Select one or more of the activities below to develop your skills in supervision.
 
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1. Get some supervision of your supervision

Choose a piece of supervision that you found quite challenging. Find a colleague who is prepared to debrief you about this. Ask your colleague to help you think about the supervision using the following guidelines.

• They can only ask you questions.
• They should make each question follow on from your response to the previous question.
• They should not give you any advice.

2. Think about power

Next time you give or receive supervision try to identify the possible power differences between you and the other person. Note down some ideas about how you think these may affect the supervision. What might they make it easier to focus on and what might be constrained by them? How easy is it to talk about this and do you think that paying attention to these factors makes a difference?

3. Work on how to be aware of and use your own prejudices

We all have opinions and take positions about the things we hear. The next time you find yourself wanting to state your view or feeling strongly about something when you are giving supervision, flag this up for yourself so that you are aware of it.

Try to remain curious about your responses. Can you remain non-judgemental and turn your opinions into questions to ask the other person? You may find it helpful to practise this with a colleague who can help you identify your strong opinions and assumptions and reformulate these into questions with you. By doing this you can help the supervisee come to conclusions that are more likely to have a better personal fit and be acceptable to them.