis, which is proving particularly interesting, challenging and rewarding. In between all of that, we have also started putting together a website to describe our offering and introduce us to the world.

Naturally, I'll be very interested in any feedback on the site as we develop it; and also in any introductions to organisations who have started to develop their internal coaching resource, but have yet to address how they are organising supervision for their coaches.

We all believe strongly in the importance and value of supervision, mainly because we have all experienced the significant benefits it has brought to our own practice as coaches, and of course, to our individual and organisational clients. 

Intuition

I have long been interested in Intuition, and in particular, the intuition of coaches during coaching sessions with their clients; and likewise the intuitions of supervisors during sessions with coaches.

It happened again the other day, in a supervision. The coach I was working with had asked me, as her supervisor, to share some of the interventions I frequently use in coaching, so we spent a few minutes towards the end of our session on that, and it was a useful and interesting conversation. And we moved on and talked about other things. 

And then, I was struck by... well let's call it an intuition, for want of a better word: another tool that I thought it would be helpful to share. And this one really caught her attention - as I was describing it I could see her engagement and she only just managed to stop herself from interrupting my explanation to tell me about a situation that she faced (and which she had not previously mentioned) in which this particular tool would be invaluable.

As I reflected on this, wondering where the intuition had come from, it became clear to me. Although she had not discussed the specific situation with me, she had discussed that client with me; and I think at some barely-conscious level I was noticing a pattern in their interactions, as she described them, that this tool would helpfully disrupt. So perhaps it was no surprise that she should see its relevance and apply it immediately - in the same context, albeit to a different specific situation, to the one that had prompted me to think about it.

I suspect that is often the case; and that intuition is a name that we give to a process that includes:

• listening, observing and noticing with a high degree of attention and accuracy; 
• processing that in a part of our mind that is not under our direct observation (barely-conscious, or unconscious are words I often find myself using in that context) 
• discovering (as if from nowhere) an idea that is highly relevant (drawing from a huge range of our previous knowledge and experience those elements that are most appropriate) 

And as I have mentioned before, my supervisor, Jan Allon-Smith has pointed out that such intuitions are actually co-created by the two parties involved and the process that they are working through, so again, it should be no surprise that the insight I mention above was so readily recognised as valuable by the coach with whom I was working.

Coaching Supervision (revisited)

Yesterday, I finished the last assignment for my ILM 7 qualification in Coaching Supervision. I have blogged previously about a question that arose early in the programme about the difference between supervision and coaching a coach.  That difference has become ever clearer as we progressed through our joint exploration, and in particular through the experience of practicing supervising.

But one of the things that most clarified it, was reading the excellent book Reflective Practice in Supervision (about which I have also blogged previously, here and here). Along the way, and almost in passing, Hewson and Carroll remark that one of the key purposes of supervision is to help the practitioner to review and revise their practice framework.  A practice framework, they further explain (and this is from memory - the book is upstairs - so don't assume this is verbatim...), is a set of values, skills, habits, behaviours and attitudes that inform our practice. More often than not (like the engine of a car) it is under the bonnet, as it were, and we don't attend to it. We merely drive (to push the analogy about as far as it will go) and it all works.  

But to become better coaches, we need to look under the bonnet; to tune it up, replace components that no longer work etc. So the supervisor's job (inter alia) is to help the coach to make explicit all those implicit aspects of the work, to examine them, improve or replace them, and so on. This is the formative, or developmental, aspect of supervision.

That's not the only role, of course.  The supervisor has two other key functions. One is the normative function, which is about ethical and professional standards. This is actually an area to which I think I need to pay more attention in my supervision. The ethical aspect is one I am interested in and typically attend to: I love that kind of discussion.  But professional standards, including things like checking a coach has appropriate insurance, discussing membership of appropriate professional bodies etc, is something I can easily forget to raise.  The third function is restorative, which is about helping the coach to process and deal with the emotional weight of his or her coaching client relationships and the issues discussed. I am better at that one.  Attentive readers will have made the links between these and the coaching rooms described in the Hewson and Carroll book, which I blogged about a mere three months ago.

So plenty to think about as I move ahead (and there's a lot more, of course) but for the moment , I think it's time to sit back and put my feet up, and enjoy the feeling of having smashed the (self-imposed) deadline of finishing my work on this qualification before the end of January.