“Nothing is too difficult or embarrassing to bring here.”
I say that to every new supervisee, and I wrote about it earlier this month. A colleague then pointed out the obvious problem. In group supervision, the potential for embarrassment is higher.
He is right. One to one, I can make that promise and keep it myself. In a group I am making it on behalf of everyone in the room, including the reactions they do not voice.
As I see it, a supervision group can be any of four things.
Scary
Before anyone has spoken, we are weighing up what it will cost to be seen by our peers. So we bring the case that went well.
Shaming
A group reacts before anyone speaks. A flinch. A silence that lasts a beat too long. A quick piece of advice. A joke. A colleague who rushes in to reassure.
Each of those is a body dealing with its own discomfort, and none is meant unkindly. But the person who has just brought their boredom with a client, or their attraction, or their fear, reads every one of them.
If nobody holds those reactions, they do not dissolve. They land on the person who has just exposed something. The supervisee learns, in their body, that bringing the difficult thing costs more than it gives. Next month they bring a tidy case.
Seductive
This is the one that looks like success. Everyone is warm. Everyone agrees. Nobody is challenged, so nobody is shamed. It is comfortable, and comfort is easily mistaken for safety.
The unspoken deal is: I will not look closely at your work if you do not look closely at mine. The person who pays for that deal is the client, who is not in the room.
Often the deal includes the leader. Supervisees learn which material unsettles us, and they stop bringing it. They become easy to supervise. They may even be praised for it.
That is the child who copes well, grown up. In families it has a name: parentification. The child carries what the adults could not hold, and the praise is what hides the load.
Safe
Safe is not the same as comfortable. It means the difficult thing can be brought, and questioned, and the person who brought it does not carry the cost alone.
What is the group leader’s work?
As I see it, three things.
- To notice our own body first. If I have flinched, the room already knows.
- To name the category before anyone has to confess an instance. “Most of us have been bored by a client. Most of us have been frightened of one.”
- To catch the group’s reaction and hold it, so that it does not become the presenter’s problem. And then to ask the harder question anyway. Support without challenge is the seductive group again.
None of this is about being unshockable. Supervisees can see that we are affected. The line is between a group that witnesses a leader’s reaction and a group that is made responsible for it.
How strong is the evidence?
This is a clinical argument from my own practice, not a research finding. The four groups are my own way of sorting what I have seen, and nobody has tested them. The evidence that supervision of any kind improves client outcomes is weak, and I have set that out here.
A worksheet for group leaders
The free worksheet that goes with this article has eight reflective questions about one recent meeting of your group: which of the four it was, what your own body did, and where the group’s reactions landed. Download the worksheet: Scary, Shaming, Seductive or Safe?
Which of the four is your group, most weeks?