Key Questions for Prospective Clinical Supervisors

Choosing a clinical supervisor is a significant decision impacting professional development. Asking targeted questions during an initial meeting can help assess compatibility and the supervisor’s approach, moving beyond assumptions based solely on reputation or credentials.

Here are questions I’m typically asked by prospective supervisees. If you need me to expand on the answers, I recommend you contact me for an initial chat.

What is your primary theoretical orientation? What if I use a different approach or modality to you? Would I still benefit from supervision with you?

My primary theoretical approach is acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), but I’m trained in several other approaches. I’ve explained why ACT is my primary orientation elsewhere. One of the principles that ACT emphasizes is that of psychological flexibility. This allows someone who’s practising in an ACT-consistent manner to work with a wide range of clients. They’re able to do this because psychological flexibility means you are not cognitively fused with your own beliefs or point of view and have learned to navigate by pragmatic goals rather than by preconceptions.  This allows the practitioner to adapt to people with many different concerns and backgrounds.

Likewise, when it comes to supervision, we’re not restricted to only supporting someone who has the same worldview as us. For instance, I’ve supported practitioners who are oriented more towards schema therapy, existentialist and psychodynamic approaches, and family systems approaches, even though those are not approaches that I use.

If you want to understand more about how I can support you even if you have a different theoretical approach, it would probably be a good idea for us to have a chat to ensure we understand each other’s way of working.

How do you approach giving feedback, particularly when it involves areas needing improvement or potential difficulties in my work? Could you share how you generally handle providing constructive criticism?

As I’ve said elsewhere, feedback is a tool, not a weapon, so it shouldn’t be experienced by the supervisee as punishment for getting something wrong.

In fact, you and I should welcome your mistakes. They are learning opportunities. When I work with a supervisee who is experiencing difficulties in their work, we need first of all to locate where the difficulty is. Sometimes it actually is with the client and you may be doing as much as you could possibly do.

However, on other occasions it may become clear through questioning that you are missing something in what you’re offering the client. At other times you may simply have a specific developmental need, as in learning how to use a particular technical approach or learning to pay attention to your own reactions to clients.

I will tend to deliver such feedback in a way that is calibrated to several factors such as:

• your openness and hopefully lack of defensiveness,
• your level of development,
• your motivation to change what you do in sessions to both learn and to support the client better.

What are your views on using direct observation methods such as reviewing audio or video recordings of sessions as part of clinical supervision? Is this something you typically incorporate?

I love direct observation and it’s probably how you were originally taught to do counselling or psychotherapy. I see it as an essential part of our learning. If I ruled the world, I would actually require all psychologists to have a peer or supervisor observing one session a month. And likewise, they would be able to sit in on some of the supervisor’s sessions. This would give everybody a chance to know what everybody is doing in their practice. I’m all for transparency.

When I can get my client’s consent to show a session to my supervisees*, I’ll often audio or video record a session and review it especially with practitioners who are in graduate student or registrar programs. However, I can make this available to other supervisees as well.

Likewise, I would very much welcome it if you’re able to provide recordings of sessions with clients who have given new consent with the understanding that it’s done to support your learning. This is very much how medical practitioners and other allied health practitioners are trained. I think it’s a shame it’s not done more often in our field.

* I implement very strict conditions on these recordings to protect the client’s privacy and ensure they have ultimate consent on what gets recorded and whom it gets shown to. I provide the client with the names of the supervisees I plan to show the recording to and the period over which the recording  will be available to them including when the recording will be destroyed – usually within thirty days. Clients are given the option to withdraw consent at any time during or after the recording has been made. If you are sitting in on a session with my client they know why you are there, that you are bound by the same confidentiality restrictions as I am, and that they may ask you to leave at any time during the session.

How do you typically work to create a safe environment where supervisees feel comfortable discussing their challenges, uncertainties and mistakes openly?

I’m so glad you asked this question. It is actually fundamental in much the same way as we hold a space for our clients to feel safe to learn. It’s absolutely necessary for supervisees to feel safe. Part of what you’re doing is revealing the areas of your practice where you’re most vulnerable. To do that, you need to know that your supervisor isn’t going to attack you and indeed has your best interests at heart, both as a person and as a professional.

“You have always been kind and supportive to me.“

Anonymous supervisee

Like many of the other processes that I employ in both therapy and supervision, I adapt what I’m doing to the needs of the individual. This means that I don’t have specific techniques for making supervisees feel safe. Rather, through careful listening and open communication, we can establish your areas of vulnerability and then I can take particular precautions depending on your needs.

Clinical work can be demanding. How do you support supervisees in managing stress, processing difficult client experiences, or vicarious trauma, and maintaining well-being to prevent burnout?

