For the past decades and in a growing number of “relationship” professions, individual and group mentoring and supervision have been central and very practical processes for ensuring continuing education, competency development and quality control. First in psychotherapy, then in other personal development professions and now in professional executive coaching, supervision has gradually become a central and integral part of the development and transformational process for professionals.
Coaching supervision offers a performing learning and mentoring environment in which life coaches, executive coaches and team coaches can question the quality level of their professional skill set, experience continuous training, explore ethical positioning, etc. To underline their professionalism and sometimes to reassure their clients, some executive and team coaches now publicize their mentoring or coaching supervision commitment by mentioning it in their marketing documents.
A growing number of professional associations for coaches, coaching schools, and executive or team coaching clients ask and sometimes demand that their members, graduate students, and coaching purveyors be actively engaged in a coach supervision or mentoring process. Some may even ask about the rhythm of that coach supervision and for the name of the supervisor.
Self-defeating effects of such a systematic demand for supervision can be perceived when we find that some participants in an executive or team coaching supervision or mentoring process are merely present to obtain what appears to be an almost automatic validation of their quality level and personal concern for continuing education. Consequently, the generalized obligation to prove that one is following a coach supervision process may ultimately replace a real and active personal motivation to work on one’s professional development and quality. Unfortunately, in some executive, team and organizational coaching environments, the danger of that pernicious shift of supervision objectives is already perceptible.
The second negative effect on the executive and team coach-training market concerns the possibility of a sudden multiplication of questionable individual and group coach supervision or mentoring products and services. Indeed, one can sometimes wonder at the real value of a number of offers on what appears to be a fast growing supervision niche market. We are sometimes also facing budding executive and team coaches who strategically offer a supervision or mentoring service to attempst to position themselves as advanced or masterful coaches on the executive coaching market.
In the form of F.A.Q.(Frequently Asked Questions), the text below offers a few insights on a number of different and complementary coach supervision processes. It attempts to answer questions that could or should be asked by existing or potential supervision clients, questions asked by executive and team coach supervisors and mentors or questions asked by those considering the possibility of providing a coach supervision or mentoring « service ». The object of this article is not necessarily to give solutions or advice but to share a fifteen year supervision experience first in the field of training, then of consulting and now of life, executive, team and organizational coaching.
What is supervision ?
Individual or collective executive and team coach supervision is a self-processing form of continuous education and quality control centered on a coach’s active client oriented competencies. Consequently, an obvious necessary preliminary condition for coach supervision or mentoring is that the concerned executive or team coach already be trained on the use of coaching tools and already be actively practicing coaching within ongoing relationships with existing individual, executive or team clients. These considerations explain why coach supervision or mentoring is generally considered as a form of « continuing education » rather than as an initial coach training process.
Supervision and mentoring can however also be used before a coach has clients in order to develop the future coach's skills and build their own internal self-supervision competency. This is particularly the case in a group coach supervision setting in which there can be a range of experiences, all of which contribute to individual learning.
An executive or team coach may choose to work with a supervisor or mentor that is well known for specific expertise in a particular theoretical or practical approach, but a coaching supervision process is not centered on the acquisition of particular concepts or tools. In an executive or team coach supervision process, the supervision concerns the general skills and attitudes of coaching as a profession without necessarily taking into account any specific theory or tool on which that profession can rest. Executive and team coach supervision is therefore essentially multidisciplinary in terms of conceptual frames of references, theories and tools.
Likewise, most coach supervision or coach mentoring processes are not necessarily tied to any one specific coaching market. A specific executive or team coach can be supervised by any competent coach supervisor no matter that coach's specialization either in life coaching, professional and executive coaching, family coaching, etc. There may be one exception to this affirmation as far as team coaching and organizational coaching is concerned, as we shall explain farther below.
Coach supervision or coach mentoring is not particularly centered on the acquisition of a supervisor’s practical competencies as one would expect in a workshop or in didactic and experiential training situations. It would be more exact to say that whatever their specialties, coach supervisor are merely coaches for coaches. A coach supervisor or mentor adopts a stance that does not provide specific knowledge solutions but one that stimulates professional development by accompanying executive coaches in their own apprenticeship process. Again, a coaching supervisor’s formal knowledge should not interfere in the supervision process.
Coach supervision or mentoring is therefore very precisely centered on the development of how executive and team coaches daily implement their practical skills and competencies. Concretely, the "supervisee" or suervision client offers a succession of real client cases and is accompanied by the supervisor to develop more depth, question strategies, remodel personal behaviors, control ethical position, reconsider objectives, revisit relationships as a professional executive coach, etc. In short, coaching supervision is the art of accompanying professional coaches within a defined ethical and professional framework.
When should one consider undertaking supervision ?
