choice Magazine

Beyond the Page ~ The Evolution of Coaching Super-Vision

May 09, 2023 Garry Schleifer
choice Magazine
Beyond the Page ~ The Evolution of Coaching Super-Vision
Show Notes Transcript

In this interview, we talk with Damian Goldvarg about his article entitled, "The Evolution of Coaching Super-Vision."

As professional coaching has continued to grow in popularity worldwide, coaching supervision has gained a significant role and acceptance in the last few years.  One of the challenges in the understanding and development of coaching supervision is that the word "supervision" may have a negative connotation associated with management, guidance or quality control.  Damian prefers to separate the word in two – super-vision – to emphasize the nature of the reflective practice focused on offering a space to learn about our work for new coaches as well as for very experienced coaches.

In this podcast, we will discuss the three functions that coaching super-vision serves, the competencies that EMCC holds around supervision, and learn the differences between mentor coaching and supervision. 

Dr. Damian Goldvarg is a world-renowned executive coach with over thirty years of experience in the field. Born and raised in Argentina, he has worked with individuals and organizations in over sixty countries, offering services in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. He is a Master Certified Coach (MCC), received his Ph.D. in Organizational Psychology from Alliant University in California., and is also an Accredited Team Coach (ACTC), Professional Certified Speaker (CSP), and an Accredited Coach Supervisor (ESIA).  He facilitates certifications in Professional Coaching, Mentor Coaching, Team Coaching, and Coaching Supervision. Dr. Goldvarg was the 2013-2014 International Coaching Federation Global President, and authored and coauthored eight coaching books.

Join us as we learn more about coaching Super-Vision and why everyone needs a supervisor in their coaching practice.

Watch the full interview by clicking here.

Find the full article here: https://bit.ly/Goldvarg

Learn more about Damian here.

Damian's website recommendation mentioned in the podcast:  Americas Supervision Network

Grab your free issue of choice Magazine here - https://choice-online.com/
In this episode, I talk with Damian about his article published in our March 2023 issue.

Speaker 1:

Hi everyone. I'm Garry Schleifer, and this is Beyond the Page brought to you by choice, The magazine of Professional Coaching. choice is more than a magazine. It's a community of people who use and share coaching tools, tips, and techniques to add value to their businesses and impact their clients. It's an institution of learning built over the course of 20 years, actually we're in 21 right now, dedicated to improving the lives of coaches and their clients. In today's episode, I'm speaking with Damian Goldvarg, who's the author of an article in our latest issue about mentor coaching and coaching supervision, I was corrected on that along the way of putting that one together,"The Evolution of Coaching Super-Vision," and notice how I say that as two words. We'll talk more about that. ICF, EMCC and Personal Perspectives. Dr. Damian Goldvarg is a world renowned executive coach with over 30 years of experience in the field, born and raised in Argentina. He has worked with individuals in organizations in over 60 countries offering services in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. He's a master certified coach in MCC with the International Coaching Federation. Received his PhD in organizational psychology from Alliant University in California, and is also an accredited team coach, professional certified speaker, and an accredited coach supervisor. And we'll hear a lot about that in our conversation today. He facilitates certifications in professional coaching, mentor coaching, team coaching and coaching supervision. You hear a pattern here? I hear a pattern. Dr. Goldvarg was the 2013 to 2014 International Coaching Federation Global President and has authored and co-authored eight coaching books. Damian, welcome. Good to have you here, my friend. We've known each other for how many years, probably around the time you became president.

Speaker 2:

Before that. I met you when I was starting to the Global Board of Directors and you were exiting and I was entering, and I was asking you, Garry, give me some tips that some guy entering into that at that time was challenging for different reasons. And so I needed some guidance and you were really mentoring me before I got into the Global Board 2010.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Well, and thank you for your leadership and thank you for everything you're doing for the coaching profession. I think it's kind of obvious, I usually ask authors, why did you write this? It would be like me saying, why didn't you write this? Because you're just like all over supervision, mentoring and coaching. But was there a reason why you really felt you needed to be in this issue, other than the obvious?

