Reflective Practice in Supervision

By Daphne Hewson

The best teachers are not outside of us – they are inside. Collaborative reflection in supervision can transform our experiences into learning.

This practical book details three stances of reflective supervision:

1. noticing what's happening (the Mindful Stance),
2. analysing it and unpacking the assumptions that underpin it (the Consideration Stance) and
3. putting this learning into practice so that it becomes routine (the Consolidation Stance).

Daphne Hewson and Michael Carroll highlight the importance of Reflective Space as one of six supervisory spaces (the others are Directive, Evaluative, Passive, Restorative and Active Space). They provide guidelines on creating safe Reflective Space and how to use a range of mini-tools to invite practitioner's to learn from their professional experiences. The book is written for both supervisors and practitioners – it takes two to tango.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Dec 17, 2016
• ISBN: 9781925529944

Daphne Hewson

Daphne (Daf) Hewson is a Sydney psychologist who is committed to reflective supervision as the key to maintaining professional standards and sustaining health professionals in the demands of their coal-face work. She has a background as an academic (training clinical and counselling psychologists and Indigenous Health Workers) and a practitioner (specialising in working with adult survivors of childhood trauma). She teaches reflective supervision around Australia and internationally.

Book preview

Reflective Practice in Supervision

Daphne Hewson and Michael Carroll

Companion Volume to

The Reflective Supervision Toolkit

This is an IndieMosh book

brought to you by MoshPit Publishing

an imprint of Mosher’s Business Support Pty Ltd

PO BOX 147

Hazelbrook NSW 2779

http://www.indiemosh.com.au/

Copyright 2016 © Daphne Hewson and Michael Carroll

www.reflectivesupervision.com

All rights reserved

Cover design by Katya Shmaiger/kaligraphicprint.com.au

Cover photo: Eugene May/Shutterstock.com/7447678

‘Negative capability’ (E1)

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Contents

Licence Notes

Preface

Our Journeys

PART A SUPERVISION AND REFLECTIVE PRACTICE

A1 Principles for reflective practice in supervision

A2 What is supervision?

A3 What are supervisory spaces?

A4 What are the helium balloons?

A5 What is reflection?

A6 What is reflective practice?

A7 What is a practice framework?

PART B REFLECTIVE SPACE

B1 What is Reflective Space?

B2 What’s the ‘dark side’ of reflective supervision?

B3 How is Reflective Space created?

B4 What environment is needed for reflective supervision?

B5 What preparation does the practitioner need?

B6 What preparation does the supervisor need?

B7 What preparation does the organisation need?

B8 What preparation does the supervisory relationship need?

PART C CONCEPTS

C1 How do I reflect on my ‘other’ mind?

C2 How do frames set problems?

C3 What is critical reflection?

C4 Whose gaze is shaping my work?

C5 What do I focus on when I reflect?

PART D FEEDBACK

D1 How can I give better feedback?

D2 How can I avoid feedback mistakes?

D3 How do I give Reflective Feedback?

D4 Is formal feedback helpful in supervision?

D5 How do I respond to feedback?

PART E PUTTING THEORY INTO PRACTICE

E1 What do I do in the Mindful Stance?

E2 Mini-tools for noticing

E3 What do I do in the Consideration Stance?

E4 Mini-tools for Consideration Stance

E5 What do I do in the Consolidation Stance?

E6 Mini-tools for the Consolidation Stance

PART F FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

F1 How soon can trainees start reflective practice?

F2 Isn’t evidence-based practice preferable to subjective navel-gazing?

F3 How does reflective supervision work in a group?

F4 Why is reflection-in-action so hard to do?

F5 How do I deal with problems in reflective supervision?

F6 Why do I find it so hard to do reflective supervision?

Epilogue: Our Top Ten Tips

Notes

Acknowledgements

Photo Credits

References

Copyright Statement

Preface

Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels there really is another way, if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think of it. And then he feels that perhaps there isn’t.

A.A. Milne [1]

Like Edward Bear, we often want to ‘stop bumping for a moment’ and think of another way of doing whatever it is we are doing. Reflection might help here. Edward Bear could ask:  What’s working well in my particular manner of coming down the stairs? What isn’t working so well? What assumptions am I making? Might there be another way of coming down the stairs that’s more efficient and less painful?

Most of us are not unlike Edward Bear. We form beliefs and these beliefs become the eyes and ears through which we interpret our experiences. Ellen Langer calls these ‘mindsets’. Over time, mindsets shape habits – automatic behaviours that we perform without being aware of them. This is a state of ‘mindlessness’. On the other hand, reflection is a state of ‘mindfulness’. It is the key to unearthing and changing mindsets.