Some insist that all active executive and team coaches should be participating in a coach supervision process as soon as they start practicing with a first client, sometimes even before, and that they should continue as long as they are in that line of work. If for executive and team coaches, supervision is a form of continuous education and applied research on professional behaviors, strategies and options for evolution, why indeed do without ? Throughout 40 years of potential career coaching individuals and teams, coach supervision can offer marvelous and continuous personal and professional developmental perspectives!
If, however, coaching supervision corresponds to an obligatory process to ensure a reasonable quality level for executive and team clients, then a limited minimum amount of prescribed supervision time should do the trick. One can then imagine institutionalizing a « quality control » process of a regular and frequent number of two hour individual or full day collective supervision sessions. Ten sessions over a year’s time, for example, and repeated every four years could be and example of a minimum institutional standard.
Whatever the case, coaching supervision can today concern budding executive and team coaches to help them « muscle » and master executive and team coaches to provoke them away from their certainties, stimulate their creativity, develop their professionalism and deepen their existential or spiritual questioning. It may become obvious to most that in the early days of a coaching career, coach supervision concerns mostly work on day to day executive and team client issues, when after a few years on the road (say ten or more), it becomes an arena for the transformation of one’s general professional approach if not for privileging the research and development of the field of coaching itself.
For very advanced coaches, supervision could also also be considered on a practical "as needed" basis when one feel that one are stuck, not knowing what to do or are finding that coacing is too easy and that nothing is a challenge.
Some professionals originating from fields that are relatively close to executive coaching (training, consulting, career advisors, recruiters, etc.) may also use a coach supervision process (especially collective, as explained further below) to operate a professional transformation and progressively reposition themselves as executive and team coaches with their historically acquired clients. In that case, coaching supervision can also serve to gradually accompany one’s professional transition from a similar professional context or environment towards the field of coaching.
How should one choose a coach supervisor ?
It is sometimes useful to recognize that one is not necessarily simultaneously a good executive coach, a good team coach, a good coach supervisor and a good coach trainer. We can indeed often observes that :
- One can be an excellent and inspiring life coach or executive coach trainer, very naturally capable of teaching coaching tools, without necessarily wanting to be an executive or life coach themselves.
Coaches could prefer the choice of coaching supervisors who are different from their initial trainer into the executive coaching profession. Reality seems to confirm that numerous coach trainers have a limited real coaching practice with “normal” non-coach clients. Their excellent knowledge of executive or team coaching techniques and skills and their proficiency in the art of teaching can sometimes exist in almost complete ignorance of another reality resting on years of private, corporate, executive or team coaching practice. Those trainers or teachers nonetheless know how to prepare good executive and team coaches for a very successful career or for one that consists in training other future coaches in turn. There is a real need and market for this teaching competency.
- One can also be both an excellent executive or team coach and a reasonably mediocre or uninspiring teacher, trainer or supervisor.
A sometimes positive career model would have executive or team coaches develop their practice and skill set over a few decades to then become trainers or coach supervisors. They could then share their rich experience with beginning or confirmed executive coaches to have them in turn reach higher levels of professionalism. This switch of focus is sometimes considered the best way to end one’s coaching carrer with a bang.
If, however, this career model is considered as the automatic social promotion one deserves close to retirement or to obtain peer recognition (another feather in one’s hat), it can obviously become quite counter-productive.
- A good coach supervisor’s competency rests much more on long practical field experience coaching in various personal and professional contexts rather than on extraordinary teaching skills.
Luckily of course, some people out there manifest outstanding competencies in more than one of the above fields. Some rare people know how to be master executive and team coaches, know how to analyze the magic of what they do, and know how to simply and clearly explain or share what they do with others. Good supervisors not only have experience but also have an excellent conscience or awareness of that experience and can transmit it. Beyond the first five basic senses, they know how to use, model and teach their capacity to envision, discern, transmit, make happen, and intuit. They know how to formulate and formalize or give form to their art
In that light, coaches could be well advised to get informed as to the relative percentages of their potential coach supervisor’s professional activity in the executive and team coaching field, and outside of it.
- How much relative time does the coaching supervisor spend as a trainer, teacher or speaker on the subject of coaching?
- How much relative time does the coaching supervisor spend mentoring or supervising other coaches ?
- Finally how much relative time does the supervisor spend professionally coaching real clients (who are other than active or potential coaches) as an executive coach, life coach, family coach, organizational coach, team coach, etc. ?
- How much time does the coach supervisior offer to develop the coaching profession as a researcher, an author, a volunteer in a professional organization or on the public arena?
To conclude on these reflections, it is obviously useful to choose a coaching supervisor that has years of reality testing and field experience. Diagnostic competencies, finesse of observation, sharp questioning, fluid and precise expression, intuition, etc. in one’s executive coaching and supervisory skills don’t rest on knowledge of theory and tools, but on years of experience with life coaching, executive and team coaching clients.