Speaker 2:

Well, going back to being the Global Board of Director for the International Coach Federation, I was serving for six years from 2010 to 2016. In 2013 and 2014 was when I was the president and when we were in the board discussing the role of the future of coaching, the role of supervision, we wanted to have a position around it. Because at that time, ICF didn't have a position like EMCC had about making it mandatory for all coaches to get supervision to renew their credentials. So we were discussing what should be the position of ICF, and we were not very familiar with supervision. So Janet Harvey who is also a contributor from choice, we were sitting together at the board and she helped organize the first training ever on coaching supervision in the Americas through Coaching Supervision Academy. That was 2013, if I'm not wrong. And she was her own place where she trains coaches close to Seattle. And we had there the first program, and I was not very familiar. I was familiar with supervision as a psychologist. So for, for mental health, professional therapy, social workers, psychologists, supervision is part of your practice. So I have done it and I was familiar from that perspective, but not in coaching. I had never had formal coaching supervision experience as a coach. I was blown away by the experience. I thought, okay, I agree with EMCC, all coaches who have a supervisor, because doesn't matter how much experience we have, we all have blind spots. We all have opportunities to grow and learn. We are working the business of developing peoples transformation of growth and learning. We need to keep doing that for ourselves. So interestingly, Garry, I was surprised that I found a lot of resistance because of the supervision people. The first reaction from them was, don't tell me what to do. Don't tell me what this is. I don't like it. That sounds good. I don't wanna even know about it. So it had been since 2013, 10 years now, that I have been working and advocating for supervision because I always thought it would enhance the quality of the work we do, enhance our profession, not only personally, but also as a community and it has been challenging. Now it's less challenging, but after 10 years.

Speaker 1:

You're a pioneer. I was thinking the same word.

Speaker 2:

And Garry, for people who have been doing this for a long time, we also had to struggle for people to understand what was coaching. Like 25 years ago, people didn't know what was coaching and we had to struggle in supporting people to understand the value. Now, we don't need to talk about that any longer. Like we don't have to talk about that coaching is a valuable service.

Speaker 1:

Right.

Speaker 2:

Twenty years ago, we had to work very hard in getting people to understand how coaching works. So that has been a journey.

Speaker 1:

Wow. You know what? It's interesting. I didn't realize that that was your jumpstart. I mean, it's evident in the results of who you are that I read in the bio that you are a pioneer, but now I really get that you're a pioneer. It's like your eyes lit up when you talk about that moment when you figured out what supervision was all about. That's awesome. One of the things that I remember, because, as you mentioned, I was also on t he Global Board, but just being around the International Coaching Federation members, I remember there was a conversation a nd, I d on't k now if you've heard this, that if we allowed supervision then we might be considered a body that n eed to be regulated. Do you remember that conversation? How did we get around that? O r we just said, supervision is more important than this rhetoric and a way we go.

Speaker 2:

I think that was left behind that argument at one point. So we didn't keep like active. I think that the problem was more about seeing supervision as something that was mandatory, that was problematic for some people and I think still is, and not understanding the value of it and they worried that hasn't happen. We've had many conversations with many people over the 10 years, how to change the name other than supervision. I think so far they won. I think they lost the reflective practice like, because it is a reflective practice and if you see ICF change they went from 11 to eight core competencies.

Speaker 1:

Right.

Speaker 2:

And there is a new one in the coaching mindset and that's how the being of the coach and one of the element of the coaching mindset is to have a consistent, reflective practice. So interestingly, t hat's t o t alk about supervision i tself, u sing t hat word supervision, but u se a more reflective practice. An d p r actice i s w h at i s s upervision. It is a state to reflect on your work.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Well, and you spoke a lot about that, so I won't reiterate that for the listeners and the readers and those of you that don't have a subscription, you'll just have to go read it and find out. This is the snapshot that I think really says it for me about what distinguishes supervision from mentor coaching is developing a new awareness about how the personal may intrude into the professional. So to your point about, in the article and in this conversation, about who you're being and what's going on for you, what biases are you bringing in just to mention a few different things. So thank you. I really got a lot out of reading and rereading. I tend to be rereading more than I'm reading. So, it's like I proofread it, then I read it and then I read it again when it's sitting in my hand and I have a lovely copy. One of the other things in the article that I noticed that I wanted to ask you about is when we were speaking about this too is what coaching supervision is. Can you tell me more about the three functions of coaching supervision in your own words?

