What Good Supervision Offers Once the Training Is Done

How reflective supervision supports the transition from self-doubt to coaching mastery.

I recently spoke to a coach who described their first supervision experience as "dreadful." The supervisor was highly experienced but seemed more interested in demonstrating their expertise than supporting the coach. The coach felt judged and left the session feeling small. Thankfully, they gave it another go - and found a different kind of supervisor: one who held the space with care, rigour, and kindness.

It stayed with me. Because early supervision experiences matter.

Great supervision (individual or in a group) can become an important formative container - one that carries us through the early years of practice with all their challenges, wobbles, and joys. When it's done well, it holds us as professionals and as humans.

It's a container to help us grow into the coach we want to become. Both one-to-one and group supervision have real value - but there’s something uniquely powerful about a group coming together. When we each bring our piece of the puzzle, it becomes easier to connect the dots, see the whole picture, and grow from it.

But not everyone sees its full potential straight away.

Often, what's available during or after training are rotating groups, focused on early-stage questions or competencies needed for credentialling. Valuable, yes. But also limited.

It's easy to come away thinking, "This is just part of the certification process," and miss the deeper work supervision can enable.

Erik de Haan describes supervision as reflection-in-relationship, a place where experiences from practice are transformed into new potential for action. It's a phrase that I keep returning to as it always evokes a sense of excitement in me - because it's the sum of those moments that carves a path to excellence.

But here's the thing: supervision is a practice in itself.

I've seen it many times in my work with newly qualified coaches that being in supervision — especially early on — can bring up a surprising amount of ambivalence: "Is this the right thing to bring?" "Am I doing it wrong?" "What if my supervisor thinks that I shouldn't be coaching?"

Sometimes, supervision becomes a space full of questions: How do I do this? Was that okay? Should I have done more?

And it's in meeting those questions - gently, relationally - that something begins to shift.

Over time, something else begins to emerge. We start exploring not just what happened, but what it tells us about our patterns, our presence, our way of being in the work. We notice the paradoxes. The places we get hooked. The ethical edges. The grey areas between coaching and therapy. The moments we flinch or light up.

Supervision of this kind is sometimes hard to explain and it has to be experienced, but here are a few examples that can shed some light on what happens in supervision groups:

• A coach brings a session they can't stop replaying - convinced they "messed up" by missing a client cue. Together, we slow it down, untangle fact from fear, and uncover a valuable learning moment beneath the self-criticism.

  
  

• Another coach realises that many of their clients are burning out - and through reflection, sees how their own over-functioning might be subtly shaping the work.

  
  

• Someone else notices a pattern: they often sense something important in sessions but hesitate to say it. Supervision becomes the space to explore why - and to practise voicing what they see with more courage and care.

When you’re choosing supervision, pay attention to how authority is held.

It can make or break the experience.

Healthy authority feels like:

– being challenged, but with care,

– interrupted, but usefully - when you're circling something important,

– offered a hypothesis - “I wonder if...” - not handed a conclusion.

It's the kind of authority that shares experience to support your growth, not to prove expertise.

Unhealthy authority feels different.

You probably get a sense of it as you read these words. There is ego in the room, even if unspoken.

– the feedback that stings but doesn’t necessarily land,

– certainty where curiosity should be,

– advice delivered like a verdict, not an invitation.

Good supervision should feel like coming home to yourself, not performing for someone else's approval.

Eventually, supervision becomes not just a place of support, but a site of mastery.

Not mastery as perfection. But as clarity. Intentionality. The ability to stay present in complexity. The courage to bring more of ourselves into the work — not as a performance, but as an offering.

And that's what excites me most about supervision: the chance to practise this from the very beginning. In a space that welcomes uncertainty and treats self-doubt not as something to get rid of, but as something we can learn from.

If you're a coach in the early years of practice and this speaks to where you are - curious, thoughtful, finding your way but committed - you might be interested in the kind of supervision experience I'm describing.

From Self-Doubt to Coaching Mastery is a six-month programme designed exactly for this: to help you build confidence and depth in your work while being part of a community that grows together. It's designed to introduce supervision gently, helping you learn to use this powerful tool from the very beginning, in a space that welcomes uncertainty and treats it as fertile ground for growth.

Read more here.