What is Coaching Supervision?

Small groups of 6-12 Coaches attend the session under the guidance of an Accredited Facilitator of Supervision. Each individual is asked to share their thoughts on their current coaching experiences. These thoughts might include challenges, issues, concerns, wins, successes, etc. Whilst this can be a forum for sharing good news and for celebrating wins and achievements, the majority of Coaches prefer to use this opportunity to work through their coaching issues and challenges.

Supervision can be used to work through issues or to get deeper understanding of events and situations. The group collectively coach each individual, through use of great coaching questioning skills, in the presenting issues. The Coaches each select an item for discussion and the group work together to coach each other towards strategies and outcomes for these personal issues and challenges.

The group may elect to spend an equal amount of time on each of the presenting issues or equally may elect to focus on one or two presenting issues and explore these in detail. Learning and growth takes place on four levels:

1. The individual Coach benefits first-hand from the group coaching and will leave the session with ideas and insights into their presenting issues.

2. The individual Coach will benefit from the ideas and insights occurring for the other Coaches within the group session.

3. The individual Coach will be exposed to the various coaching styles, questioning techniques, etc, used by the other Coaches in the group.

4. The individual Coach may create rules, boundaries, guidelines for their own coaching practice as a result of what they learn through the experiences of others and this enables accelerated learning.

Without a doubt, this is one of the most powerful professional development tools for Coaches. Coaches who have experienced this event describe it as:

• “A peer-based process to build coaches’ self awareness and skill in a safe and non-judgmental environment”
• “An opportunity to reflect on my coaching practice and to develop my skills through learning and benefiting from the collective experience of my peers”
• “A forum for sharing and growing my skills in a meaningful way”
• “Another level of professionalism for my coaching”

Coaching Supervision is for any coach looking to maintain and develop their coaching skills whilst building quality coaching contacts. All Supervision events are conducted remotely – either online or over the phone, so you can attend from the comfort of your own home or office.

We have been running Supervision since 2009 and our team of trained facilitators are the best in the business. If you have never experienced Laser Coaching or Peer Supervision, come along and try it and discover why so many coaches who regularly attend are accelerating in their coaching careers.

Everyone welcome! Open to members and non- members. Of value to new coaches and highly experienced coaches alike.

What is interesting about the process is that we often gain as much from supporting other Coaches with their issues and challenges as we do from resolving or getting clarity on our own. In fact on occasion, when a Coach presents with an issue perceived by the group to have high urgency or complexity, the group will often agree to forego their own issues in favour of dedicating the time available to support the Coach with the pressing issue. Of course as Coaches we all have the skills to work through our own coaching issues and many of us have great networks which facilitate this. However, Supervision is not limited to just ‘solving issues’, more accurately, issues get resolved as a by-product.

Supervision is about being together with our peers, having quality conversations, asking great questions, willing each other to a new level of awareness, sharing, checking in with other coaches, broadening our understanding of coaching and adding more depth to our coaching tool kits.

Without a laser coaching or supervision forum how would you respond if you found yourself in one of the following situations?

• Your client bursts into tears whenever you attempt to discuss relationships.
• The person you are supposed to be coaching, refuses to be coached, and his manager says it is up to you to win him round..
• Your client has asked for help to step into her inner Goddess..
• Your client is unable to separate the content from the process. It always comes back to the story and he struggles to understand how you can help him without hearing all of the details. Every session overruns..
• You’ve just discovered that your client has been voice recording your coaching sessions..
• Your inner voice kicked in whilst coaching and momentarily you started to doubt your ability as a Coach..
• Your client keeps asking you for advice and doesn’t seem to be able to commit to any form of action unless you validate it as a good idea first..
• One of the other Coaches working on the same project as you is turning up late, being critical about the organisation and is creating some negative waves in your coaching environment..

These are just some examples of issues that might arise at Supervision. As you can see they are great cause for debate, good food for thought and we have some really interesting discussions about frameworks, agreements, ethics, morals, code of conduct, etc. Usually there is no right or wrong answer. Coaches leave with some new tools and ideas for dealing with issues that they have and with some ideas about how to improve their coaching practices.

Most importantly Coaches feel connected, supported and safe! You don’t need to have an issue in order to attend. Few Coaches book Supervision just to resolve a dilemma (but many are heard to say “I’m glad Supervision is next week, I want to thrash this issue out with the group”).

Most Coaches attend in order to expand their coaching skills and to generate ideas for their coaching sessions. In the same way that some of the best coaching sessions occur when your client says that they can’t think of anything to discuss, or that nothing is coming up, this is also true of Supervision. Come with an open mind, trust the process and know that every individual in the group will take away from the session whatever is relevant for them at this time.

If you appreciate the power of coaching; consider the impact of receiving coaching from a group of your peers who are focused on supporting you.

Places are limited (because of the facilitator to coach ratios) and we usually SELL OUT FAST. We’d love to see you there. You can choose to attend an ‘open’  session with Coaches from all levels of experience and from various fields of coaching, or you can choose specialist coaching supervision sessions, such as those just for accredited coaches and those specifically for workplace coaches.

Click here to visit the supervision calendar.