A Profile of Lousy Supervision: Experienced Counselors' Perspectives

Abstract

The authors used data from interviews with experienced counselors to examine ineffective supervision practices. The data yielded 6 overarching principles (e.g., unbalanced, intolerant of differences, untrained/immature) that permeated 3 general spheres of lousy supervision (e.g., technical/cognitive).

Building and Sustaining the Supervisory Relationship

“…Shafranske (2004, 2012), in their summary of the literature in this area, suggest that a good SR consists of facilitating attitudes, behaviors, and practices including, for example, a sense of team work (Henderson, Cawyer, Stringer, & Watkins, 1999), empathy (Worthen & McNeill, 1996), approachability and attentiveness (Henderson et al,1999), encour agement of disclosures by supervisees (Ladany, Hill, Corbett, & Nutt, 1996), and supervisors' sensitivity to the developmental level of the supervisee (e.g., Magnuson, Wilcoxon, & Norem, 2000). Additionally, recent research (Ancis & Ladany, 2010;Constantine, 2001;Inman, 2006) suggests that the supervisor's multicultural com petence is an important component of the SR, which supports the significance of contextual influences identified by the work of Clohessy (Beinart & Clohessy, 2009) and Pearce et al (2013).…”

Administrative and Clinical Supervision: The Impact of Dual Roles on Supervisee Disclosure in Counseling Supervision

“…Supervisor training was first, due to the lack of quantitative research on the effect of training on supervisee disclosure. Given the evidence that supervisory training may assist supervisors in managing more difficult clinical situations (Magnuson et al, 2000), I wanted to explore the impact of dual role on supervisee self-disclosure above and beyond any impact of supervisor training level. Supervisor disclosure was included second due to the findings of Walsh and colleagues (2003) regarding mutuality within the supervisory relationship.…”

“…Magnuson, Wilcoxon, and Norem (2000) identified multiple aspects of ineffective supervision. Two of their findings stand out related to the multiple pressures on dual-role supervisors.…”

“…Ladany, Walker, and Melincoff (2001) found that increased supervisor self-disclosure was correlated with a more effective supervisory style. The level of training of the supervisor has also been identified as a contributing factor to the efficacy of supervision (Magnuson et al, 2000). Supervisors with inadequate training were described as having difficulty managing advanced supervisory issues.…”

The Importance of Competency-based Clinical Supervision and Training in the Twenty-first Century: Why Bother?

“…Well the truth is supervision has not always been stellar. For example, inadequate (Greer 2003), culturally-insensitive (Burkhard et al 2006, 2009Jernigan et al 2010), lousy (Magnuson et al 2000), and even harmful (not simply ineffective but actually harms or traumatizes the supervisee) supervision occurs (Ellis and Swords 2009;Ellis 2001). Even if supervision does not suffer from the aforementioned deficits, supervision that does not clearly identify, assess, and facilitate the development of specific competencies, including metacompetence, will likely fall short of what we refer to as competency-based clinical supervision.…”