The many faces of supervision

The supervision confusion

I remember a conversation I had with my dad once, many years ago, about supervision. He asked about it after I had spoken of my supervisor, commenting that it was a strange term. I was impatient with his questioning at the time, as I was well ensconced in the world of social work where the term was well understood and seen as a fundamental part of practice. As I reflect now, with the benefit of more diverse experience, I can perhaps understand more clearly what he meant. The term ‘supervision’ can sound, to be quite blunt, authoritarian. In fact, the top five suggested synonyms when I search the thesaurus are management, direction, regulation, command and control. Doesn’t really sound like something that you would want to sign yourself up for unless you had to, right? So, while many of us who have been or are registered professionals may feel like supervision is self-explanatory, it’s nature and benefits are not apparent to everyone.

To make matters more confusing supervision is defined differently in different places. For example in the Health Practitioners Competency Assurance Act 2003 it is defined as:

“the monitoring of, and reporting on, the performance of a health practitioner by a professional peer” (Sounds very serious and like you might get in trouble if you say the wrong thing)

whereas The New Zealand Psychologists Board defines it as:

“a scheduled meeting with a respected professional colleague to conduct a self-reflective review of practice, discuss professional issues and receive feedback on all elements of practice”. (Sounds more friendly and engaging but maybe only for very professional peeps?)

These definitions and their different approaches to the term would certainly lead a reader to a different conclusion about what supervision is. In fact, many definitions out there either lead you to think the concept of supervision is 100% occupation specific (only these ‘professional professions’ need it) or that it would be another person bossing you around and pointing out your flaws.

This lack of clarity for me is disappointing as supervision, certainly the way I understand and practice it, could be fundamentally useful to many workers- from a range of occupations.

What do I mean by supervision?

In simple terms supervision is a space where you have an opportunity to reflect on your work with someone whose skills and experiences you value.  Supervision is a chance to regularly test your ideas, grow your understanding and knowledge, explore actions taken (or not taken), and to share the emotional load of the job.

As human beings are not robots, reflecting on our work also can mean reflecting on the boundaries between work and personal life. There can be inherent tensions between the demands of work and the demands of community, iwi and whānau. These can be ethical tensions or simply being caught between the demands of time and energy that both require. These can have cultural and/or gendered components that it can be important to be able to work through.

Supervision provides a space to hone our critical thinking skills, to process our experiences and continue to learn and grow in a safe environment. Safe does not mean that you will not have your ideas questioned or your actions challenged, but that when this occurs its aim is to aid growth and insight, not to judge. For these reasons a supervisor should not be undertaking your performance review or deciding on your pay. In order to grow people require the light and sunshine of freely expressing doubts, vulnerabilities and aspects of the work they struggle with. It is unlikely many people would feel confident to do this with someone who has influence over their earnings or their career opportunities.

In my life so far, I have been public servant, a social worker, a union organiser, an NGO manager and self-employed. Only one of these roles required me to have supervision, but I can tell you unequivocally that in each of these roles I needed it. Where I was able to arrange it in my non-social work roles it absolutely made me more courageous, more willing to learn and adapt and most importantly a happier and more grounded human being.

Keen to have supervision? Get in touch with me today at amy.ross@workethics.nz for a free half hour chat on how I can help.