Professional Practice Supervision is a conversational process that supports and challenges, provides insight and practical suggestions and offers a space for ‘thinking out loud’ and reflection with an experienced practitioner.

Good supervision aims to enhance self knowledge and self awareness, while building and increasing practical ability, and deepening the powers of observation, cognitive processing, emotional reading, and active intervention. In short, professional practice supervision supports personal development in the skill of facilitating change

The process can help you think through and consider responses to such challenges as

What’s going on here?

What is the best way to engage with this or proceed?

Why isn’t this going to plan?

I’m stuck, they’re stuck, how do I get things moving again?

As well as helping you unpick

The patterns of the complex responsive process of relating

Building and managing relationships with the whole system

The whole process from secure commissions to evaluating impact

Ethical challenges

Power dynamics

and much more

The service is offered to people in the fields of facilitation and organisational development. In other words, to practitioners working in dynamic, fluid, emergent systems who are focussed on helping the system achieve some kind of beneficial change.

The opportunity to slow down and reflect, often in detail, on a particular interaction is likely to produce greater self-awareness.

Discussing possibilities for future action can lead to greater understanding of the opportunities and constraints of the role of facilitator.

Anchoring to some one a greater distance from the system can help protect against ‘seduction’ by the powerful.

Effective questioning by the supervisor can help reveal the power dynamics at play.

Joint analysis of the choices made and the impact (or not) of various interventions can lead to a greater understanding of the facilitative process.

Accessing the supervisor’s experience and resources can enhance the range of deliberative action.

The service can be delivered one-to-one or to a small group. The frequency of the meet ups can be agreed to reflect the complexity, urgency or pace of the work.

Allowing for geographical constraints, the service can be delivered face-to-face or online.

Generally a minimum series of 5 sessions is agreed, but established clients maybe able to access ‘emergency’ sessions.

The content for the sessions is brought by the client. Each session will be focussed on what you want to focus on at that point in time.

It is for the client to take notes of and during the session. No ‘record of the session’ is provided by the supervisor.

I am an experienced, highly qualified facilitator and organisational development practitioner, with a previous career as a child protection social worker. For the last thirty years I have worked with a multitude organisations from across the not-for-profit, public and commercial sectors with groups, large and small, that sought to achieve change.

I am a published author in the field with six books to my name.

I am fascinated by the whole process of human group dynamics and systems and the role of the facilitator.

With a transdisciplinary first degree and further qualifications in social work, organisational psychology and creative writing, I can offer many different lenses through which to view phenomena to find a perspective that opens up possibilities.