This week, I listened to a very interesting podcast from the University of Buffalo’s School of Social Work (UBSSW) addressing the topic of the supervisor – supervisee relationship in clinical social work settings.
This podcast (Living Proof episode #5) is titled Models of Supervision: Parallel Processes and Honest Relationships and in it Dr. Lawrence Shulman, Professor and Dean Emeritus of UBSSW, was being interviewed by Peter Sobota, a Clinical Assistant Professor at the school.
According to Dr. Shulman, supervision essentially involves 4 key areas of guidance:
Direct Practice – how to work with clients
Job Management – how to manage workload, do required paperwork, make appointments, meet people on time etc.
Professional Impact – how to work effectively with other professionals in their agency and with other agencies
Continued Learning – how to use supervision, the literature, research colleagues, peers, and how to learn from mistakes and do things more effectively
In addition, good supervision entails:
- providing emotional support while helping social workers do their job
- maintaining clarity about supervisory role
- creating a safe and open environment for social workers
The importance of the supervisor providing emotional support is indicated in the parallel process model. A supervisor is modeling the appropriate behavior for the social worker to exhibit with his or her clients.
When a supervisor provides emotional support to the social worker, the social worker is able to, in turn, provide emotional support to his or her clients.
In terms of clarity of role, Dr. Shulman was referring specifically to the slippery slope that may occur as a supervisor is supervising a student and begins to conduct therapy with the student out of lack of role clarity or because the supervisor is more comfortable with the therapeutic role vs. the supervisory role.
It is the supervisor’s job to hold the boundaries with respect to their role. This is a very important boundary for them to hold. The parallel process model is at work here as well. When supervisors model appropriate boundaries, they help social workers ultimately hold proper boundaries with their clients.
In addition, there is the supervisor’s ability to create a safe and open environment in which the social worker may share feelings, be open and honest, and admit to mistakes is critical.
This is important for the social worker to be able to learn the work (including the learning that comes from making errors) and it is also key from the parallel process perspective. The supervisor’s skill at encouraging an open and honest relationship in turn facilitates this process for the social worker with his or her clients.
Dr. Shulman also makes mention of the interactional model. This model stresses that the supervisor-supervisee relationship is a function of both what the supervisor and the supervisee bring to the table, so to speak. This means that you have the supervisor’s skill and understanding of his/her role on the one hand, and what the supervisee brings, on the other hand.
Based on the experience I shared in Healing Yourself as You Heal Others, I feel that the parallel process and clarity of role concepts raised in this podcast speak to me. To recap, I had shared how I had felt rather vulnerable following one particular session of supervision because certain sensitive points had been touched.
This, in turn, made me wonder whether I may have inadvertently also gone too far/deep/quickly with two of my clients because they had been coming on a regular weekly basis and then all of a sudden, they had various excuses for missing every other appointment over the last six weeks.
This explanation would make a lot of sense in terms of the emotional make-up of these two clients…and it also seems to be an illustration of the parallel process at work.
My supervisor modeled for me a style of going quite deep rather quickly; in turn, I realized that I probably erred by moving too quickly with these two clients (let’s call them T and C) by trying to get them to face up to emotions and memories that they were not ready to feel and/or face.
To see if this was the case, I specifically raised this question with them during their respective sessions this week. While T denied that she had any issues with the pace, I decided to listen to my gut and modified my approach with her.
To my surprise, I received almost instant positive feedback because before T left, she made a point of ensuring her ability to make a subsequent week’s session by rescheduling it for another day to avoid a scheduling conflict.
C had no problem confirming the fact that I had been trying to go deeper/faster than she was ready to go; she clearly stated that she wanted to move “bit by bit.” Like T, C responded positively to my inquiry and modified approach by making a schedule change for next week to ensure her ability to see me (and not to have to skip a week).
Moving onto the idea of the potential slippery slope that sometimes may occur, this error happened during the same supervision session that left me feeling very exposed. In other words, my supervisor had inadvertently crossed this boundary that day in her attempt to help me address the sensitive issues.
Subsequently, she acknowledged this and her need/responsibility to maintain the boundary with me, modeling for me the safe and open environment in which you can share your mistakes and learn from them.
In sum, I believe that I am receiving excellent supervision as defined by Dr. Shulman: aside from being taught how to work with clients, my supervisor (E) is providing me with the required emotional support, maintaining her boundaries and teaching me in such a way that I feel safe to share my feelings and ask any questions that come up for me.
E conveys the feeling to me that she cares about me and likes me as a person and I too like her and want to do all I can to please her as I am learning and growing.
What types of supervisor – supervisee experiences have you had? How important to you are the critical components of good supervision in your work? What are your thoughts on the parallel process and/or interactional models? Please share your comments and thoughts below. I love hearing from you 🙂
Photo Credits: Patrick Hoesly
Expressionism in Black
Wall Paper – Morning Sun
Source: Episode 5 – Dr. Lawrence Shulman: Models of Supervision: Parallel Processes and Honest Relationships . (2008, October 20). Living Proof Podcast Series. [Audio Podcast]
Nice to know that talk about the parallel process is going on at your school. It is one of the cornerstones in supervision in my opinion. Another is acknowledging my empathic failures with a supervisee as soon as one of us notice it.
One thing I would say from my own theoretical and stylistic perspective is to offer you an additional way of looking at the above vignette. Providing emotional support is not the same as always making sure that the supervisee (or in parallel the patient)feels comfortable. Therapy is not supposed to be comfortable all the time, imo. Therapy needs to be challenging, interesting, and curiousity-evoking, and so does supervision.