Speaker 2:

Yes. So there are three key functions that make coaching different than supervision. So supervision is not coaching the coach. Sometimes people think, oh, if I am already coach, I can coach coaches and I'm supervising. I think that it require some other extra skills, adding skills. That is the reason why t he position from ICF a nd EMCC, that supervisors should receive additional training to develop skills. Now the ICF is making mandatory supervision for team coaches. So t his brand new credential from ICF is t he team coaching credential requires supervision. That's something new. And the supervisor needs to h ave training a s supervisors t o b e a ble to provide that service. And that service requires basically three functions, formative, normative and supportive. The normative is about ethical standards. Like the supervisor needs to have sensitivity to identify when the coach may have some blind spots around ethical issues. So that is different than coaching is and that's something unique that is one of the pieces of the puzzle. The other one is that coaching supervision also have the supportive function where the coach can bring unique challenges, emotional challenges that they have around the work that we are doing. And during covid 19, there was a lot going on. We still affected by it, a lot of mental health issues and coaches many times had to listen to clients share the struggles that we all were experiencing. I believe that that was a time where supervision was very important for all of the coaches to get the emotional support that they needed to do their work. And then the developmental part is about keep growing, learning, developing new skills, learning new models, new knowledge, new competencies. So basically keep the developing also professionally. So then there is a way supervisors sometimes also have a little bit of mentoring in the work in providing some best practices, share some strategies and at the same time in all of these practices, supervision, mentor coaching, coaching is always client centered. Either the client is always with the expert the client or the supervisee. They are the experts in their lives. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Exactly. Naturally creative, resourceful a nd whole. I r emember that from my CTI days.

Speaker 2:

We keep that and I think ICF adopted that too from CTI.

Speaker 1:

I think so. So you alluded to a little bit in this explanation, and I want to know more. Is supervision, like, is there a clean line between coaching supervision and mentor coaching? Or are there places where they overlap?

Speaker 2:

Well, the position of ICF, International Coach Federation, have two different definitions or two different practices. That is the reason why I have been training mentor coaches before supervision for many years. And we started in supervision to train supervisors a few years ago and the skills are different because in supervision we work with the being of the coach. We explored that ethical dilemma, what you were saying before, ethical dilemma challenges, what's happening to us, working with our client, what happened when the client is stuck and we don't see progress. So this is a reflection of our practice. Mentor coaching is very specific. It's about skills. So the mentor coach need to see the coach working in person or through a recording and provide feedback. So the main task of the mentor coach is to provide feedback on coaching conversations. Mentor coaching is mandatory for coaching training for ACC accreditation to renew accreditation. For people applying for their Master Certified Coach credential, there are points in the development that is expected that people get mentor coaching as part of the development and training of the coach is mandatory for ICF. Supervision i s not mandatory for now. It's o nly m andatory f or team coaching.

Speaker 2 :

Yeah. I train with that myself too, Garry, because I do believe it should be mandatory, but at the same time, nothing that is mandatory we like. I don't like that either. I don't like to do mandatory things. I like to be able to choose. So I think that is a paradoxical, it's like a challenge. It's like ideally you want people to want it without having to be mandatory. So this is what we have been working on and people understand what is it so they can go and take advantage of it without having to be mandatory.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Well it's like coaching. The more we know about it and the more education we have around it, the easier it is for us to go,"oh yeah. That's a no-brainer. Of course, I've got to get a supervisor." What do you see for the future of supervision? Do you think it's going to become mandatory in the near future? And why is it mandatory for team coaching but it's not mandatory for a regular coach?