Change your mindsets and you can change your life. Sounds easy when written in a short sentence, but as we will see, reflection is a challenging task. Often, we don’t notice that there’s a habit to reflect upon, and when we do notice it, our mindsets protect themselves by blinding us to other possibilities. That’s where reflective supervision comes in. The supervisor can notice what we can’t see and help us to unpack the taken-for-granteds so that we don’t have to keep bumping down the stairs over and over again. This book is about how supervisors can do that and how practitioners can be active participants in the process.

Our intended audience Most supervision books are written for supervisors, but this ignores the wise saying that it takes two to tango. No matter how skilled the lead dancer might be, the dancing will be hopeless if the other dancer doesn’t know what to do. So we have two intended audiences – supervisors and practitioners. We are equally committed to each of you because we want you to tango well together. When we write ‘you’, you can be either the supervisor or the practitioner.

Our focus The book would be huge if we addressed all forms of reflective practice, so we’ve chosen to focus on:

• reflection between a supervisor and one practitioner (rather than reflecting alone [2] or in a group [3])

• in which most of the reflection is done by the practitioner (rather than a supervisor or team feeding their reflections to the practitioner [4])

• for qualified practitioners (consultative supervision; rather than for trainees– briefly discussed in F1)

• including both reflection-on action (reflecting after the event) and reflection-for-action (reflecting/planning for future practice) rather than Donald Schon's reflection-in-action (reflection as the work is being done – briefly discussed in F5).

Tips for reading the book

We’ve had feedback that when people first start to read about reflective supervision, it can seem to be very complex. Even daunting. But all you need to do is get the basic idea and then you can dip into the book when you’re ready to learn more about a particular topic. The basic idea is that there are three steps in learning reflective practice:

• learning how to notice what’s happening (Mindful Stance)

• learning how to analyse its meaning (Consideration Stance)

• learning how to put this into practice, so that it becomes routine (Consolidation Stance)

This basic process is manageable and doable. The details take time and effort, but if you like the basic process, then it’s just a matter of time and practise before you fine-tune your knowledge and skills.

We suggest you skim the whole book by reading the shaded bits (stories, excerpts from supervision sessions and summaries) and the Epilogue. Then you can return to the chapters that interest you most. Note that:

• Chapters are numbered within Parts; e.g. the 8th chapter is B1 (the first chapter in Part B)

• Instead of the usual academic referencing, the full names of authors are given in the text and details such as year and the page number of quotes are given in the reference list

• The companion volume, the Reflective Supervision Toolkit includes four templates, 12 tools and many mini-tools

• The Supervisory Spaces figure (A3) plus some forms and tools from the Reflective Supervision Toolkit are available to download from our web page: www.reflectivesupervision.com

• A video of a reflective supervision session is available on youtu.be/4k4hsog8Ops (capital O not zero) or youtube.com (enter Daf Hewson/Reflective Supervision Toolkit)

Our Journeys

We have both been training supervisors for many years, but it’s more recently that we’ve realised the key role that reflection plays in effective supervision. We heartily agree with Dan Siegel that reflection could be the fourth R of education.

To introduce ourselves, we start by sharing the journeys that brought each of us to an appreciation of reflection and to writing this book on reflective practice in supervision.

Michael’s story

Zero Reflection Period I was born into a non-reflective family and community where it was frowned upon to ask questions or be curious. In fact, it was dangerous in the volatile conflict of Northern Ireland in the fifties and sixties. Compliant and obedient, I chose a lifestyle and a career in keeping with that heritage.

Reflection A mammoth change came when I went to Chicago to study Counselling Psychology. Just 30, a new land, a new program and new companions forced me to ask questions about my taken-for-granted assumptions and some of the rational principles on which I had based my life. My first experience of what reflection looks like came when the tutor helped us to reflect on taped counselling sessions. After listening to about ten minutes of my tape, the tutor would pause it and ask, ‘So Michael what do you think is happening here?’ I would give my best account of what I understood to be the process. The other students were then asked their opinions. Only after that did the tutor say: ‘Let me see if I can summarise what you are thinking’. And then he would give his own reflections on the process. What he did was activate my curiosity, give me permission to question established wisdom, shine lights into dark places and show me how to be open to what was happening and to new possibilities.

Reflective Supervision Later, when I was supervising counsellors in an adolescent service in London, I tried to emulate my old tutor. But I found little room for including reflection in supervision, as more urgent issues seemed to press for the limited time.

