Full Spectrum Supervision

"Who you are, is how you supervise"

Edna Murdoch, Jackie Arnold

• Editorial: Panoma Press
• Año: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781909623354
• Categoría: Business
• Categoría: Formazione e tutoraggio

This book is written by qualified, experienced professional supervisors; their wisdom and skill is evident in every chapter. Full Spectrum Supervision takes the reader into the heart of reflective practice and provides fascinating insights into the complexities of this transformative work. The book offers the reader a unique view of what actually happens in supervision and shares many new and practical exercises; these can be used by a wide range of professionals and adapted to make your practice stronger. The case studies illuminate key skills that have emerged from mature practice. Through exploring the Full Spectrum Model in these chapters, the reader will take away new ways of relating to and developing people. If you work with people and want to build your professional skills and your capacity to engage staff or clients, then this is the book for you. The book is generous, offering many new perspectives on supervision, new interventions, new maps and models which demonstrate the authors' original thinking and their commitment to best practice. "Who you are, is how you supervise".

I	Coaching supervision - an ethical angle

- Alison Hodge

Abstract

IN THIS chapter we establish the ethical context in which we work as supervisors to support coaches to provide the best possible service to their clients – both individually and corporately. As coaching establishes itself as a “profession” (spence, 2007: 261; Bennett, 2006; Lane cited in Bachkirova, 2011), many of us continue to explore the role and practice of supervision in supporting coaches to meet the demands of this highly complex practice. While there are numerous examples of Ethical Codes available in the field of coaching, ethical dilemmas may still arise for the coach. Often these are the issues that the coach brings to us in supervision, and our mutual task of how to address these is not always straightforward. When the coach creates a coaching contract between him or herself, the client and the sponsoring organization we find the bedrock that may pre-empt many of the ethical issues that reportedly occur. Here we explore the professional, practical and psychological dimensions of the coaching contract and how these support everyone involved.

Introduction

As coaching continues to blossom in the UK, there is a groundswell of interest in how we become more professional. Conversations about “professionalism” and “ethical practice” are gathering momentum (Lane, Stelter and Rostron, 2010). We are seeing significant efforts dedicated to the process of coach accreditation and, as part of this, coaching associations are seeking to validate the coach’s awareness and understanding of a professional Ethical Code of Conduct and to seek evidence of this in his or her practice (Lane, 2011).

I have been working as a coaching supervisor for the past 12 years. My coach-clients practice in a wide range of contexts including the corporate and public sectors as well as in education. Through my involvement in facilitating ethical awareness workshops for both external and internal coaches throughout the UK and Europe, I am constantly reminded that many coaches face diverse incidents on a daily basis during coaching assignments, which may or may not be described as “ethical dilemmas” and to which there is not always an obvious or easy answer or solution.

In this chapter, we look at the types of incidents that arise during coaching assignments across a wide range of coaching contexts, why these may occur, the role of the different stakeholders in contracting to create robust, ethical coaching alliances and the role of supervision in supporting coaches in managing themselves and these issues both professionally and ethically. Here too we notice how this ethical dimension flows through all of the other elements of the Full Spectrum Model.

Before we enter this discussion, and given the diverse participants who may be involved in the coaching and therefore supervision relationships, I have created a glossary to describe frequently used terms as well as the different and potential stakeholders.

Glossary

‘Ethics’ – “a system of moral principles that affect the way in which people make decisions and lead their lives” (Townsend cited in Passmore, 2011).

‘Ethical practice’ – “The coach/mentor will acknowledge the dignity of all humanity. They will conduct themselves in a way which respects diversity and promotes equal opportunities. It is the primary responsibility of the coach/mentor to provide the best possible service to the client and to act in such a way as to cause no harm to any client or sponsor. The coach/mentor is committed to functioning from a position of dignity, autonomy and personal responsibility” (EMCC UK, 2010).

‘The client’ – the participant/receiver of coaching in the coaching assignment.

‘Line manager’ – the person to whom the client reports in an organizational context.

‘Sponsor’ – the budget holder and/or champion of the coaching initiative, particularly in an organizational context.

‘The coach’ (supervisee) – ‘External coach’ – an independent professional practitioner who provides the actual coaching service. He or she may operate through his or her own business or he or she may be retained as an associate of a larger coaching consultancy.

‘Internal coach’ – an employee in the client organization who provides coaching services to other employees on either a full-or part-time basis.

‘Consultancy principal’ – head of the coaching consultancy providing coaches to the client organization.

‘Multipartite agreements’ – where all parties in the coaching assignment are both implicitly and explicitly involved, i.e. client, line manager, sponsor and coach.

‘Stakeholder’ – any person connected with the client who will benefit from the outcomes.

‘The coaching supervisor’ – a qualified practitioner who provides coaching supervision to either internal or external coaches.

‘Full Spectrum Model’ – offers a powerful range of professional development tools and insights that … combine traditional and contemporary methods and models applied in supervision. Uniquely, FSM has at its core, Coaching Presence and the awareness of the total Field in which coaching operates across mind, body and spirit (coachingsupervisionacademy.com/our-approach/full-spectrum-model).

‘Coaching supervision’– “A co-created learning relationship that supports the supervisee in his or her development, both personally and professionally, and seeks to support him or her in providing best practice to his or her client. Through the process of reflecting on his or her work in supervision, the supervisee can review and develop his or her practice and re-energize themselves. It offers a forum to attend to his or her emotional and professional wellbeing and growth. Through the relationship and dialog in this alliance, coaches can receive feedback, broaden their perspectives, generate new ideas and maintain standards of effective practice” (Alison Hodge, 2011).

Ethical issues that arise in supervision

In 2008, the EMCC conducted some research among its members that established that coaches would welcome a workshop that discussed and addressed ethical issues. These sessions have now been running regularly throughout the UK and the examples discussed here are representative of the incidents that arise for coaches and their clients and that as supervisors we are likely to explore with coaches during our supervision together.

Subsequent research in 2009 (St John-Brooks, 2010) aimed to identify the ethical dilemmas experienced by internal coaches in the UK and that are not confined solely to internal coaches.

In the figure below, we see some of the domains where issues arise during coaching assignments, for both external and internal coaches.

Domains where issues arise during coaching assignments

▼Line managers in the client organization want information or feedback about the client and/or information or feedback regarding the progress of the coaching.

▼Line managers want separate conversations with the coach about the purpose of the coaching and that are not shared with the client – the manager’s agenda.

▼There is conflict of roles and interests where the coach (be they internal or external) holds more than one role within the organization, e.g. coach, facilitator, leadership and development trainer, human resources business adviser and/or OD consultant.

▼The client wants to explore issues that involve someone else in the organization that the coach knows well, or works with, and/or is sponsored by.

▼The client describes inappropriate comments or behavior by a third party in the organization and the coach is not able to act on this under the terms of his or her confidentiality agreement, e.g. harassment or bullying.

▼The client has significant personal issues that have an effect on his or her performance that they share with the coach but do not want anyone else to know.

▼The coach is privy to knowledge about the client/client’s future (for example, regarding restructuring or redundancy) that he or she does not know and the coach can’t tell him or her.

▼The coach gathers information about a team or the organization that could be of benefit but is unable to share this information within the boundary of confidentiality.

▼The client attempts to use sessions to further his or her own agenda by influencing the coach, inviting collusion by the coach.

▼The client wants to discuss leaving the organization, which their line manager may not be aware of.

▼There are boundary issues between the coach and the client and/or between th...