While I’m risking being an iconoclast let me also say this: Crossing boundaries is not inherently wrong or bad. France and Spain have boundaries, but traveling from France to Spain is not inherently wrong or to use that social worky word I hate “inappropriate.” Crossing a boundary with a supervisee or a patient is ALWAYS important, usually worthy of discussion and acknowledgement, often an opportunity to risk and gain more, and only sometimes a mistake or violation.
Thanks for keeping us learning Dorlee!
Actually, to give credit where credit is due, the discussion about parallel process is going on at UBSSW and it was Nancy Smyth, the Dean of that school and a dear twitter friend who has become a long-distance mentor to me, who had referred me to the podcast that covers this topic in her response in my last post.
Strangely enough, we have not (yet) discussed this concept at my school.
I agree with you that therapy (and supervision) needs to be “challenging, interesting, and curiosity-evoking.” This is definitely the process that my supervisor is modeling and teaching me.
That said, I think that T and C did not have a strong enough psychological make-up for me to have been working at the pace that I had been formerly working and/or I did not provide a good enough transition for them before they left my office.
I’m wondering what are some good ways to help a patient feel better before she/he leaves the office…
With respect to boundaries, what you are saying makes a lot of sense. While that particular supervision was especially painful for me, it opened an important “door” for me to work on.
Thanks so much for your valuable feedback, Mike!
A very insightful description of the parallel process and how it applies. And thanks for your kind comments about our relationship, Dorlee. You’re a very special Twitter friend to me, as well. I don’t get enough of a chance to be a mentor with students since I’ve been dean, so it’s a pleasure to be a long distance mentor to a mentee who is so passionate about learning.
I agree with Mike about boundary crossing–what’s most important is to talk about it, and there’s a lot of growth that can come from it. The issue is how it’s handled. Clients shouldn’t be coming apart as a result of session–and yet I’ve heard many stories (from my clients and those of others, when I do trainings), who talk about dissociating or cutting themselves immediately after a session because they weren’t “together enough” when they left. It’s a huge sign of progress and health when someone can say “things are moving too fast”, “I need to go more slowly.”
One way to make sure clients feel okay before leaving the office is just to allow enough time to close the session and check in with someone to see how the session felt to them. Also, many therapists in my field (trauma) use some variation of “Safe place” or “soothing place” imagery like what is described here: http://www.getselfhelp.co.uk/imagery.htm Many of my students use the content from the manuals Seeking Safety (Najavits) or Dialectical Behavior Therapy (Linehan) with their more fragile clients.
I shared your blog entry with Dr. Larry Shulman (he was dean here at the University at Buffalo prior to me). Here’s what he wrote:
“I thought she had a great understanding and appreciation for the content. Encouraging to see social work students engaging with these ideas. I tried to post a comment on her blog but it required some form of signing in and since I have cleaned my computer of my cookies it would not allow me to do so.
I’m trying to get more social network literate (especially with my son founding a start-up company) but so far I’m limited to sprinkling OMG throughout my e-mails and signing off LOL when I communicate with my grand kids.
If you can easily share these comments with her please feel free to do so.”
Just thought you would like to know!
It was a most relevant and enlightening podcast for me to listen to. While the concept of parallel process had been raised in a presentation during my second or third week at my placement, I only fully understood it after listening to this podcast.
Thanks again for having referred me to this resource and moreover, for your kind comments and you being you 🙂 I feel so grateful to have the opportunity to be guided by you. The way in which you respond demonstrates your love, skill and talent of teaching.
I’m glad to hear that contrary to the way things were presented in the podcast, there appears to be some flexibility around the issue of boundaries.
While I would not cherish feeling the way I did that particular session anytime soon, I recognize that having had some therapy in addition to “just supervision” took me to an important place and it is quite possible that my supervisor would feel that such an intervention may be needed at another time.
And if she did, I would value that intervention because I have found that I only grow from all the interactions I have with her and I know that she would like me to heal for myself as well as for my work.
Thanks so much, Nancy, for all the great suggestions and resources you provided on ways to help clients feel okay before they leave the office!
I am most honored and appreciative of Dr. Larry Shulman’s visit, as well as of his most encouraging comment.
Thanks so much, Nancy, for sharing!
I think that these comments are such an amazing example of how technology can bring together social workers across distance, theories and practice settings. In just a day we’ve connected learning mutually between an intern, a private practitioner and two Deans from schools of social work!
Imagine if Freud had had Twitter in Viena… 🙂
It’s so true…if not for the technology/ internet, I would have been keeping a private journal of my experiences and while this would still have helpful, I would not have had the pleasure nor benefit/opportunity of “meeting” and learning from all of you.
I would like to also take this opportunity to express my appreciation to you for being a valuable contributor to my blog. You too act a like a mentor to me 🙂
Your comments on my posts clearly illustrate your love of teaching, as well as skill and talent at supervising!
Hi Dorlee,
Fascinating post. I wonder – are there times when a therapist might be going too slow for the client? Indeed, I can see where one might run into a slippery slope in these matters. Checking in with the client is so crucial.
The piece about the supervisor maintaining a clear boundary with the role between them and their supervisee. So important. I can see how it might be easy for one to fall into the “therapist” mode. It sounds like your supervisor is right on target.
I think you might have the beginning of a book – with these experiences!
LOL, Mike, I can only imagine Freud on Twitter.
Actually, come to think of it, that would be a great “gag” Twitter account: Freud’s Tweets.
Hi Terry,
You are absolutely right. A therapist may err in the other direction as well.
I’m so glad you enjoyed this post. And I’m so touched by your kind words…
Warmly,
Dorlee