In 1987, now teaching at university, I enrolled in a PhD program and immersed myself in understanding what supervision was all about. I went through a period of utter confusion as I got bogged down in the many theories, approaches and frameworks. One of my ways of making sense of this was to begin to train others in becoming supervisors. However, most of the work took place in organisations where reflection, curiosity and creativity were treated with suspicion and as a threat to authority. I discovered that although participants on my courses loved the idea of reflective supervision, it stalled as soon as they began to integrate it into organisations that didn’t value reflection. They usually gave up and conformed.

Slowly, I began to move to what I now see as the heart of supervision: the learning of supervisees. Central to that is reflection. I realised that the best teachers are not outside of us – they are inside; in the experiences we have in our practice. The best book you will read, I tell my supervisees, is the book of your own experience. Reflection on practice emerges as the main function of supervision. I started thinking and writing on reflection [5]. I traced its roots and read the literature. I tried it out. It opened doors into practice that we haven’t dared open before. Reflection doesn’t end up with answers; it creates possibilities.

What have I learned from these experiences? That supervision is first and foremost for supervisees. For too long, supervisors have taken centre stage and been conductors of the supervisory orchestra. I want to give supervision back to supervisees by helping them learn how to reflect. Secondly, I have learned that supervision is primarily a reflective conversation – not teaching or discussion or evaluation; it’s those too, but primarily it’s about reflection on practice. Ask me what I do as a supervisor and I will reply that I have become a facilitator of reflection and that I manufacture uncertainty. It was allowing myself to be uncertain that first introduced me to reflection.

The Book It was a joy to discover that Daf, far away on the other side of the world, was close to me in how we thought about reflection and its role in supervision. I was excited about co-authoring this book with her but didn’t realise that the journey would be one of even more challenge and even more reflection until we came to find our shared understanding of the principles and methods of reflection in effective supervision. It demanded a new form of reflection. A straight talking, direct Australian woman and a diplomatic, conflict-averse Irishman agreeing to write together on reflection was one thing. Making that work through reflective conversations was another. We wrote differently: Daf with a more academic style, me much wordier and informal. We struggled with feedback to each other. We were re-discovering the basics of good reflective dialogue. We stopped and reviewed, were unhappy with the writing style, and tried another. We ordered and reordered, brought more in and left more out. We got excited, frustrated, anxious, and enthusiastic, struggled, broke through, and wondered at times if this writing project was worth the effort. We agreed and disagreed, were flexible and sometimes dogmatic. So much of our journey mirrored supervisory relationships that are committed to reflection – they become archaeological digs where each new discovery leads to fresh exploration.

The journey towards reflective maturity is not unlike mountain climbing with its base camps, its victories and setbacks, and its commitment to keep going with your companions, knowing the end result is more about you and relationships than it is about mountains. It takes experiential wisdom to know when to stop and go back to base camp or when to dig in and ride out the storm. Reflection is never an end in itself – like mountains – just when you think you have reached the top, another peak appears. How frustrating and how exciting!

Daf’s (Daphne’s) story

Supervision When I started supervising in 1980, I got it all wrong. I didn’t attend to structure or process and I gave out lots of advice. Fortunately, my colleagues in the supervisory team started to teach me about the fascinating layers of complexity in supervision.

I returned to academia in 1985 and decided to specialise in supervision. The vast literature didn’t speak to me or provide sufficient practical guidance, so I set out to identify the principles. The starting point was the structure of supervision [6] and then the Supervision Triangle (see the Reflective Supervision Toolkit) as a template for sessions. Over time, I added questions such as, ‘What are you most pleased with?’ I noticed the power of simple reflective questions and started to recognise the importance of reflection in supervision.

Reflective supervision Once again, the vast literature was lacking in practical guidance. I found one promising approach, The Power of Peer Supervision: 7 Tools for Supervision Groups by Aly McNicoll and Wendy Baker. The tools are great for a reflecting team [4] of consultants to share their reflections on another’s work, but I was looking for a way to give the practitioner a more active role in reflecting on their own work. I liked the toolkit concept, though, and was keen to develop some reflective tools to assist the practitioner to reflect.

I found that the reflective practice literature highlights the spontaneous nature of reflection. For example, Tony Ghaye and Sue Lillyman emphasise that reflection is not a ‘toolbox’ of methods and warn that reducing it to ‘checklists and recipes… can quickly become akin to painting by numbers’. This attitude blocked me from developing tools until my colleague, Marilyn, asked what I needed to do to escape the gaze (Chapter C4) of the anti-toolkit brigade. I recalled what Salvador Minuchin and Charles Fishman wrote when they were under fire in 1981 for their book Family Therapy Techniques.

