Are you sitting too comfortably? Using the praxis of positioning to move between the activities of therapy-supervision and the identities of therapist-supervisor

Are you sitting too comfortably?

At one mid-year review, one of the things a group of supervisees told me was that I had a particular seat that I sat in and they always left for me, because that was the one that I seemed to prefer. They referred to it as ‘the supervisor’s seat’, and I just thought it was where I sat! Harré and Langenhove (1999) call this non-conscious positioning as ‘tacit’ or ‘first order positioning’ (p. 22) and others refer to it variously as a default position, a habit, something we regularly do without much thought. Indeed I had not given this physical positioning any conscious thought for some considerable time. As soon as we begin to talk about a position we move into second order positioning, and this opens the possibility for our positioning to become ‘intentional’, implying that we have choice. So, looking at ‘the supervisor’s seat’ more closely, it was beside the screen and literally alongside the therapist’s chair on the other side of the screen. We all adopted our usual seats with the intention of considering what I could see from this position. I noticed that I was looking at the family/client (like the therapist). It seemed likely to make me think about the family and draw more on my resources for doing therapy and acting as a restraint to my intention of being a supervisor for the therapist’s work with the family. Actively experimenting with different seating positions opened different possibilities for seeing differently and focussing on different aspects of the session. When I physically re-positioned to keep the therapist in view it helped me to keep them in mind and encouraged me to use my resources as a supervisor/trainer. This meant noticing more about the practice of the therapist/trainee. I was able to write down the observations (comments and questions) for them to reflect upon between sessions, including when they were reviewing recordings of their sessions. Previously I wrote ‘Notes from the supervisor and other supervisees in the team can develop into “narrative means to training ends” [after White and Epston (1991)]’ (Burnham, 1993). Continuing this narrative theme by writing down the noticings for the supervisees may be thought of as a kind of learning letter. I also began to notice that it helped me to move out of the position of ‘frustrated therapist behind the screen’ and into a more ‘attentive supervisor/trainer’. This did not mean that I permanently swapped one position/seat for another. I now, literally as well as metaphorically, had at least two positions to sit in, and movement between them offered what Bateson called ‘double description’ (Bateson, 1979, p. 21) and hence a broader range of possibilities for activity as a supervisor. Making an intellectual re-positioning visible to others by moving physically can make the intentionality of the re-positioning more explicit in relation to the other participants, who then can consider their own opportunities for re-positioning.

The practical effects of intentional positioning

A supervisor in training presented for ‘tape to tape supervision’ (Burnham, 2001). The DVD featured the supervisor in training providing retrospective supervision for an individual practitioner working with a family. Watching the DVD (in the absence of the supervisor in training) I noticed in particular, and recorded in my audio SOS recording, that a) the supervisor in training drew a family tree on the board without including the therapist in the diagram, and then b) spent most of the time looking at the family tree whilst talking about the work in hand. Both of these aspects potentially keep the supervisor in the position of experienced clinician. The supervisory conversation proceeded to be useful in terms of the thinking about the family, but missed a number of opportunities to discuss the worker-family relationship.

In her reflections on these SOS remarks, (and in contrast to my tacit/default/non-conscious positioning in example 1) the supervisor in training said she was deliberately (intentionally) positioning herself so as not to look at the supervisee. When a positioning is intentional it would seem necessary (in Kolb’s terms) to spend some time reflecting before moving to active experimentation (Kolb, 1984). Our reflections on her positioning prompted the supervisee to say that where she looked was a significant cultural, family and personal issue for her (related to issues of politeness). She was also hesitant to look at the supervisee because of the uncertain nature of the relationship she had with the supervisee, and did not want to appear intrusive or challenging by maintaining her gaze. She had not realised the practical effects of doing her supervisory practice in this way, and felt that this awareness made her more mindful of where she looked. This SOS discussion opened space for her to actively experiment in this area and extend her repertoire of supervisory positions and postures.

Positioning oneself as an ‘Experienced Therapist’ or ‘Novice Supervisor’

I was addressing this issue with members of a group of supervisors in training, and one person volunteered to explore this issue through a non-verbal method ‘paper-play’ (Burnham, 2012) which has a resemblance to miniature sculpting with some interesting differences. In the presence of the other trainee supervisors we went through a process as follows.

