Voices in Supervision
A reflection by Julie McDonald
Who are the engaging voices in supervision right now and what are their areas of interest? Where do we go to find them? Should we draw exclusively on voices from pastoral supervision or cast our net wider, to expand and deepen the breadth of our understandings of what supervision can be. Good Supervision Matters wants to source practitioners that might offer PD opportunities for us in the future. Taking a look out there I found a number of voices that I felt are worth exploring and in this April issue feature one practitioner that I came across and felt drawn to.
Nicki Weld is a senior lecturer at the University of Auckland on the Post Graduate Professional Supervision programme. A registered social worker with experience in a variety of social service and child protection roles, she was also a national social work advisor within the New Zealand government and non -government sectors. This might give us an idea about her roles and what she does but what are her interests in supervision and what is her perspective? It was her perspective that drew me to take a closer look at what she has to say. Her latest book, Applying the therapeutic function of professional supervision – Attending to the Emotional impacts of human service work (Routledge, 2023), has both depth and breadth including chapters on relational skills, Developing a coherent narrative, courage and compassion. Weld also explores further about building on the relational components to support attending to the emotional impacts of our work. Definitely worth a read. Though published in 2012 her book, A Practical Guide to Transformative Supervision for the Helping Professions: Amplifying Insight, struck a chord with me too. In her introduction Weld expresses her interest and purpose in presenting this text. She wants to explore how supervision can become more transformative as a way of amplifying insight to contribute to positive personal and professional change. I and all members of the Good Supervision Matters team are interested in this also. Chapters and themes in the book that inspired curiosity for me included - The importance of openness, the role of honesty and humour, applying our observations, offering the unexpected, the importance of exploring emotions in supervision, applying emotional intelligence to reflective practice, defining intuition from the brain to the gut, checking for bias in intuitive reasoning to name but a few.