The training of the samurai was a training in spontaneity… To become a master, he had to train as a warrior for three to five years. Then, having become a craftsman, he was required to abandon his craft and spend a number of years studying unrelated areas, like painting, poetry, or calligraphy. Only after achieving mastery in these different intellectual endeavors could a warrior go back and take up the sword, for only then had the sword become a continuation of the arm. He had become a samurai because he had forgotten technique. This, clearly, is the meaning given to the concept of the spontaneous therapist.

I knew I wanted to become a spontaneous reflective supervisor by forgetting technique – but first I needed to learn the technique that I intend to forget. The samurai story can be replaced with a cooking metaphor. When we learn to cook we need a recipe. At first, we follow it closely. Then we vary it a little and get a sense of how the ingredients work together. Then we try a new recipe and start to vary that one too. After lots of cooking with many different recipes, we might develop to the stage where we can cook without following a recipe. This metaphor freed me to collect basic recipes, or tools, to guide supervisors as they learn to facilitate reflection in supervision.

The toolkit started to take shape and my workshops on reflective supervision flourished. I wanted to publish a book on the reflective tools and decided to invite Michael to co-author it because his writings and workshops have had such an impact on my understanding of reflective practice. I also loved his book (with Marie Gilbert), On Being a Supervisee, because it encourages a collaborative approach by educating the practitioner on how to take an active role in their supervision.

The Book When we met to plan our project, Michael and I agreed that our purpose was to facilitate reflective supervision. The word ‘facilitate’ means ‘to make easy’, but ‘easy’ doesn't have to be ‘superficial’ or ‘simplistic’. Reflective supervision should be rigorous and theory-based, so the toolkit cannot stand alone. We recognise that many practitioners don’t have time for detailed theory, so we draw on relevant theory and research and show how they inform practice, while keeping the focus on how to do reflective supervision.

It took two years to write the first draft, partly because we wanted to ensure that the literature was covered thoroughly, and partly because it was a struggle to fit our different writing styles together and to deal with our cultural differences in giving and responding to feedback (Chapter D2). The draft was far too long and heavy. Several experiences helped me to shift my writing style.

• My colleague, Chris, gave me feedback by telling me about books that inspire her and helped me to realise that a book that can be dipped into would be more helpful for our readers (Chapter D3)

• At a writing workshop, I discovered that I was writing on the assumption that I needed to adopt a heavy, academic voice for my ideas to be given any weight and realised that 'light' writing isn't necessarily 'light-weight' (Chapter C2)

• Some colleagues helped me to unpack my problem of having too much material and I shifted from the assumption that 'it's selfish not to give fully' to 'it's selfish to overburden with all that I have to say' (Chapter C1)

• After a reflective supervision workshop when I still had too much material, Tara wrote a wonderful reflective question on her feedback form: ‘Daf, if you could trust that we trust that what you teach is firmly grounded in up-to-date theory and research, what could you leave out?’ I realised I'd been assuming that unless I detailed the solid theoretical and research grounding, my workshops and writing would be superficial, pop-psychology [7].

Revisiting these experiences brought me full circle to our original plan – limit theory to what participants ‘need to know’. The cycle also gave me a personal experience of a tenet of reflective practice: just because you know something, it doesn’t mean you will act on it [8]. A deeper knowing can shape your behaviour. As Stephen Brookfield says, 'go assumption hunting'. Explore the deeper knowing that’s implicit in your actions.

These reflections led to a complete re-write of the book in more personal and practical terms. Our reflections on each revision revealed more assumptions, some helpful, and some not. Indeed, assumption hunting has become the most rewarding part of my reflective practice, both in writing this book and in providing supervision. I find it fits well with the ideas and methods of Michael White’s narrative approach that has informed my therapy practice for many years. He taught me that every ‘given’ is open to inspection and that it’s only after we’ve unpacked our beliefs that we can fully embrace our preferred way of being.

PART A

SUPERVISION AND REFLECTIVE PRACTICE

Supervision is primarily a space for reflective practice. There are other important supervisory spaces, but it is with reflection-on-practice and reflection-for-practice that supervision finds its true home. In Part A we describe what we mean by supervision and what we mean by reflection. We then examine the relationship between supervision and reflection and begin to explore reflective practice and how it is connected to our ‘practice framework’.

