International Coaching Psychology Review, 4.2, September 2009

Barbara Moyes
Table 1: Functions of Supervision.
Kadushin Hawkins Hawkin’s Definition
Educational Developmental Skills development through reflection on work with client.
Supportive Resourcing Understanding how the emotions stemming from the client
contact affect the coach.
Managerial Qualitative Quality control, spotting coach’s blind spots, ensuring
standards and ethics are maintained and that the
organisation’s agenda is not lost.
shares some of the same psychological basis
as social work, but it draws on other theories,
concepts and methods, such as those from
sport (Gallwey, 1979), leadership (Lee,
2003) and business (Whitmore, 2003).
Unlike social work, coaching does not
operate within a legal framework. Most
coaching supervision tends not, as yet, to
occur within a managerial context. The managerial
aspect largely translates into quality
control in coaching supervision, considering
such issues as ethical dilemmas and
boundary issues, and ensuring that supervisees
are not out of their depth.
In summary, Kadushin’s (1976) influential
tri-part model still provides a broad
framework for understanding the functions
of coaching supervision, but within it, different
groups emphasise different functions.
Hawkins (2006a) identified an important
split between two key groups – coaches, who
want skills development (educational); and
purchasers of coaching supervision, who
want client protection (managerial). Finally,
coaches identified a specific developmental
need for help in achieving ‘shifts’ (or
change) with their clients.
The therapeutic model
Although we lack research into what happens
in coaching supervision, there is extensive
literature into the process of social work
supervision (for example, Kadushin, 1968;
Mattison, 1975; Irvine, 1984; Hayles, 1988;
Williams, 1997; Ganzer, 1999). This is particularly
relevant, given Hawkins’ and
Bluckert’s influence on shaping coaching
supervision. Irvine’s (1984) personal
account of supervising inexperienced social
workers illustrates how far Hawkins’
approach is influenced by social work supervision.
Irvine summarises the traditional social
work view of effective supervisory practice.
Application of theory to practice is fundamental;
Hawkins (2006a) also sees supervision
as the ‘glue that links theory to
practice.’ There is a similar emphasis on
reflection as essential for improving practice.
Jackson (2004) defines reflection as any
approach that generates individual selfawareness
of behaviour and performance.
Hawkins argues that supervision helps the
coach learn from experience and become a
better reflective practitioner.
Social work supervisors use the way the
client makes them feel as a diagnostic tool.
Of particular note is the transference. Transference
is the process by which the supervisee
transfers feelings from his/her own
past to the present relationship either with
the client or with the supervisor (Kahn,
1979). Sensitising the supervisee to the transference,
and the recognition of transferential
elements in the supervisee’s feelings, is a
key focus in therapeutic supervision. It is
used to help the supervisee enable the client
to change. This accords with the way Arney
(2007) interpreted the developmental
aspect of one-to-one supervision. Hawkins’
analysis of what supervision is trying to
achieve, with its focus on theory, transference
and projections, demonstrates the
same therapeutic orientation.
The more recent ‘big idea’ regarding
social work supervision is parallel process
166 International Coaching Psychology Review ● Vol. 4 No. 2 September 2009