Supervisors and Coaches - Are we awake to the room?

Are we truly awake to and conscious of what we see, what we hear, what we smell and what we feel in the coaching or supervision room? Are we aware of any ‘conditional positive regard’ we hold whilst purporting it to be ‘unconditional’?

Below, I take you through a situational study of coaching supervision and offer a way to start the conversation through using a racial equity lens. In this example, the white supervisee becomes fragile and vulnerable during a discussion about race and I use a model of a compass through which to navigate this engagement. I end with how we might contract differently.

The supervision encounter.

Imagine that following ‘settling in’ with your supervisee, let’s call her Jane, speaks about a new coachee, we will name Aysha. Jane wants to use supervision to prepare for their first session. She reports that she and Aysha have had a chemistry session where she noticed reserved politeness in the room; she asks, ‘how might I engage with Aysha more deeply?’ As the supervisor, you are curious, not sure which way the conversation will go; in that space you gently turn the enquiry to who is in the room and what is happening between them?

You learn that Aysha is a young (much younger than Jane), well dressed, and seemingly, rather shy woman. She has been referred for coaching through her company’s HR unit. Aysha sought advice from them expressing concern about her boss’s view of her, stating she had not been promoted at the same pace that others in her team had. You enquire about what else is happening for Jane in the session and, what might be her hypothesis about Aysha and her work situation. Jane is aware of Aysha’s sense of isolation in her team and she wonders if there is possible transference between her and her boss; she adds that she is feeling a little sorry for Aysha and finds she is wanting to protect her.

As the supervisor, intuitively, I would set aside the psychodynamic line of enquiry and ask how Jane is planning to deepen Aysha’s trust in her. In this example, Jane reveals she is considering sharing a personal story about an occasion when she felt isolated in her own team and distant from her boss. Jane chose to intentionally become more involved through socialising with the team in the pub. This had helped her to get to know them better and to feel more included. On hearing this I feel hesitant about this suggestion and use a pause for reflection.

I would be wondering who is in the room? Is there an obvious difference between these two people? Might it be one of age? Racial identity? Personality trait or type? What is the meta presence in the room? My curiosity would have been sparked by Jane’s term ‘reserved politeness’, I would ask her to tell me more about Aysha.

When Jane tells me about how Aysha presented, her age etc and that she appeared vulnerable, there was no mention of racial identity. Pondering over how little I still knew about Aysha, I might consider the origin of her name and in which communities it is most used. My hunch might have suggested a difference in racial identity. I would reflect on Jane saying she is tempted to lean in to protecting Aysha, (perhaps saviourism?) and is considering telling Aysha her story about herself dealing with a similar issue. My view might be that in this story she is inadvertently modelling a white English way to ease a relationship she had with her team and boss and, I might wonder how this could chime with Aysha, should she be of a different racial identity.

I would have asked about Aysha’s racial identity and in this example, Jane says she saw Aysha as a person of colour although she does not know how Aysha would describe herself. Jane notes that Aysha did not mentioned racism at the chemistry session, and, on reflection, she realises that systemic racism may well be a dynamic playing out in Aysha’s team and with her boss. The emotions that Jane then displays fall between vulnerability and defensiveness and asks ‘am I supposed to acknowledge people’s skin colour and their race? How would I do that?’.

I imagine I would have felt the charged atmosphere in the supervision room and taken another pause. When considering how to answer this my reflection would have been ‘this is not about dealing with a simple transaction and finding the right words, it is about transformation, a transformation in how we see the world and respond from that place’.

The Next Step

As supervisors we know there are numerous ways to influence the conversation in this moment and, how we each approach it, is subjective. The internal work of exploring the profundity of our whiteness and how it automatically places us in a position of power, and the external work of investigating what this means and how it plays out in our environment through the system, is in depth work, it is life’s work. It raises the question of whether we bring that into the supervision (or coaching) room at that point and assuming we do, how might we do that?

Starting with systemic processes

Working with ‘the system’ is not new; in the ‘seven-eyed supervisor model’ Hawkins and Shohet (1989) noted the contextual field within which supervision lies, and Hawkins and Schwenk say “it also includes the power and cultural dynamics that lie within the various relationships” (2021.p157). The complexity of the system(s), be they organisational, cultural or racial is easily ignored in the field. We are aware that any work in the coaching or supervision room has the dynamic of the disparity of power between the practioner and the client. Recognising this in the work is key as it influences the relationship in the coaching or supervision room. In the same way, being awake to our individual biases when noting data collected through our senses and the responses we bring to them, is also key in our work as supervisors and coaches. How then do we introduce the transformational change needed to shift our worldview which was brought into consciousness by Janes’ questions about skin colour and race?