In the same fashion, it is useful to evaluate the diversity of each potential supervisor's experience. Have they practiced in very different organizational and cultural contexts or are they specialized in fewer but more specific environments? Do they have in depth experience in on only one or two frames of reference or can they vouch for years of experience with really diversified types of executive and team clients ? Whether a coach wants to diversify or specialize, the coaching supervisor should be appropriately chosen to provoke and help one "waltz" right out of his or her comfort zone.
Whatever the case, remember that if you ask around and carry out your own field study of the executive and team coach supervision or mentoring market, you will confirm that every single coach firmly believes that their supervisor is the best that can be found. This validation is strategically very useful in that it is an immediate boomerang validation of the quality of the coaches that have made that choice of coach supervisor. Consequently, when looking for a coaching supervision provider, it is also advised to ask numerous questions on the supervision process or form to get a clear idea of what a given coach supervisor has to offer.
What are the different forms or processes for individual or group coach supervisions ?
The answer to that question is more complex than it may first seem. There are probably as many variations in coaching supervision or mentoring processes as there are supervisors. By differentiating executive and team coach supervision contexts (their form) rather than their contents, it is nonetheless possible to propose a number of non-exclusive categories. These different categories can help coaches make a discriminating process choice on the type of coaching supervision that either best fits their particular type of coaching practice or corresponds to the one they wish to develop.
Each different type of coach supervision or mentoring context or form can answer different coach needs and provide different and very complementary learning environments. Consequently, the first criteria for the choice of the « best » coaching supervision formula for a specific executive or team coach concerns the coherence between the supervision context either with that coach’s daily practice or with the environment in which the coach wants to develop their practice in the very near future. To explain further, consider the following list presenting the most habitual forms or contexts for coach supervision.
Individual Coach Supervision: When a coach’s practice is mostly individual to the point of being intimate such as in life coaching, executive coaching or C.E.O. coaching, or if the type of coaching a coach wants to develop will mostly take place within one-on-one privileged and confidential relationships, the most appropriate supervision context or form may be within the same one-on-one confidential relationship with a supervisor. The concerned executive coach will indeed learn as much if not more on possible client-development strategies in a one-on-one relationship within such a supervision or mentoring context than from the content that may be covered during the supervision sessions. Here as in the other coaching forms presented below, remember that very often "the medium is the message".
Individual Coach Supervision, in a group setting : If a coach’s daily practice is mostly individual coaching of managers, of executives, of experts or of other clients within a more collective and transparent professional or personal context with indirect coaching prescriptions necessitating triangular coaching contracts, then a more collective or group supervision environment could be more appropriate. Those executive coaches would benefit from a more or less structured group or collective supervision context.
Even if the collective coach supervision process is simply and directly implemented by the supervisor and even if it only concerns each executive coach’s personal issues in turn, the group’s presence and observation adds an important social dimension to each individual supervision. At minimum in this type of coach supervision context, each executive coach has to take into account a third party’s presence and influence as a witness to the supervision or mentoring work.
Telephone Coach Supervision : More specifically appropriate for executive coaches who commonly practice non-local coaching. To be efficient, this form of coaching supervision or mentoring process concerns mostly one-on-one relationships, at most small groups of three or four coaches. Obviously, this type of supervision is most adapted for coaches who wish to develop their skills and competencies when coaching individual or executive clients by phone.
Group Coach Supervision for Individual and Team Coaching: Not only is it more congruent and efficient to be supervised on a team coaching practice within a group setting, but that supervision process will be even more performing if the group’s process itself is structured in a way that permits a maximum amount of transversal collaboration between all the participating supervised coaches.
The form of this type of collective coaching supervision often requires a higher level of commitment to acknowledge and participate in the group's dynamics on the part of participating executive coaches. Generally, the coach supervision form also presents a more complex work structure tailored to give each participating coach numerous insights on the collective dimensions of executive team coaching including executive team development on the short, medium and long term.
Systemic Coach Supervision for Team Coaching: Systemic coaching supervision contexts require the creation of a formal group, whose structure is tailored to reproduce that of a real-life operational or executive team and its development in time. Within such supervision “learning teams”, each of the participating executive coaches volunteer in turn to manage the system’s vital operational functions in such a way as to make it a complex « learning environment » that models itself on a real, performing, corporate, executive team structure and culture.
The relative structural complexity of systemic coaching supervision groups and the numerous interactions between the different levels of participation and supervision or mentoring facilitate the collective learning and development process of all participating executive and team coaches. These "systemic" coaching supervision groups are an excellent training ground for preparing coaches for the complexity inherent to executive team and organizational coaching.
To consult an example of a ''systemic coaching'' offer on this website.
Does supervision take place « live » or in a delayed time frame?
Both.
