The use of immediacy in supervisory relationships.

Abstract

The Use of ImmedIacy In sUpervIsory relaTIonshIps clara e. hIll and shUdarshana GUpTa 12 Imagine that Joan (a supervisee) is very angry at dr. s. (her supervisor) because dr. s. constantly interrupts the supervision session and takes phone calls, but Joan says nothing to dr. s. about the disruptions and acts as if everything is fine. or, consider that dr. s. has overheard people talking in the lunchroom about Joan's dissatisfaction with supervision, but Joan has said nothing to dr. s. how should Joan and dr. s. deal with these situations?We propose that immediacy, or the supervisor and supervisee talking together directly about the relationship, could help to resolve some of the problems in the above situations. Unfortunately, although there is talk in the supervision literature about the importance of openly processing the supervisory relationship (e.g., mueller & Kell, 1972;stoltenberg & mcneill, 2012), there is minimal empirical research. hence, we first briefly review the literature about immediacy in psychotherapy, and then we make propositions about how immediacy could be used in supervision. We next review a study on working with

Supervisees' experiences of a metacommunication intervention in clinical supervision

“…Some also noted new learning about their role as a therapist, greater depth of reflection about the therapeutic relationship, and an enhanced awareness of parallel processes across therapy and supervisory contexts. These themes lend support to the notion that active strategies involving purposeful engagement with the supervisory relationship may offer a powerful experiential learning strategy that has the potential to impact supervisees' work with clients (Calvert et al, ; Hill & Gupta, ).…”

“…The supervisory relationship may provide a space for experiential learning for relationally based therapeutic strategies like metacommunication (Calvert, Crowe, & Grenyer, ; Hill & Gupta, ; Hill & Knox, ; Kaslow & Bell, ). The use of metacommunication in supervision (the supervisor and supervisee talking directly about the supervisory relationship and processes) provides an opportunity for the supervisee to observe and then practice these skills within the supervisory relationship which may transfer to their work with clients (Calvert et al, ).…”

“…The use of metacommunication in supervision (the supervisor and supervisee talking directly about the supervisory relationship and processes) provides an opportunity for the supervisee to observe and then practice these skills within the supervisory relationship which may transfer to their work with clients (Calvert et al, ). Hill and Gupta () conducted semi‐structured interviews with 18 supervision dyads to explore supervisor and supervisee experiences of metacommunication within supervision. Qualitative analysis of the interview data resulted in four key themes.…”

“…Calvert, Deane, and Grenyer () developed the Metacommunication in Supervision Questionnaire (MSQ) based on the themes identified by Hill and Gupta (). The MSQ was used to quantify the frequency of different types of metacommunication in supervision, from the supervisee perspective.…”

Improvements in psychologists’ metacommunication self‐efficacy, willingness, and skill following online training and a supervision exercise

“…In the context of psychotherapy, metacommunication involves speaking directly with clients about relational dynamics occurring within the therapy room (Kiesler, ). A number of alternative terms for this skill have been used interchangeably in the literature (Hill & Gupta, ), including immediacy (Hill et al, ) and process comments (Teyber & McClure, ). These terms all refer to a here‐and‐now discussion with clients about the interpersonal processes in the therapeutic relationship.…”