“Supervision is where we wipe the sweat from our brows and dirt from our faces, wash our hands, look at ourselves in the mirror and get ready to become an ‘ordinary’ person again, without a ‘role’ or ‘function’. To do so we need to bring our newly acquired experiences, impressions and reflections up to the surface, review them and sometimes give them a clean, and then muster up the courage to process our emotions, undertake honest reflection and integrate our recent experience into our broader consulting practice” (Erik de Haan, 2012). Ultimately, supervision is in service of the business or organisation that the work of consultancy, change, coaching is taking place within.
You may be an internal HR/OD Director or Change agent, an Executive Coach or Organisation Consultant who is spending large amounts of time coaching, consulting and supporting individuals, groups and organisations. You are likely to need a safe, confidential place to go to process your work and receive what you need in service of your client and to sustain your practice. This could be for support (restorative) learning and growth (formative) and monitoring (normative) (Inskipp and Proctor, 2001).