I was recently asked ‘How did you wake up to what is happening regarding racial difference and power dynamics in the (coaching or supervision) room?’

For me, it was a profound internal and external journey over years before I felt comfortable about integrating issues of difference, particularly racial, into my practice. As a white person born and spending my early life in South Africa, the issue of racism is omnipresent. My pivot moment I realised, was in May 2020 when George Floyd was murdered. There followed an examination by me of the issue globally, locally and internally; after some time, my life and my practice took on a different landscape. The details of that process known as ‘Doing the work’ in the race consciousness terrain can be seen in my paper ‘Disrupting my whiteness towards inhabiting a race equity coaching perspective: A self-inquiry into race, whiteness, and its impact on my coaching practice’

https://radar.brookes.ac.uk/radar/items/3976677f-d80a-406b-9465-0da0de9071a6/1/

Conversations of profound change

Turning back to the nature of supervision Shohet and Shohet (2020) remind us, it is about having ‘transformative conversations’ where discomfort and fear are usually present, but, with awareness, the conversation becomes one of integrity and love. They quote the Sufi maxim “Fear knocked at the door. Love answered and there was no-one there” (2020.p177). Returning to coach Jane who showed vulnerability and defensiveness when talking about race, I sensed her fear and her fragility (often named “White Fragility” (DiAngelo 2018) being present. In supervision (and in coaching) holding the space through showing care, love and compassion at these moments, opens up the conversation and ensures survival of the relationship.

A successful navigation of that inter space between supervisors/coaches or coaches /coachees deepens trust and strengthens the alliance.  It is sometimes likened to balancing on the tightrope between risk and reward; the continuum between daring to take the risk whilst caringly holding the space with the supervisee or coachee is at the centre of the process. In the inter space caringly daring to bring the discomfort about difference (in this example, racial difference) out into the open can bring a release of energy. In that openness missteps are acknowledged and accepted with kindness.

Eusden (2023) offers a metaphorical compass for orientating ourselves between the intersecting axes, where one runs between high and low care and the other between high and low dare. In this charged space each person brings “their own magnetic forces that lead to disorientation at times in the work” (2023.p217), the compass gives a way for the coach to understand the behaviour they are encountering. In each quadrant the behaviours are different depending on the emotions and history that each person brings with them and the impact of the interventions being made. The compass, held in our mind’s eye can act as a real time navigational tool to use during the supervision (or coaching) encounter.

See Figure 1 below.

Figure 1. The High Dare/High Care Compass for Deconfusion.

High Care/Low Dare

Often coaches say that their role is to be caring and hold a person with “unlimited positive regard” (Rogers 2004.p47) interpreting this to mean that they hold all their coachees in a positive light where they discern no difference between them. In our example of Jane, the supervisee, when the supervisor asks about the racial identity of her coachee, Jane’s vulnerability and defensiveness at that moment suggested she was feeling afraid. This fear may in turn, evoke fear in the supervisor who may be drawn to protecting Jane; this is highly caring, yet not daring to take a risk. Finding ourselves as supervisors, taking the less risky road may be the right one depending on the timing and situation, it may however, be the loss of an opportunity to open up the dialogue about difference and identity which is at the core of the supervision or coaching encounter.

High Dare/Low Dare

In my work with coaches, awareness of and responding to an issue of difference between them and their coachee is often ignored, it’s too uncomfortable. As supervisors we may find ourselves feeling critical of the supervisee and think ‘why did they not see the obvious difference between them and the coachee? It’s in the room, deal with it!’ Should we respond reactively with high dare and low dare, it will increase the discomfort and potentially resulting in rupture of the supervision relationship.

Low Dare/Low Care

In this quadrant there may be politeness and low emotional engagement, the flatness and lack of connection in the relationship is exposed. This place on the compass is challenging. The client may be feeling passively aggressive about the coach and thinking ‘she has not even seen me’.

It may be that the practioner is possibly burned out and the client frozen in silence, both following the motions without engagement. Unless the practioner becomes more daring in their practice, the relationship is unlikely to survive.