Speaker 2:

That's a great question. I was not involved in any of that decision making. So my guess is that supervision of team coaching is much more complex t han individual coaching. It requires many more skills. So b ecause of that, it is much more challenging because you're working not one to one person, but you're working with several systems at t he same time. So that complexity requires to get some support to be able to do this job appropriately. So my vision that people will understand the supervision and they w ill be willing to invest on it. B ecause that's t he other piece, t he economical part. It is like when you are trained as a psychologist or as a social worker doing mental health issues services, you know, that part of your development is to work with a supervisor. I t's a no brainer. Like people go a nd do it. They don't ask themselves twice. But here, s ometimes people think, oh, I don't w ant t o invest in a supervisor because I don't need it. It can be an investment and I d o believe that i t's a b est investment that you can make. I have been working w ith t he supervisor since I w orked w ith supervision training for 10 years and I w ork with two supervisors. ICF r ecommends to have o ne supervision per quarter or every 35 hours. And this one hour supervision every 35 hours follows the psychological work in terms of how often psychologists receive supervision in the UK. So that was how EMCC originally suggested to have a similar approach of one award of supervision every 35 hours of coaching but I believe that once a quarter it's fine. In my case, I have once a quarter with a supervisor that I have been working with for many years. It's______ who's one of the pioneers of supervision worldwide, but they also have a chain. So a chain is a group of supervisors. We are 12 and we supervise each other and we rotate. It's a chain because it's a rotation. So every quarter we rotate. We meet monthly. So for four months, I work with one supervisor, and then I switch for the next four and I supervise somebody from the chain. So in that way, we provide these services to each other for free too. So it's not an expense.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Well that's definitely not that expensive.Your time of course. Now that just brought another question to mind. Is supervision meant to be done one-on-one or can you have four people in a call and each person takes a turn?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. You can do individual or group supervision. So over the years I have been training individual supervisors, and also we have a group supervision certification because that requires more skills than when you're working with groups. So in group supervision, somebody brings a client to discuss. So a case is a client. So that's also the difference between coaching and supervision. In supervision it is expected that the coach will bring a topic or a case. A case is a client that you're working with and you come and you prepare the case. So you arrive to supervision with a case in your mind, saying okay, this is my client, this is what I have been doing, this is the relationship and this is my question. So one of the ways of supervision is asking supervisors to come to supervision with a question. So that is a little bit different than in coaching. In coaching, we want the client to come up with some goals, what they want to accomplish. What they want to be different at the end of the session. Here in supervision it is, okay, what question do you have? What would you like to reflect on today? And at the end, it's also expected that as a result of the supervision session, the coach will go back and apply some of the learnings with the client. But it is not like an accountability issue like it is in coaching.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Well, thank you. Because I have had the experience then of being in a supervisory. I do some coaching for an organization and they offered Coaching Courage Hour, and you had to bring a case and I brought a case and then the group offered their observations and suggestions, and then it was up to you to decide what would work brilliantly. That to me, I said, oh, there's, that's a taste of supervision.

Speaker 2:

I love group supervision. You know what you're saying there because in group supervision, everybody's learning from everybody. Soeven you are not the one bringing the case, by somebody else bringing the case you learn from that experience and eventually you may find yourself is a similar situation. So group supervision is great for that because you learn not only by bringing the case, but by learning from the cases of your colleagues.

Speaker 1:

Exactly. Exactly. And some things resonate and you're like, I'm not ready to do that. It may be right, but you're not ready and then somebody else will say something. Then what I did is, it was a case and it was pretty generic. It suited a few clients. You know, the ones that don't come ready, what do you do? That kind of basic thing. So I played around with the different options that I was given and oh my gosh, I started loving working with those clients. That was for me, one of the outcomes is I dreaded going to meet with this particular client and then after I had this supervision session, I was like, I am ready. I have to say there were some obvious things that I forgot. So there's another thing about it, right? You've done it longer than I have. I've only done it for like 22 years. You get into a routine and you start to get sloppy. Maybe not sloppy, but you forget things and doing it in a group, you're amongst other coaches. So there's less fear of a supervisor being smarter or you have to do what they say. So yeah. I'm with you. Well, and it brings up almost my last question, but where do you suggest that somebody that's just starting to look for a supervisor? Where should they go?