I asked him to:

Fold and tear a piece of A4 paper into 8 pieces (approx 3”x3"), then

Write a name (observing confidentiality) for one person in his supervisory group on each of the pieces of paper and to write each name for each team member in a style/size that showed how he thought of them in the supervision group.

Position these paper group members to show how they sat in relation to one another in the room they used for supervision.

Although I had deliberately used the phrase ‘members of the supervision group’ he had not, as yet, used a piece of paper to include himself, and so was less likely to take a ‘second order view’ in thinking about his position in the group. So I asked him to:

Write a name for himself on a piece of paper. He used his first name: ‘David’.

I asked ‘David who.?’ He looked puzzled. ‘David the experienced therapist or David the novice supervisor?’ (Each member of the training group had described themselves as such earlier on in the day). He continued by making two pieces of paper (of equal size, though in retrospect I could have asked him to consider using different sizes if that showed the differences between the two identities more clearly), and writing ‘David the experienced therapist’ in quite bold, confident letters on one piece of paper, and ‘David the novice supervisor’ in less bold writing on the other.

I asked him to position the two Davids in relation to the group. He showed (see Figure 1) David ET as much closer to the group and David NS as positioned behind and to the side of David ET. He described that position as ‘hovering on the edge’.

David gave me permission to move some of the papers as a way of/supplement to asking questions (show and ask). As shown in Figure 2, I slowly began to move the piece of paper marked ‘David NS’ into the supervisory group in front of ‘David ET’, while asking ‘what would happen if David NS was bold enough to choose to take a different position…’ David (in the room) reached out his hand and moved David ET across, effectively ‘blocking’ David NS, whilst chuckling to himself. I asked what does David ET think/feel about David NS? David replied ‘He doesn’t trust him!’ This statement came as something of a revelation to David. He thought that if ‘let loose’ or given more freedom, David NS would want to experiment with some of the things he had been learning on the course and lose focus of what was clinically significant for the client. So he kept David NS ‘in check’.

We went on to discuss the relationship between David ET (associated with safe practice) and David NS (associated with uncertainty). David gradually began to consider that it was more possible that he could position himself in ways that paid attention to both and achieve positions of what Mason (1993) has referred to as ‘safe uncertainty’.

In a recent email exchange with David about this exercise, he commented that:

‘It was good to be reminded as it set me thinking about positioning oneself in other roles too, such as teacher, consultant and, latterly, manager as I have just taken up a more senior lead role in the team I am in. Becoming a manager to team members who were peers before is an interesting challenge for someone who tends to value heterarchy over hierarchy, and collaborative over authoritarian behaviour. You have set me thinking about the importance of marking the change of position, acknowledging the wearing of different hats and the helpfulness of reminding ourselves that labels such as supervisor or expert or manager or clinician are designations that don’t necessarily need to be ‘fixed’ but used as opportunities to see dilemmas from different perspectives’.

Trainee supervisor and experienced therapist

Recently a supervisor in training was leading a group comprising of a qualified and very experienced psychotherapist/registered supervisor, a nurse trained to intermediate level and a Relate-trained person who was a volunteer within the agency. The group was assembled for the purposes of training. The experienced therapist was in the room with a family whom she knew well and the session was going well with the family reporting improvement. Behind the screen the supervisor continued to supervise the session and was looking and listening for clinical issues. In post-session I suggested that when the therapist could do the session without the ‘need’ for live supervision then the supervisor could have regarded the session as a demonstration interview and shifted to a training supervisor for the two team members behind the screen. Some example questions were:

As you are watching the session, which of your learning/development goals seem most relevant?

As you watch the session, which of the theories are coming to life, helping you to understand the session?

Which practices that you have read about do you see in action? When do you think an opportunity was lost to use a particular practice for the family’s advantage?

Which practice might you feel inspired to use now that you have seen how this family responded to it?

Which theories might help you to understand this family’s situation?

Again this indicates that different supervisory positions generate different kinds of opportunities, and different kinds of curiosities reflexively facilitate different positions.