Space to reflect

Education Support’s fully funded programmes help support leaders. Sally Gillen speaks to director of programmes Faye McGuinness.

IN sectors such as health and social care, individuals access professional supervision throughout their career, but only in the last couple of years has the model started to be piloted in education.

Across the country, leaders have been signing up to a number of trial professional supervision programmes, one of them delivered by charity Education Support.

But what is professional supervision? Education Support’s director of programmes Faye McGuinness starts by explaining what it is not.

“It isn’t therapy. It isn’t counselling. It isn’t a clinical service,” she says. “It is a space where the supervisor is able to hold a systemic view of the leader as an individual working in the education system at a particular point in time and then allow the leader to reflect on any particular challenges or successes. It allows them to acknowledge and digest the emotionally difficult aspects of their work.”

She adds that the key point about professional supervision, which is different from therapy, is that the supervisor will always bring it back to the impact on the individual as a professional, even if much of what is discussed in the sessions might be around what is driving them personally.

Supervision shares some characteristics with mentoring and coaching, but the key difference is that it isn’t goal oriented. Instead, it is a space to reflect.

Leaders, a mix of experienced and inexperienced, have been signing up for the programme. It is delivered in six, hour-long sessions, usually over Zoom.

Topics and themes arising include dealing with imposter syndrome and the current struggles many leaders are experiencing with interpersonal relationships, inside and outside work.

“There is quite a lot of strain on relationships because pressure is high and resilience is low,” explains Faye. “Leaders are trying to hold this space where they recognise it is very difficult for their staff, so they take that burden on. One of the things we might start to see is a kind of moral injury, which is what happens when individuals have to do things that go against their moral code. This happens a lot in healthcare, for example, where staff have to make decisions about which patients will receive treatment.

“There are leaders who know how tough things are for their staff, and not just at work, but because of the cost of living and everything else. Yet leaders still need those staff to work hard. But that goes against their values as a leader. It’s a really difficult place to be working from.”

The mix of leaders signing up for supervision is interesting, Faye feels, because it shows that wherever people are on their journey in the profession, they are reaching out because they feel they need that space to think and reflect. In many cases, it is the pressures of the past few years that may have led them to sign up, but in reality once they start the process they find it is a cumulative effect of many years in the role that has led them to the point where they need professional supervision.

In addition to the one-to-one supervision, Education Support is also offering group peer-to-peer support, groups of half a dozen leaders whose discussion is facilitated by an accredited coach. Again, it is offered in six sessions. but when they are up, many leaders stay in touch and continue to support one another.

Both individual professional supervision and peer-to-peer support allow leaders to hear and see from a different perspective. In the case of peerto-peer sessions, hearing another five or six perspectives helps leaders, especially if they are feeling isolated or uncertain.

“Individuals can get into negative thought patterns, and once you do it’s very hard to break them. If you’re in that inward, rumination phase, having other perspectives really helps,” says Faye. “Supervision is something leaders should be accessing throughout their career. Good-quality reflection makes leaders better. It shouldn’t just be there for when you’re in crisis mode. Probably the best supervision happens when somebody is not completely with their back up against the wall.”

An independent evaluation of the service is underway, and the findings will be published next year. Early data shows a number of benefits. Education Support is using the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale, which is designed to assess a population’s mental wellbeing, to look at leaders’ mental health before and after the intervention.

One of the things they are being asked is how connected they feel to their purpose, and there has been a huge jump, says Faye. “Leaders are telling us that they feel heard, which is new for some of them. Their wellbeing has improved, and they feel more connected to their purpose. They feel they have tools and techniques they didn’t have in their toolbox. They have more fuel in the tank.”

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