How to prepare for supervision: what to bring and how to get the most out of it

Supervision should be a reflexive, flexible process that allows space for unexpected directions to be pursued and explored if they arise. It should also evolve as your supervision needs change. This means that what you need will often vary depending on your level of experience, your familiarity wth the modality you’re applying, and your stage in the therapeutic journey with your individual clients. Nonetheless, you will always get more from your supervision if you spend a bit of time preparing.

How to prepare?

• While sometimes it’s useful to have a supervision where multiple smaller, more practical/general issues are discussed, in general depth (1-2 clients per supervision)- rather than breadth- allows you to get most from the process. 

• Try to find/create time and mental space (easier said than done!) to sit down and reflect on your cases ahead of supervision. Identify clients with whom you’re experiencing some kind of difficulty (e.g. maybe you’re unsure how to formulate them or how to progress the therapy; maybe you’ve noticed a difficult emotional response to them; or maybe you recently had a session that didn’t go to plan). 

• Prepare brief typed summary notes (e.g. history, diagnosis, presenting problems, goals for therapy, challenges, and questions) of the client(s) you wish to discuss. This can feel time-consuming initially but over time it will make your supervision more efficient. Your supervisor (and you, in the process) will build up a deeper knowledge of your clients this way, which in turn will enable them to support your work with those clients more effectively. If you have a diagrammatic formulation (e.g. a schema mode map) this can also be useful to share with your supervisor.

• Prepare and ask one or two focused questions per client in supervision relating to the difficulties you’ve identified during your preparation. This can be worked on through exploration, role play, or working through of potential aspects of your experience (e.g. schema/mode activation) that might be impacting on the therapy.

• Bring segments of audio or video recordings (e.g. of a specific intervention being implemented) from a relevant session (recorded with client’s consent) to review these in supervision. Segments can be a great way of illustrating difficulties or issues you’d like help with.

• And finally, to help you get the most out of supervision in the long run, don’t be afraid to give constructive feedback to your supervisor about what else might be helpful during supervision. Supervisiors are there to meet your needs and support your professional development. We encourage our clients to express their feelings about therapy to us and this should also extend to the supervision process. As a supervisor, the better we understand our supervisees’ learning and supervision needs, the more accurately we can meet them.