High Dare/High Care

What does our most transformative conversation in supervision look like? Some say it is that conversation where vulnerability is exposed by both the supervisor and supervisee and where the levels of trust (and care) are high enough for both to take creative risks which ushers in change. When both dig deep into vulnerable places with compassion and care, the transformational conversation changes how each sees the other and the world. In this way trust increases, engagement deepens and the alliance strengthens. In the example of Jane and Aysha, with Jane holding a caring space and daring to take the risk of showing her vulnerability, Aysha is likely to respond by showing hers with the relationship deepening.

The saying ‘No Mud No Lotus’ https://youtu.be/rkS0HuCIaiU?si=HCgSoKY1SE9e_vno (used in eastern religions) is a metaphor that highlights growth coming from being in the difficult, muddy place and from there, beauty emerges. This is where transformational conversations happen and gives birth to transformational change.

The Practice

At moments when we lose confidence in our competence as practioners, we often forget a key step in our practice, the contract. Bringing high dare and high care to this moment sets the framework for transformational work.

In my work, particularly when working with people who I see as Black or Brown, once we have settled in, I usually say ‘hi, let’s start with who we are. I’m a woman who, as you see is somewhat older than you!’ This regularly brings a smile of recognition. Soon after that I say, ‘I racially identify as white and bring a lens that draws on awareness of difference and the power and privilege that goes with being white’. This rapidly throws open the conversation introducing a directness showing I am comfortable in this territory. Coachees regularly tell me that no coach (or talking therapist) has ever said that to them before and some have described it as ‘a breath of fresh air’. On one occasion when working with a young man I saw as Brown, I opened the dialogue in this way and he said, ‘I am glad you have said that, I am white too’.  Giving me important data for our relationship.

How we progress our practice depends on our own style, knowledge and intention. We may choose to deal with increasing our level of consciousness about race and equity by taking it lightly. Or we may choose to go on a much deeper journey and become more ‘awake to the room’. In our global world difference will always show up, and it may be that, like me, you find that risking openness and being daringly caring brings enormous rewards.

References and Resources

Ahmed, S. (2007). A phenomenology of whiteness. Feminist Theory. 8(2), 149–168.

Bernstein, A. F. (2019). Race Matters in Coaching: An Examination of Coaches’ Willingness to Have Difficult Conversations with Leaders of Color. (Doctoral dissertation, Columbia University, New York, United States).

Crenshaw, K. (1989). Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1989(1), Article 8, 139-167.

Dabiri, E. (2021). What White People Can Do Next, From Allyship to Coalition. Milton Keynes: Penguin Random House.

DiAngelo, R. (2018). White Fragility. Dublin: Penguin Random House.

DiAngelo, R. (2010). Why Can’t We All Just be Individuals? Countering the Discourse of Individualism in Anti-Race Education. InterActions: UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies, 6(1). Available at: https://escholarship.org/content/qt5fm4h8wm/qt5fm4h8wm.pdf.

Daly, K. (aka Akala) (2018). Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire. UK: Two Roads.

Eddo-Lodge, R. (2018). Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People about Race. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

Eusden, S. (2023). High Dare/High Care Compass: A Guide to Transforming

Trouble and Ethical Disorientation in Psychotherapy, Transactional Analysis Journal, 53:3, 207-221, DOI: 10.1080/03621537.2023.2213952

Hawkins, P. and Schwenk, G. (2021). in Bachkirova, T., Jackson, P., and Clutterbuck, D., (eds) Coaching and Mentoring Supervision: Theory and Practice. London: McGraw Hill.

Hawkins, P. and Shohet, R. (eds) (1989) Supervision in the Helping Professions. Maidenhead: McGraw-Hill.

Hewson, Bernice. https://raisingracialconsciousness.com“RRC is on a mission to disrupt our common-sense mode of thinking in pursuit of a racially equitable society”.

Roche, C. (2022). Decolonising reflective practice and supervision. Philosophy of Coaching: An International Journal, 7(1), 30-49.

Roche, C., & Passmore, J. (2022). Anti-racism in coaching: a global call to action. Coaching: An International Journal of Theory, Research & Practice, 16(1), 115-132. 

Rogers, C. R. (2004). On Becoming a Person. London: Constable.

Shohet, R. and Shohet, J., (2020) In Love With Supervision: Creating Transformative Conversations. Monmouth. PCCS Books.