This is such a crucial question, especially for younger practitioners early in their career. You may well be very enthusiastic about working with challenging clients, carrying a high caseload, or trying to be all things to all people. However, my aim is to help you have a sustainable career that provides satisfaction for you as well as your clients.

For this reason, I need to know about your workplace and how you fit into it, what demands are made of you, what kind of people, both clients and colleagues, you work with, what level of resilience you already have, and how you respond when you’re either traumatized or stressed.

The better you look after yourself, the better you’ll be able to care for others.

By paying attention to signs that show up with someone experiencing burnout, workplace stress and vicarious trauma, I’m able to suggest ways to buffer yourself against those stressors.  However you  also may need to revise either your work practices or your own expectations so that you can manage these challenging experiences.

One of the essential components of ACT that is often overlooked is the practice of self-compassion. I often say to my supervisees that we’re human beings doing a human job with other human beings. This means that just as we show compassion to our clients, we need to be able to treat ourselves with compassion and take whatever steps we can to restore our well-being when we’re under pressure.

Difficulties or disagreements can sometimes arise in any relationship. If we experience a misunderstanding or rupture in our supervisory relationship, how would you typically approach addressing and resolving it?

The answer to this depends on a lot of other factors:

• How long we’ve worked together.
• How the rupture arose.
• How it’s affecting you.
• Whether, for instance, I even noticed it.

Hopefully I will notice a rupture, but I’m not a mind reader and so I can’t know about a one that hasn’t been communicated or signaled to me. With regard to the transparency that I mentioned earlier, this is why I think it’s so important that we be able to both practice good assertiveness skills and state clearly what was the expectation and in what way it wasn’t met. That’s usually at the core of a supervisory rupture. Early attempts at resolution are always more likely to be successful than allowing a situation to stagnate. So I will tend to raise a suspected rupture as early as possible. And I welcome that from my supervisees.

Should the relationship become unworkable I would propose bringing in an agreed upon third party, such as another experienced supervisor, to mediate the situation so that we can be, if not happy, at least at peace with the resolution.  I need to add that this has never been required in 25 years of supervision practice.

I’m absolutely fine with people stopping seeing me for supervision. I know my approach isn’t right for everybody, which is why I’ve developed these questions and answers and also why I insist on the initial complimentary meeting before we start.

How do you assist supervisees in thinking through and navigating ethical dilemmas that arise in their practice?

Again, the answer to this depends on  your career stage and the level of experience you have had in dealing with these situations. It would be nice if ethical dilemmas could be resolved as simply as just looking up the code of professional conduct and applying the principles. The code is good in terms of clarifying situations that are clearly either in or outside ethical boundaries. But the difficulties you’re going to bring to supervision are usually in the areas where things aren’t black and white.

I try to train my supervisees to ask intelligent questions about ethical dilemmas and challenging situations. Questions that require them to think through issues such as:

• Who are the parties involved or potentially affected by the situation?
• What ethical principles are at play?
• What elements of the code of professional conduct come into play in this situation?
• Of course, what are my own personal values?

At the end of the day, you need to not only be able to show your colleagues and the wider public that you’ve behaved ethically, but you have to be able to live with your own conscience.

What are your expectations of me as a supervisee in terms of preparation for sessions, engagement and communication?

In my experience some supervisees don’t prepare as thoroughly for sessions as they might. I understand why this is. We’re often under a lot of time pressure and it’s quite common for supervisees to arrive at a session saying, “Oh, I haven’t prepared anything”. Usually, though, we can overcome that and have a productive session.  You will find there are often issues, concerns, and clients that have been taking up your attention between sessions. Simply taking a mindful moment to pause and contemplate recent weeks allows these concerns to bubble up to the surface.

In terms of engagement, I really appreciate it when you engage with me in exercises such as role plays or Socratic questioning on how you might resolve a therapeutic or ethical issue, or how you might respond to something a client says or does.

In terms of communication, the main thing is to be as forthright and honest as you can be. I will do the same.

Conclusion

Choosing a clinical supervisor is a big decision for a practitioner. It’s not just about meeting requirements, it’s about finding a supervisor who can help you grow professionally, personally and ethically. Research shows that a good supervisory relationship is key, along with constructive feedback and reflection.

I’ve provided these questions so that even if you decide not to pursue supervision with me, they can help you start a conversation with potential supervisors and find someone who fits your learning style and goals. It’s not about finding the ‘perfect’ supervisor, but building a relationship based on understanding, openness, and growth. This will help you become a better psychologist and provide the best possible care for your clients and greater career satisfaction.