On Being a Supervisee:
Creating Learning Partnerships
(Second Edition)

ISBN: 978-0-9551139-2-5

The focus of supervision is learning. Supervisees learn from their work and from their supervision where they present their work in order that they may give a better quality of service to their client group. Supervisors are facilitators of learning. They aim to create the kind of collaborative relationship and the sort of learning environment that sustains learning for supervisees. Supervision is for supervisees, not for supervisors. Too often we have had to put up with supervisor-based supervision where supervisors take most of the initiatives, are motivated by their own current hobby horses, dazzle with their wisdom and insights and take the spotlight off supervisees. This manual is to empower supervisees to take responsibility for their supervision and for their learning and to persuade supervisors to allow them to do so.

This manual is primarily for supervisees. We consider a supervisee to be anyone, of any profession, who brings his/her work experience to another in order to learn from it. Supervisees come from professions such as psychology, social work, probation, nursing, psychotherapy and counselling (i.e., the helping professions) as well as from management, HR and Personnel departments. They may also be teachers, trainers, coaches, mentors, organisational consultants, tutors, spiritual directors and members of the emergency services or Prison Service. We are equally broad in seeing the focus of supervision as any aspect of the supervisee’s work or professional development: direct coal-face contact (face-to-face contact) with individuals or groups, work with teams and organisations, programmes and training events, issues of continuing professional development as well as relationship issues, process issues and even strategic elements of the work. We are aware of the many influences that impact on the actual work itself – all those can be valid focal points for supervision.

Most of the research in supervision involves supervisees. They have been asked, in all sorts of ways, what they think of supervision, what it means to them, how they view its various forms and expressions, how they see supervisors and what are the features and characteristics of supervisors they find helpful and unhelpful. The number of questionnaires given to ascertain the views of supervisees is in stark contrast to the amount of help given them to use supervision effectively as a developmental tool. It is still rare for supervisees to receive help and instruction in being an effective supervisee. There is little literature to which supervisees can turn to help them make sense of, understand and be, a collaborative partner in supervisory arrangements, either one to one or in a group/team. The best help for supervisees we have come across is the work of Inskipp and Proctor (2001) and Knapman and Morrison (1998) which systematically brings supervisees through what they need to know to use supervision effectively. However, the first work on supervisees (while being the most comprehensive and the classic in the field) is nested in Inskipp and Proctor’s two working manuals on “The Art and Craft of Supervision” and unless taken out and given them by supervisors, would scarcely find its way into supervisee hands. Knapman and Morrison’s self-development model for supervisees is a good initial start on the basics of being a supervisee – this manual builds on their work and asks supervisees to move further into understanding their own learning approaches.

The Authors

Maria Gilbert, M.A. is a chartered clinical psychologist, a UKCP registered Integrative Psychotherapist and a BACP accredited supervisor. She works as a trainer, supervisor, psychotherapist and organizational consultant. She is currently the Head of the Integrative Department at Metanoia Institute in West London which she was actively involved in setting up over ten years ago. This training is for integrative psychotherapists and has more recently extended to training integrative counselling psychologists who are also psychotherapists. Maria is also Head of the Supervision Training at Metanoia and has taught nationally and internationally in both supervision and integrative psychotherapy.

Michael Carroll, Ph.D. is a Fellow of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, a Chartered Counselling Psychologist and a BACP Senior Registered Practitioner. He works as a counsellor, supervisor, trainer and consultant to organizations in both public and private sectors, specialising in the area of employee well being. He has lectured and trained both nationally and internationally. Michael is Visiting Industrial Professor in the Graduate School of Education, University of Bristol and the winner of the 2001 British Psychological Society Award for Distinguished Contributions to Professional Psychology.

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