Coaching super-vision is an opportunity to reflect on your coaching practice, to gain insights and awareness around who you are being as a coach, your beliefs, your insecurities, your triggers or other concerns. This is a service meant to support and encourage you – not to judge or evaluate you. As a coach, you give so much from your heart and soul in service of your clients growth and well being. Think of coaching super-vision as a place to replenish and refuel your tank so that you can continue to bring your best to your clients and be energized by the work you love.
The word “supervision” conjures all sorts of potentially negative images from other disciplines. That’s why in the coaching world, we often hyphenate the word and it becomes coaching Super-Vision which positions the service to be more in line with what we do as coaches – guide others to a clear and compelling vision for moving forward, gaining confidence, and showing up in the world as the best version of yourself. A coach/supervisor relationship is a peer relationship where I openly share from my own experience and we collaborate to help you gain the insights you are looking for.
Isn’t this just about coaching coaches? There is of course some overlap between super-vision and coaching in that I draw on many of the same skills I use as an MCC coach. What’s different about coaching super-vision is that the focus of our work revolves around what is happening in your coaching practice with individual clients. For example, you might bring a particular client engagement to discuss in a super-vision session, a theme you are noticing across multiple clients, or an ethical conundrum you are facing. Topics such as life balance or building your business or improving a love relationship are for a traditional coaching relationship rather than super-vision.
Isn’t this just another way of saying “mentor coaching”. Yes and no. Of course some mentoring occurs in the course of a super-vision relationship as we talk about your client situations and different approaches you might explore. Mentor coaching for your ICF certification process, is more structured around skills development and involves providing recordings of your client calls for evaluation. In super-vision, recordings are not involved. Instead we reflect on your experiences with a client or general coaching themes.
Does the ICF require coach super-vision? Not at this time, however, up to 10 hours of coaching supervision may be applied to your continuing professional development (CPD) hours.
Currently, the ICF website states: “ICF Credential holders may submit up to 10 hours of Coaching Supervision as Core Competency credits toward their credential renewal. “
You can go here for the latest information on the ICF position on coaching super-vision.
Coaching super-vision is well established in Europe and is required for coaches through the EMCC – the European Mentoring and Coaching Council. Though super-vision is not currently required by the ICF, the trend is growing where some client organizations are beginning to require coaches in their networks to be engaging in coach super-vision.
To explore whether coaching super-vision is for you and whether I’m a good fit for you, please contact me to set up a 20-30 minute Zoom call. I’d be delighted to chat with you!