Speaker 2:

That is a good question. So basically six years ago I went to ICF and I said, let's create a community of practice for supervision. And they told me it is not a strategic priority. So I said, okay, okay, okay. I got it. I got it. I will open my own. So, six years ago with Lily Seto, we opened the Community of Practice in the America Coaching Supervision Network. So the America Coaching Supervision Network grew from 10 to 300 people. So now we have 300 participants in our network. We open it to anyone who wants to participate. Originally it was mainly North America. Lily Seto is my co-facilitator in Canada. So our goal was to bring visibility to coaching supervision in the Americas. We went together through the first Coaching Supervision Academy training with that I was telling you about with Janet Harvey too. So we started that and we started also, what we call, conferences every year. We have our next conference coming up, by the way. The conference is at the end of April. So you got a c hance t o hear that. I t's before t he e nd o f A pril.

Speaker 1:

I think we posted that on our site.

Speaker 2:

Great.

Speaker 1:

And it might have even been in the December issue of choice at the back. There's a place for it.

Speaker 2:

And this conversation, this podcast, when is it going to come out.

Speaker 1:

This will be in the next couple of months. This is part of our series related to that issue. Nancy will let you know.

Speaker 2:

Just for people listening to us, maybe the conference by that time have passed. But we have this conference once a year. We have around 150 people coming from all over the world. And that has been one of the contributions that I feel proud of that over the years we really have been calling the space for supervision. Now there is a community of practice at ICF they have.

Speaker 1:

You've forced their hands.

Speaker 2:

For the last two years, I think. And I was, for the first time invited to participate. I'll be doing a session at the end of the month.

:

Well keep us posted on that. When you find out when next year's is, let us know and we'll let our audience know as well. So what's the website to go to for the supervision?

Speaker 2:

In America, Coaching Supervision Network website, we have a list of all supervisors who are accredited. So you know that these people are accredited and they have received coaching supervision training. That is called AmericaCoachingSupervision.com. I think it is.

Speaker 1:

America

Speaker 2:

Coaching supervision

Speaker 1:

AmericaCoachingSupervision.com. Okay.

Speaker 2:

We will put that in the write up for this blog post. Okay. So it is americassupervisionnetwork.com/.

Speaker 1:

Oh, AmericaSupervisionNetwork.com. Okay, great.

Speaker 2:

The second place that I would recommend people to go is if you go to the EMCC, European Mentor and Coaching Council website, they have there all of the people who are accredited by them and they have the supervision credential is called ESIA. That means European Supervision Individual Accreditation. So you may want to work with a supervisor, be sure that they have coaching supervision training, and if they have a credential, it's even better because that means that they follow standards and they have a training experience for the requirements. So these are two places where to find a supervisor. Now, something else that you said before, I don't want to forget, I differentiated between supervision and mentor coaching. At one point, there can be a little bit of overlap when as a supervisor you don't need to listen recordings. You only listen recordings as a mentor coach. But if you're supervising somebody, your supervisor may ask you, Damian, would you mind listen to a session to give me feedback? So you may do it once, but that's not the ongoing task. But it doesn't mean that the supervisor cannot listen to a recording. The same thing about mentor coaching. Mentor coaching is about focusing on skills, but that doesn't mean that the mentor coach at some point may explore what's happening to the coach with the client. So sometime maybe that part of the mentor coaching, so there is a little bit of overlap. That's the reason why many coaches and mentor coaches, they were saying that they were already supervising because they were working on the who when they were mentoring people. But the emphasis is different, but it can be overlap too. So I wanted clarify that too.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, no, thank you for that. Thank you for all of this information. Is there anything else you'd like our listeners and readers to do as a result of your article and this conversation? Other than get a supervisor.

Speaker 2:

Yes. Get a supervisor.

Speaker 1:

How did I know the answer to that question?

