One day that lit a workplace on fire

Last week, I had a ‘follow-up training’ meeting with the manager of an allied health team. She excitedly shared with me that the supervisee training had "lit a fire in their department".

Engagement in the team was up. People were highly motivated in supervision in ways they had never witnessed before. The culture had shifted. One day of supervisee training, and something had profoundly moved.

I wasn't completely surprised. I was, if anything, relieved that this manager had prioritised one of the best investments healthcare managers can make – supporting their team to know how to drive their own learning.

Because here's what most workplaces do: they invest in supervisor training and assume the supervision relationship will take care of itself. They put resources into one side of the equation and wonder why the results aren’t fully optimised.

The assumption that costs

Supervision is a co-created relationship. It requires two skilled participants who actively collaborate and drive the process. Yet in most health and community sector organisations, supervisee training is either an afterthought or doesn't exist at all.

This is not a small gap. As I outline in my whitepaper, Transformative Supervision, supervisees who are not trained in supervision are sometimes unsure of how to prepare for it, how to develop proactive and reflective learning goals, or how to advocate for their learning preferences. They can end up waiting for their supervisor to make the session worthwhile, and when it doesn't quite land, they can slowly disengage.

The result can be benign supervision: a tick-the-box exercise that neither party finds meaningful, and that costs the organisation real time and resources with very little return.

What would it look like if your supervisees actually knew how to use supervision well?

What supervisee training actually achieves

This week, I ran my public supervisees training for individuals from a range of backgrounds and locations across the health and community sector. The feedback I received from attendees is that they finally have a framework for something they've been doing without a map.

When supervisees understand what supervision is for, what their role in it is, and how to take ownership of their own learning, something shifts. They stop waiting to be taught and start driving their own growth and development.

The highest form of supervision is one where "supervisees are highly engaged, self-directed learners. They feel safe to share their learning goals, concerns, questions, and understand that seeking guidance is necessary for solid learning and skill development".

That level of engagement doesn't happen by accident. It happens when supervisees are prepared.

The manager I spoke with saw exactly this. Their team began to take initiative. Conversations in supervision deepened. People started arriving at sessions with learning goals and motivation. But even more than what happened in supervision sessions, the benefits to ongoing learning throughout the week had amplified.

The Cost of Only Training One Side

When workplaces invest only in supervisor training, they create an imbalance that is structural, not personal. Supervisors develop skills to facilitate rich learning conversations. But if supervisees don't know how to participate as active learners, even the most skilled supervisor is working against resistance.

This is the interpersonal equivalent of a coach working with a team that hasn't been educated in the rules of the game they're playing. The effort is real. The skill is real. But the conditions for learning haven't been created equally.

If supervision is one of the primary mechanisms for sustaining workforce wellbeing, then investing in the capability of those who provide it is essential. When supervisees are not adequately prepared, opportunities to strengthen engagement, resilience, and wellbeing may be missed.

Is your supervision program building both sides of the relationship, or just one?

What to do about it

If you're a leader, manager, supervisor, or supervisee looking at how to make some changes in your workplace, here's where I'd begin:

• Raise it in supervision. Talk openly about how the time is being used, including what the learning goals are, how preparation is going, and whether supervision is actually working. This conversation can shift the entire dynamic.

• Advocate for supervisee training as a distinct investment. It is not a luxury add-on to supervisor training. It is the other half of the same investment.

• Audit your supervision program. Does it include onboarding for supervisees? Do new staff receive an orientation on how to drive their own learning and supervision, and how to use it?

• Separate supervision literacy from clinical orientation. Many new staff receive an orientation to clinical work, but not to supervision itself. These are different skills and deserve separate attention.

• Book training for supervisors and supervisees together, or sequence them deliberately. Supervisee training before or alongside supervisor training creates a shared language. This makes every subsequent supervision session more productive.

• Build learning goals into your supervision culture. Encourage every supervisee to come to each session with at least one learning goal. This simple shift moves supervision from reactive problem-solving to proactive development.

The shift that makes things flow

Professional supervision, at its best, enhances self-directed learning, builds long-term workforce capacity, and contributes to a culture of lifelong professional growth. But this can only happen when both people in the room know what they're doing and why.

What I saw in that department after one day of training wasn't magic. It was what happens when people are finally given the understanding and permission to take ownership of their own learning. The fire was already there. The training just gave it air.

If your organisation is ready to invest in in-house training for supervisors and supervisees, I would love to talk to you. You can contact me here.

I also regularly run public training programs on supervision. My next available online Professional Supervision training is on 7 and 8 October, and face-to-face training is in Melbourne on 22 and 23 September. Training for supervisees in my one-day Getting the Most out of Supervision training will be on 30 November. Early bird fees are still available for all of these workshops.

Upcoming public training programs

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