Churchill Associates

I presented a workshop at the British Association for Supervision Practice and Research (BASPR) conference this past weekend.

I attend the conference most years as I really value the combination of thought-provoking speakers, friendly atmosphere, and a two-day format with breaks long enough to really talk to others. Over the weekend, various keynote speakers and workshop leaders explored areas such as learning from experience, how shame imprisons us, a philosophical consideration of accountability, and an outline of the research findings of the Oxford clinical psychology supervision research.

Those attending were mainly experienced supervisors, with a few training as supervisors. We were united by a commitment to enhancing how we operate as supervisors, but varied in many other respects – delegates included coaches, psychologists, psychotherapists and counsellors.

My topic was ‘Exploring our Jailer and Liberator voices’. I started by asking participants to consider how they viewed imprisonment and liberation in general, with the subsidiary questions ‘Is liberation always good?’ and ‘Is imprisonment always bad?’. The discussions in the small groups included themes such as:

• imprisonment sometimes provides safety for the individual
• structures can feel constraining, but again they provide safety
• complete freedom, without boundaries, does not always lead to creativity
• the key issues can be summarised as responsibility, choice, and owning our individual perceptions

I then went on to talk a little about the nature of ‘subpersonalities’ (aspects of ourself such as the inner critic) and invited those in the workshop to consider how they might fall into a liberating or imprisoning subpersonality. We speculated on the extent to which this might be a reaction to the subpersonality from which their supervisee was operating. (This idea – referred to as ‘reciprocal roles’ – is a central concept in cognitive analytic therapy.)

Although I didn’t mention this during the workshop, this is one strand I’m investigating in my current work on emotional intelligence.

I’ll be exploring these themes further with the people I supervise, and welcome comments from anyone reading.