Transforming Supervision: Are you a compulsive problem solver?
Imagine a world where supervisors are no longer the superheroes swooping to the rescue, ready to solve every supervisee’s problem.
Instead, they're the wise guides holding space for reflection and discovery, transforming supervisory conversations, into a landscape of endless learning opportunities.
This isn't just a shift; it's an evolution in supervision, taking the experience from a benign chat to deep and engaging professional learning. It takes the supervisor to move from being the continual fixer to being a facilitator of learning responding to the real learning goals of their supervisees.
The adage “give someone a fish and you feed them for a day, teach them to fish and you feed them for a lifetime” rings so true when it comes to refining our role as professional and clinical supervisors.
The Art of Facilitating Learning
Facilitating learning is less about handing out answers and more about crafting reflective questions that act like keys, unlocking self-reflection and new perspectives for each individual.
It’s the art of seeing the learning opportunities that every situation offers and building capacity in others and helping them see it too.
Supervision, in this context, is the act of creating an environment where people can build their strengths, skills, insights and potential. This is built not on dependency but on the empowerment of exploration and the bravery of asking good questions.
Critical times to give your supervisee a fish
When someone is starving, and you have a bucket of fish, it is not the time to start asking thousands of reflective questions. As we explore in detail in my comprehensive supervision training, there are critical times where it is necessary to problem solve and give supervisees guidance or an answer. These can include situations when:
- it is time critical
- there is risk
- there is a duty of care issue
- the supervisee has no bandwidth – they’re very stressed or overwhelmed and their cognitive capacity is limited
- the supervisee doesn’t know, what they don’t know
However, sometimes our choice to problem solve is driven by other factors and may not be the optimal strategy for supervision.
Understanding the Drive to Solve
It’s helpful to be able to choose the best supervision strategy and not compulsively problem-solving. To do so, it's crucial to understand the underlying reasons why we fall into this pattern. This can stem from various drivers, including:
Belief that problem-solving is supervision: When we’ve had little training and guidance in the nuanced role of professional and clinical supervisor, we can believe that the most important role of a supervisor is to solve our supervisee’s problems, rather than understanding we are there to be the facilitator of learning.
A Need for Control: In a world that often feels chaotic and unpredictable, solving problems provides a sense of control. It's a way to impose order on disorder, to feel that we're steering the ship rather than being tossed by the waves.
Validation and Recognition: Solving problems can become a source of validation and recognition from peers and superiors. It becomes a way to prove our worth, to stand out as the go-to person in a crisis, and as much as we may not like to admit it, it also feeds our egos.
Lack of confidence: When we’re very self-critical and lack confidence, we can give answers to problems as a way of re-assuring ourselves that we have value to offer our supervisees.
Cultural and Environmental Factors: Sometimes, the drive comes from the culture of the workplace, or the expectations set by leadership. In environments that value being busy and solving problems, it's easy to fall into the trap of compulsive problem-solving.
Recognising these drivers is the first step towards changing the pattern. It allows us to see the difference between being genuinely helpful and being driven by an internal compulsion that may not always serve us or our teams well.
The Toolkit for Transformation
With an understanding of what drives us to compulsively solve problems, we can better embrace the role of a facilitator of learning. Here’s how:
Cultivate Curiosity and Reflection: Build your capacity to ask reflective questions, to dig deeper, and see challenges as puzzles to be solved together. It's about fostering a culture where we are willing to let go of control and ask great questions. These could include:
What did you do well?
What could be improved?
What theory or framework could be helpful or applicable here?
What were you thinking or feeling?
Let’s brainstorm several other ways we could address that.
What are some of the specific positive thoughts and ideas?
What were some of the most interesting discoveries you made? About the problem or situation? About yourself? About others?
What were some of the most challenging moments and what made them so?
What were some of the most powerful learning moments and what made them so?
What is the most important thing you learned personally?
How did you incorporate your previous clinical wisdom in this situation?
Normalise Learning: Share your growth and development journey, the bumps, the detours, and the discoveries. This vulnerability isn't a weakness; it's a superpower that reassures supervisees that it is safe to learn.
Design a Culture of Feedback: Invite feedback, create the type of supervisory relationship where your supervisee feels safe to provide you feedback, where feedback is two-way, not just welcomed but celebrated. It's not about criticism but about growth, a continuous loop of feedback that fuels improvement and innovation.
Becoming a facilitator of learning is about being the linchpin in the wheel of growth, the one who sees the potential in every challenge and the learning opportunity in every failure. It's a call to shift from being the hero who saves the day to the mentor who empowers others to save their own. This isn't just supervision; it's leadership in its most genuine and impactful form.
If you’re curious about how to hone your supervisory skills, we have regular supervision training both online and in-person in Melbourne. We also offer training for supervisees and can bring these training programs into your workplace and deliver them in-house customised to your learning needs.
If you’d like to know more about the supervision offerings you can find more details here.
If you would like to explore the option of Michelle delivering an in-house professional and clinical supervision program click here.