The What’s and What Not’s of Workplace Supervision:
What it is:
- A safe place for encouraging the reflective practitioner inside
- A structured time to focus on areas of strength and development in your youth work practice, your program management and your wider organization
- A space for bouncing ideas, venting frustrations, exploring solutions and creating an action plan to achieve favorable results in each area of your youth work practice
What it’s not:
- A cozy chat – you need to be ready to explore tough issues and answer hard questions that will help you become a better youth work practitioner
- A spying session for your organization – workplace supervision is confidential (except in extreme situations) and the issues discussed will not be shared with your employer or other colleagues. However, you will be encouraged and equipped to bring any issues you identify in sessions to the attention of your supervisor yourself
- A waste of time – this is a valuable time that helps youth workers, often in challenging situations (long hours, little reward and few resources) to get the support and advice they need to keep from getting burned out
The role of Shae, as a trained and experienced workplace supervisor, is really more of a mentor. Her goal is to help you gain the tools and skills you need so that you can move from where to you are to where you want to be. She does this by working herself out of a job. (Say What?!)
At first, sessions might be quite frequent but they should taper out over time as you become more confident in the skills you are learning. You will become your own ‘workplace supervisor’, being able to go through the process of internal reflection without the need for much outside support.