Who Is the Supervisor People Remember?
Beyond models, techniques and having the right answer
Somewhere in most of our professional histories there is a person we remember,
perhaps a teacher, mentor, colleague or supervisor who influenced us in ways that
are surprisingly difficult to describe. Years may have passed since we sat with them,
and although we may struggle to remember the models they taught, the particular
cases we discussed or even much of the advice they gave, something about the
experience of being with them has remained.
This is worth considering when we become supervisors ourselves, because
supervision quite rightly places considerable emphasis on knowledge, competence,
ethics, accountability and clinical skill. We learn models and frameworks, undertake
further training, become familiar with professional standards and gradually
accumulate the experience that allows us to recognise patterns, ask better questions
and notice things that might once have escaped our attention. All of this matters, yet
when we think about the supervisors who most influenced our own development, it is
often something less easily measured that comes to mind.
Perhaps there was someone who was genuinely curious about how we thought,
rather than simply waiting for an opportunity to tell us what they knew. They listened
long enough to understand the question beneath the question and somehow made it
possible to bring uncertainty into the room without feeling that uncertainty was
evidence of incompetence. They might have challenged us when challenge was
needed, but did so in a way that invited us to look more closely rather than retreat
into defensiveness. At other times they may have recognised a developing
competence that we had not yet learned to recognise in ourselves.
These moments can appear deceptively small. A supervisor pauses rather than
immediately supplying an answer, asks one more question when it would have been
easier to move on, notices what has not been said, or gently returns to something
the supervisee would rather leave unexplored. Sometimes the most useful
contribution may be the willingness to say, “I’m not sure either. Let’s think about it.”
At other times it may be a clear challenge, some well-placed encouragement or even
humour that allows a difficult conversation to remain human without diminishing its
seriousness.
None of this suggests that the supervisory relationship should simply feel
comfortable. A supervisor has responsibilities that extend beyond being supportive,
and there will inevitably be occasions when boundaries need to be clarified,
assumptions questioned, competence discussed or difficult feedback given. Perhaps
what people remember is not that they were never uncomfortable, but that
discomfort could be experienced without humiliation; that they could be challenged
without being diminished and encouraged without being falsely reassured.
Over time, something begins to change. The supervisee who once arrived hoping to
be given the right answer begins to arrive with better questions. Uncertainty can be
explored rather than concealed, mistakes examined rather than defended, and
different possibilities considered without the expectation that the supervisor will
decide which one is correct. The supervisor remains important, but gradually the
supervisee becomes less dependent upon the supervisor’s judgement because their
own capacity to reflect, question and make thoughtful professional decisions is
becoming stronger.
Perhaps this is one of the quieter measures of good supervision. We are not trying to
create practitioners who think as we think, work as we work or eventually become
smaller versions of ourselves. We are helping another practitioner discover how they
think well, how they recognise the limits of their knowledge, how they respond when
something does not feel quite right, how they remain curious when certainty would
be more comfortable, and how they carry responsibility without becoming
overwhelmed by it.
Years later, some of those practitioners will become supervisors themselves, and this
is where the influence of supervision becomes particularly interesting. A question
once asked of them may find its way into another supervision room. A way of
listening may be passed forward without anyone quite remembering where it began.
The courage to challenge, the patience to wait, a particular kindness or even a piece
of humour may quietly become part of how another generation of practitioners learns
to supervise.
We rarely know how far our influence travels.
Perhaps, then, the question is not simply whether we are good supervisors. It may
be more useful occasionally to wonder what it is like to be supervised by us. When
the people we supervise look back many years from now, what will remain?
They may have forgotten the model we were so careful to teach. They may no longer
remember the advice we thought was particularly wise, and they almost certainly will
not remember every case we discussed.
But perhaps they will remember that supervision was somewhere they learned to
think, to question, to tolerate uncertainty and to trust their own developing
professional judgement. Perhaps they will remember being challenged without being
diminished, encouraged without being rescued, and taken seriously as the
practitioner they were becoming.
And perhaps, without either of us ever knowing it, something of that will travel with
them into the next room.