Supporting Growth Through Every Stage of Practice

One of your supervisees arrives at supervision wanting to explore complex clinical thinking, reflect on their decision-making, and consider different ways of approaching a situation. Another wants to check the fundamentals, build confidence, and confirm they are on the right track before moving forward. Same years in the role, same fortnightly supervision sessions, but they need completely different conversations.

If your approach to supervision does not already reflect that difference, you are not alone. Supervision is often shaped by role and years of experience, rather than where someone actually is in their professional learning journey.

A useful starting point, but not the whole picture

Role, years of experience, and level of responsibility are often used to guide supervision arrangements. This provides a practical way for workplaces to organise support.

Research into allied health supervision found frequency was commonly based on career stage, with newer practitioners typically receiving more frequent supervision than experienced colleagues (Snowdon et al., 2020). While this is a useful starting point, it does not always reflect what an individual practitioner needs to continue developing.

The research shows that supervision is most effective when it centres on the learning needs of the supervisee, whether the supervisors has the relational skills to facilitate that and when the workplace creates the conditions for it to happen.

The reframe: stage, not years in the role

Growth in practice tends to move through developmental stages. Patricia Benner's model of skill acquisition describes five stages, novice, advanced beginner, competent, proficient, and expert, drawn from watching practitioners develop over time (Benner, 1982). What is most useful is not the labels but the finding underneath them. As Benner put it, experience is not the mere passage of time, it is the refinement of theory and preconceived notions through real, practical situations.

This explains why years of experience tell only part of the story. Practitioners can have many years of experience but limited practice wisdom, if they have never invested in reflective learning.

As John Dewey says, we do not learn from experience, we learn from reflecting on experience. A practitioner who actively engages in reflective learning with five years' experience can have significantly more practice wisdom than a practitioner of twenty years' experience who has never committed to reflective practice.

For supervisors, this means asking a different question. Rather than asking, "How long has this person been qualified?", ask, "What does this person need from supervision to continue developing?" That is not a question for the supervisor to answer alone. It is a conversation co-designed, with your supervisee, regularly reviewed and tailored to each learning goal to ensure a good match of support for their current learning needs.

Understanding a person's stage of development may change the focus of their supervisory needs. Supervising well is its own skill, separate from clinical expertise, though it is easy to assume otherwise. A recent graduate may need more structure, guidance, and frequent feedback as they build confidence and clinical judgement. As practitioners develop, supervision gradually shifts towards reflection, critical thinking, and exploring more complex situations. Experienced practitioners often benefit from supervision that offers challenge, different perspectives, and space to continue learning, rather than simply confirming what they already know.

One of the misconceptions I still encounter is that supervision becomes less important as experience grows. In reality, the purpose of supervision changes. Early in a career it often focuses on building confidence and competence. Later it becomes a place to test thinking, navigate complexity, explore leadership, and continue refining practice. Reflective practice is not something we graduate from.

Our learning needs and goals change throughout our careers, but the need for a dedicated space to think, reflect, and continue developing does not.

Research also supports this approach, finding that supervision is most effective when it is responsive to the individual, rather than delivered as a one-size-fits-all process (Snowdon et al., 2020).

I think of supervision as a custom-tailored jacket, co-designed with the person you are supervising. As they grow, the jacket needs adjusting too so it fits their learning needs and stage of development, not handed out off the rack.

The practice

One concrete way to put this into practice is to co-design supervision around explicit, current learning goals, rather than a fixed list of agenda items or tasks. Those goals should be revisited regularly as the practitioner's confidence, responsibilities, and stage of development change. That is one of the clearest ways to make the stage visible instead of assumed. Goals don’t have to be smart goals, they can be oriented to having greater self-awareness, enhanced confidence or stronger bandwidth.

It can be as simple as beginning a supervision session with questions such as:

• What would make today's supervision most useful for you?

• What are you finding more straightforward than you were six months ago?

• Where would you value more support, and where would you like to be challenged?

• Are your current learning goals still the right ones, or have they changed?

If you supervise others:

• When did you last check whether your supervisee's stage matches your assumptions about them, rather than their years in the role or job title?

• Which of your supervisees might benefit from more guidance, and which ones are ready for a challenge?

• When did you last review your supervisee's learning goals together? Do they still reflect where they are now and where they want to develop next?

• When did you last ask your supervisee what would make supervision most useful for them?

If you are being supervised:

• What are you finding easier now than you did six months ago?

• What would you like more support with, and where would you like to be challenged?

• Have you told your supervisor what would make supervision most useful for you right now?

Supporting growth, not just experience

Those two supervisees with identical years in the role, don't need the same supervision simply because they have the same job title or years of experience. They need supervision that is co-designed around where they are now, where they want to develop next, and what will genuinely support that journey. Good supervision is never static. It evolves alongside the practitioner.

References

• Benner, P. (1982). From novice to expert The American Journal of Nursing, 82(3), 402-407.

• Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and education. Macmillan.

• Snowdon, D. A., Sargent, M., Williams, C. M., Maloney, S., Caspers, K., & Taylor, N. F. (2020). Effective clinical supervision of allied health professionals: A mixed methods study. BMC Health Services Research, 20(2). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-019-4873-8

• Walker, A., Nagarajan, S. V., Orr, P., Elphinston, R., Dunne, M., & McAllister, L. (2024). Allied health work readiness capabilities: A qualitative comparison of graduates, supervisors, and managers' perspectives. Journal of Interprofessional Care, 38(6), 1026-1034. https://doi.org/10.1080/13561820.2024.2406476

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