Coach's Supervision: The Saviour from Solitude

Photo by Matthew Henry on Unsplash

Coaching breeds it’s own kind of solitude; sitting in silence with another person’s truth and bound by confidentiality and ethics that sound simple on paper…until they aren’t. Holding this space and silence for others creates a paradox; a coach is expected to offer clarity amidst navigating their own fog. What happens when ethics and confidentiality clash? A 2022 study by Puleng Ratlabala and Nicky Terblanche gave sound to that silence through interviews with coaching supervisors from COMENSA and the ICF; the people who hold the people holding everyone else. They found that coaches don’t seek supervision for a ‘professional polish’, but instead, to stay human. The most experienced coach does not struggle for lack of ethics.

They struggle because they work alone.

Confidentiality is a sacred boundary in the coaching profession, but this acts, also, as a wall. Real life is messy and unpredictable and coaches face ethical dilemmas that no guideline can fully prepare them for; the tidiness of rules is not enough to match the unruliness of reality.

Supervisors have identified two main kinds of ethical tension:

Three-Way Relationships and Confidentiality

Or, the dance between coach, coachee and the sponsoring organisations. Three separate parties with three sets of expectations.

The scenario: an organisation asks for progress updates on a coachee. It may seem harmless, a wish to stay in the loop, but for the coach, it can feel like pressure to betray confidence, to trade trust for compliance.

Three-way relationships may be present in an alternative stance; when a coach is asked to work with a colleague they already know, someone who was once a peer, or more complicatedly, a friend. The blur of professional lines and interactions guided by unspoken familiarity make taking an unbiased approach (neutrality - the essence of coaching) harder to maintain.

Coach and Organisation Contracting

Loyalty.

What happens when a coach is forced to take sides?

Sometimes the organisation wants outcomes, sometimes the coachee wants safety and sometimes the coach gets lodged between them – loyal to both, belonging to neither. When a coach discovers their coachee has committed misconduct, they cannot speak out without breaching confidentiality. When organisations use coaching as a subtle weapon to manage people out there may be a conflict of moral interest, and nothing to be done about it without breaking contract. Ethics become more than theoretical, they become visceral.

And that is where supervision comes in, to steady the turbulence created by the uncertainty of human interaction; to save the coach. Supervision is more than quality assurance, it is a lifeline, a reflective space for coaches to speak when they have been silenced, to navigate the transition between abstract ethical frameworks and real life.

When a supervisor use structured tools, such as the ACTION framework, it creates a structure for thinking, slowing the moment between impulse and action. They ask sharper questions; ‘what are you loyal to here?’ and ‘where are you overstepping?’. They offer the reminder that not everything falls under the parameters of coaching, belonging in therapy rooms or HR offices – or to the coachee’s own introspection. The boundaries a supervisor draws protect all involved; the client, the coach and the work itself.

Strong contracting can also mitigate these blurry lines. While this sounds bureaucratic, it is not; it is about honesty, laying all cards on the table before the issue even occurs. The professional relationship must begin with the confirmation what a coach will offer and what they cannot do; that is real confidentiality. This does not, however, mean that there will not be messy situations to follow but with the guidance of a supervisor, a coach will not

respond with a spiral into self doubt and isolation, but with reflection and recalibration and the ability to reach out.

The lack of ethical training may be a fatal flaw to the business of coaching, left unprepared, decisions may be made swayed by emotion, loyalty or fear. The assumption that a ‘good’ person will automatically make ‘good’ decisions is an issue that cannot be overlooked, it is not human to act without emotion, and unmanaged emotion may cause irreparable damage to client, organisation and the credibility of the profession itself. Supervision brings unconscious forces to light, allowing the coach to step back, see themselves in the frame and question who exactly it is they are serving.

Supervision is about breeding self-awareness, catching the drift between empathy and intertwining, between being a support verses being the saviour. Not only that, but supervision offers connection. It breaks the loneliness of confidentiality, it allows the coach to be seen and challenge, it allows true development of professional and personal growth. Ethical strength is not built in isolation, it is forged in reflection and conversation and the ability to admit one’s own inabilities. Depth psychology will say that supervision limits the subjectivity of the unconscious, the shadow of the unconscious is fuelled with bias disguised as empathy or care. With supervision on hand, the further inward a coach can go, and the more discipline can be brought to the conscious, to let objectivity breathe, to keep power dynamics honest. Support breeds support, decisions can be made with both the heart and with clarity. Perhaps confidentiality does not have to mean isolation.

This study was published in the SA Journal of Human Resource Management (2022): Supervisors’ perspectives on the contribution of coaching supervision to the development of ethical organisational coaching practice | Ratlabala | SA Journal of Human Resource Management

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