Reflective Supervision

Protected Space. Reflective Supervision provides a safe and confidential space that belongs entirely to you. It’s a space to step back from the everyday, offload stresses, reflect and gather fresh perspectives – it can be so hard to do this amidst the pressures of everyday working life!

Focused on your well-being. What you bring to supervision is entirely up to you. Many people focus on personal aspects to their lives, recognising that this inevitably has an impact on them at work, and many chose to focus on work pressures that can leak into their personal lives. This is your call; everything is welcome, and our focus will always be on your wellbeing. Ultimately if you are emotionally healthy, all aspects of your life will function well. 

Promotes reflective practice. Reflective Practice is an essential skill for anyone who’s results are dependent on communicating and influencing others. It’s what helps us to differentiate between our own ‘stuff’ and the ‘stuff’ other people carry into interactions with us. Reflective Practice helps us to negotiate our way around the most complex of relationships and to remain objective in the most difficult of situations. Therefore, supervision is centred around increasing your self-awareness, awareness of others, understanding your strengths, celebrating your vulnerabilities (yes, this is brave and should be celebrated) and increasing your resilience in all aspects of life.

What Reflective Supervision is Not

Job coaching. You are the expert of you and of your role so supervision is not job coaching, we won’t be telling you how to do your job better. What supervision will do is help you evaluate how you are managing in your role, how it is impacting on you and you on it.  

Counselling. Supervision is not counselling but it can and should be to some degree therapeutic for you – you should feel better as a result of regular sessions. 

Holding you to account. Whilst accountability for your well-being does form a small part of clinical supervision, this is very different to holding you account for how well you are doing your job. Supervision is not a space where you are expected to list off all the things you ‘did well’, it’s a space to bring your challenges and draw from successes where this will help with current circumstances.  

When is Reflective Supervision appropriate?  

Regularly. Reflective supervision is most effective when sessions are frequent enough to become part of everyday thinking. We always recommend monthly however, in some education settings half-termly is also appropriate.  

Especially when stress is present. supervision can be particularly valuable when you feel under pressure and like you have no time to spare. It is a known fact then if we take a deep breath in the face of crisis BEFORE we react, our response is a more measured one. In the same way, supervision can act as that deep breath. When we are under pressure, it is tempting to put in all the hours we have into work, work, work, but are those hours as productive as when we are clear headed? Whilst a little stress can be motivating, a lot of stress can actually impede productivity and so the best thing we can do is take a step back – a deep breath – and regroup.