48. Supervision4 - Structuring the Supervision Meeting

Today's episode, which is the fourth on the Unit Supervisory Learning Pathway, focuses on a model for how to structure the typical supervision session. In the context of working on a residential treatment unit for children and youth, there are many sub-roles that define an effective relationship between a supervisor and their supervisees.  A Supervisor encompasses the roles of Counselor, Teacher, Coach, Leader, Superior, Boss, and Mentor.  This episode focuses on starting supervision meetings with the Supervisor focuses on the role of Counselor.  In that role, the Supervisor is most concerned about the emotional well-being of the direct-care staff being supervised.   This initial focus on emotional wellness, which starts with simply asking a person how they're doing this week, makes sense as a basic display of good social skills.  However, the Counselor sub-role goes far beyond good manners and tries to attend to helping your Supervisees manage the high level of exposure to traumatic stress that is a big part of their jobs.  Just expressing concern helps.  Beyond that, there will be times when engaging in psychological debriefing will be an appropriate way to help your Supervisees take the edge off of the more stressful encounters they've had that week.  Attending to the basic human emotional needs of your Supervisees also means trying to help them find inspiration and meaning in the work, celebrating their successes, and reinforcing examples of their good teamwork and their demonstrating strong executive skills in their work. Sometimes, it makes sense to spend an entire supervision meeting primarily in that Counselor sub-role.  However, that should be the exception and not the rule.  Supervision meeting time is incredible valuable and a skilled Supervisor consciously designs their supervision time to be strategic about how many minutes to devote to the domain of emotions, before moving on to the other sub-roles (Teacher, Coach, Leader, Superior, Boss, and Mentor) that are also essential aspects of being an effective Supervisor.