A1

Principles for reflective practice in supervision

•  Principles are the foundational beliefs that guide practice

•  Principle: Keep coming back to the basics

It is always more easy to discover and proclaim general principles than to apply them

Winston Churchill

Churchill could have been talking about us. We’ve spent years discovering principles for reflective supervision, and we’re ready to proclaim them in this book, but we don’t always succeed in applying them. Here are a couple of our learning experiences.

Michael’s problematic session with Peter

I meet with Peter, an executive coach, once a month. He’s usually very energetic, but today he seems weighed down.

Peter: I’m struggling. To be honest I’m stuck. Vivienne came for coaching because she should be the automatic choice when the Managing Director retires in six months. But feedback indicates there’s something about her that’s lacking. My guess is that she needs to be more decisive and dynamic. There’s been some suggestion that if she doesn’t get up to speed soon, they’ll go outside for a new MD. Despite our five sessions together I don’t see much progress. Time is running out and I’m getting really worried.

Michael: Maybe you could provide some assertiveness training? Or perhaps she doesn’t realise how others see her. What do you think of some 360-degree feedback? Or what about checking if she really wants to be MD? Some people are afraid of having too much responsibility.

I sit back and wait. I’m confident there’s plenty in those ideas to get his reflective juices going. Peter also sits back. He’s very quiet and looks deep in thought. I assume he’s considering which suggestion to go with. Maybe my last comment about fear of responsibility has hit home. His next words take me by surprise.

Peter: Michael, I really do value your insights and I don’t want to lose them. But just now they’re not helping me. I need to slow down and sit with my struggle, not get too much into my head with ideas and hypotheses.

He seems concerned that I might be hurt by what he’s said. I’m not hurt. I’m disappointed in myself. I led with action plans, rather than helping him to reflect.

Michael: Sorry. You’re right. I picked up on the words ‘time is running out’ and rushed in, instead of waiting to explore what’s going on. Let me go back and pick it up again. What are you feeling right now? 

Peter: I feel useless. We should have made more progress in our sessions. I should be doing more to help her. I really want her to succeed.

Michael: I recall that you’ve had other clients who didn’t get the promotions they hoped for. We’ve all had them. It’s par for the course. I wonder why Vivienne’s situation is affecting you more than usual?

Peter: [Ponders for a few minutes, then sits up and leans forward with a sudden burst of energy.] I just realised I am very protective of her. She’s delightful to work with, very sensitive and caring, but I’m worried that she’s having a rough time in this brutal world of finance.

Michael: Do you feel the same about other finance executives you’re working with?

Peter: No, I don’t. There are two others. They’re both tough. My work with them is on developing their emotional intelligence. Vivienne has plenty of emotional intelligence. I don’t need to protect them, but I do want to protect her.

Michael: Are they both men?

Peter: Oh. Yes. [Long silence] In our last session I had the thought that she can’t live up to what they want. Finance is a dog-eat-dog world. It’s unfair to ask her to do it.

Michael: [Repeating his words] She can’t live up to what they want. It’s unfair to ask her to do it.

Peter: [Laughs] It sounds ridiculous when you say it like that. She’s very competent and well able to be decisive. She has great presence and authority. Where did I get the notion that finance is a man’s world?

We explore Peter’s gender assumption further and he recognises that being a knight-in-shining-armour is neither respectful nor helpful for female clients. We discuss how he can work with Vivienne by appreciating her potential and being optimistic about her future, rather than being protective and pessimistic.

Postscript: Six months later Vivienne becomes the new MD.

When we reflected on this session, we realised that Michael had disregarded some important principles of reflective supervision.

• He took responsibility for having the ideas and doing the work. When the supervisor takes this responsibility, it leaves the practitioner in a one-down position as passive recipient. The supervisor’s responsibility is to facilitate the practitioner’s exploration of their work, not to do it for them.

• Although Michael offered his ideas with ‘maybe’ and ‘perhaps’, he leapt into problem-solving and advice-giving, rather than prompting Peter’s reflective exploration.

• He didn’t attend to his feelings as Peter told his story. If he had done so, he would have noticed the parallel process between Peter’s sense of urgency (‘time is running out’) and his rush to find quick solutions. From these reflections, Michael refined his practice framework, that is, the complex network of theories, principles, roles and procedures that we draw on when acting in a particular situation (A7). He noted that he would do for practitioners only what they couldn’t do for themselves and that he would hold problem-solving for after the reflective process. In particular, he reminded himself that