Learning from the supervisee about good supervision
As a supervisor, as well as relying on general supervision skills and experience, we have to learn how to adapt to each individual supervisee (or group) that we work with. Our best teacher is the unique supervisee (or group) who is with us in the room.
Sometimes it can be helpful to move away from casework and have a conversation around questions like the following:
- What's going well in your practice generally?
- What do you enjoy about the work?
- What's not so easy?
- How do you cope with that?
- What tells you that you can keep on growing and learning in this profession?
- What do you look for in supervision?
- How does supervision contribute to your practice?
- How do you make supervision work for you?
- How do you help your supervisor (me) to supervise you well?
- When you walk away from a supervision session, what makes you feel that we've both done a good job?
- What could we do between us that would make supervision even more useful to you and your clients?