Delayed Supervision : In this context, the coach supervisor or mentor generally offers insights following a participating executive coach's description of specific and real past « client case studies» and helps the supervised coach elaborate alternate or more performing strategies for future implementation with the concerned clients. This form of supervision can take place both one on one and in a group environment. In the latter setting, the coach supervisor usually directly comments and proposes options on each « client case study » with the concerned executive coach. Other attending coaches also profit from the exposed situations and learn from each others’ coaching and supervision issues.
This type of “delayed” coaching supervision process based on the description of « client case studies » is appropriate for a number of individual executive coaches in as much as most of their professional practice also takes place in a similarly delayed coaching context. During their real coaching sessions, clients also typically offer these executive coaches descriptions of their problems or expose them through analogical or metaphorical learning tools withiin a protected and confidential environment.
The executive coach never actually observes their client in a real or “live” professional or personal context in the midst of their real corporate or private environment. Consequently, this form of « delayed » coach supervision process is congruent with most coaches’ daily professional coaching practice.
Just in Time or Live Coaching Supervision : Some coach supervisions concern executive and team coaching situations that are directly observed by the supervisor. Examples :
- One on one, the coach supervisor first takes a client role and volunteers a real personal or professional issue to be coached by the executive coach asking for supervision. Once that real coaching session is over, the supervisor abandons the client role to supervise the coach on the effectiveness of the sequence that just took place between them. This approach is quite effective in one-on-one telephone supervision.
- The coaching supervisor can also be physically present with a coach and listen to the latter work on the phone with a non-local executive client, and then propose growth, development and supervision after the client session is concluded and the executive client is off line.
- In a local group (or during small-group phone supervision) one of the other participating executive coaches offers a real-life personal or professional problem or issue and is coached by another participating coach. The coaching supervision will then concern the observed or « live » coaching that actually took place rather than the content of the "client" issue.
Live or "just in time" coach supervision is much more congruent with coaches that have a "live" executive or team coaching practice that consists in accompanying clients in real life situations such as in executive team coaching during real operational team meetings, or when coaching individual clients on the field (shadow coaching) during sales or negotiations, in public speaking, during yearly evaluations, etc.
What about the different levels of experience between participants in a group coaching supervision context ?
No two executive coaches have an identical background or identical experience. Coach supervision in a group setting consequently rests on a mix of origins, personal backgrounds, educations, professional tracks, knowledge of theory, frames of reference, etc. This variety or diversity is both a gift and can considered an issue.
In collective coach supervision contexts, for example, budding executive and team coaches can hide in retreat so as to avoid demonstrating their lack of experience, while other more experienced coaches can limit their participation to delivering regular and brilliant demonstrations to avoid taking risks and learning something new. To avoid commiting, there is always a crack that offers a way out (that’s also how the Light gets in).
Whatever a coach's level of experience, the best strategy to profit from a coaching supervision context is to accept full responsibility for being present, and then take risks. Only then can each executive and team coach develop, grow and reach their learning objective, using the diversity offered by the collective setting. When each coach follows that strategy, the collective informal or systemic supervision context rapidly becomes a very powerful learning experience.
Can coach supervision be undertaken « as needed » or should it be programmed on a much more regular rhythm?
Once again, it all depends on the expected results. For a beginning executive and team coach and even for a confirmed practicing coach, it is usually advised to participate in a regularly programmed coaching supervision process, keeping a same mentor or coach supervisor for a reasonable length of time. Experience seems to prove that the existence of a regular coaching supervision context provokes a coach’s growth with much more apparent and continuous progression. Much as with « real executive and team clients », if the rhythm is not set in a relatively formal way and with a contract, most coaches seem to « forget » or postpone.
After years of coaching, a masterful executive or team coach will need coach supervision on relatively different themes that are related to deeper professional development, existential, spiritual and life issues or that concern research and development of the coaching field itself. Consequently the rhythm of coach supervision may become less regular, but the sessions will become longer and may be more prepared by more original and creative experiments on the field.
To follow a common real coaching rhythm, coaching supervision sessions are often monthly, for an hour or two on an individual basis and for up to a full day in group coach supervision contexts. More formal group or systemic supervisions take place once a month for a full day to reproduce the most usual executive team meeting rhythm of client organizations.
Whatever the chosen rhythm, regular or as needed depending on the defined context and contract, a given executive and team coach’s capacity to respect his or her commitment is often a very precise indicator of general capacity to commit professionally if not personally. By extension, that level of commitment will also often reflect that same coach’s executive client capacity to commit to a continuous coaching process.
What is the most useful or performing form of coaching supervision for a coach ?
Depending on each coach’s motivations and preferred learning context, the best coaching supervision process is the one whose form, rhythm and supervision are most congruent with that coach’s daily professional practice, with the skills or competencies that coach wishes to develop, or again which is most likely to jolt a coach out of a personal comfort zone. And whatever the choice be, it is often useful to question it again a few miles down the road, to experiment with yet again an other option