Speaker 2:

Well, Garry, like I was sharing before, and if for some reason the issue is economical, if there is a financial factor, as I was telling you before, after I have done the training in 2013, in 2016 I was asked by my colleagues in Argentina to offer training on supervision in Spanish because there was nothing at all. So in that way, I wrote my first book on coaching supervision in Spanish. I also started to train coaching supervision in Spanish to offer that becasue it was not available in Spanish in the world. But that was my first cohort in 2016. And then I was approached by Coach Source, and Coach Source told me, Damian, we lost a big, big client because our competitor provided supervision and we didn't. And they are very open about it. So I can share this information. We need you to come and train our coaches but there is a requirement. The program needs to be approved by anybody, doesn't matter which value, but needs to be approved. And ICF doesn't have a credential for coaches or for coaching schools. So at that time, the only one that was available was EMCC. So I went through EMCC and then developed a program and I got an accreditation. So I did it as a result of this request. It never was my plan to train supervisors, but these opportunities came along and I was in trouble about saying that everybody should have a supervisor before I was training supervisor. So it may see like a conflict of interest but that is okay because I'm training supervisors. I want everybody to get supervision. But I got in trouble at ICF because I was told as a president, you cannot tell people that. That everybody should get the supervisor. Because at that time, 2013- 2014, I was a global president for two years and I was saying I believe that all coaches should work with a supervisor. And I was told, you know, as a global president, if that your mind, you cannot share that because this is not ICF as an organization. So I had to wait and then later is when I start training supervisors. What I'm saying that is because, as part of the training, supervisors need to provide supervision to coaches. So if anyone who's listening to us is interested and there is a financial issue, we can offer free supervision for people who are interested in trying and experimenting and we have our students who can provide the free service. I want to offer that to people too. So financial is not an excuse to not to try something.

Speaker 1 :

Yeah. Good. Yeah. That definitely would be a question for some people, especially those starting out and wanting to get right into it. So yeah. Thank you so much.

Speaker 2:

And about that Garry, you know, one of my positions too is that I do believe that supervision should be part of coaching training. I think that when people are getting trained as coaches they need to have not only mentor coaching, but also supervision so they can understand the value so by the time that they finish the program is not something new or different. They already have received that through coaching. When they finish the coaching training and start coaching, they keep working with the supervisor. I see that in the future. We also want t o advocate for that.

Speaker 1:

Well, and you know, it has to work backwards. EMCC already says, but for the majority of people that are ICF that ICF has to say it's mandatory. We have to. I know we talked about that, but only then will i t become. I know there's a lot of proactive coaching schools. Yours. I know Janet Harvey's probably way ahead on all of that as well. She's already working on the level three training for the MCC, so I'm like, crazy, lovely. Anyway, thank you. Thank you Damian, for joining us today for this Beyond t he Page episode. What's the best way for people to reach you?

Speaker 2:

Well they can reach me, if they put my name, Damian Goldvarg, in Google. But I have something to offer people using YouTube. I have more than 350 videos of what that they have been doing for the last 10 years. That is in English and we have it in Spanish. We have a lot of demonstrations of coaching supervision. The American Coaching Supervision Network, we have in recording all of our presentations. So we have five years of recordings, around 50 videos on issue related to supervision. That can be a great resource with the most important supervisors worldwide pioneers, Peter Hopkins. Many of the most important supervisors worldwide have come to do sessions on different topics. Everything is available for free. Also if they wanna join me on LinkedIn or in Facebook or in Instagram. I also have a newsletter. If anybody wants our newsletter, we publish different blog with different topics. Part of my programs, we open the programs every month for people to join. So they can come as a guest and they can observe a demonstration of coaching or supervision. So that's something we do every month. So that's an invitation to, it's free.

Speaker 1:

Very generous. Very generous my friend. Me amigo. My little bit of Spanish. Thank you f or inviting me. Oh, our pleasure, our pleasure. Thank you. We had to have you in the issue. We had to have you number one in the feature well, and we had to have you on the podcast. So the trifecta. Thank you very much.

Speaker 2:

Thank you. And thank you for all of the work that you do also to bring more awareness in the coaching profession.

Speaker 1:

That's it for this episode of Beyond the Page. For more episodes, subscribe via your favorite podcast app. I know for sure we're on Apple and Spotify, so check us out there, choice Magazine. And don't forget to sign up for your free digital issue of choice Magazine by going to choice-online.com and clicking the signup now button. I'm Garry Schleifer, enjoy your journey to mastery.