Supervision, an Art or a Science? Supervisors sometimes have difficulties with boundaries. This page will try to humanize the Role of the Supervisor. You may wonder why I decided to write this page. By the way, this is another Sunday morning. And, it is terribly cold. In addition to my central heating, I had to put on my small portable heater, which I carry from room to room as needed. No, I don’t live in the East Coast of the US, or the Mid West. I hear those regions are deadly cold. I am the West Coast. Yet, It feels like I am freezing.
On top of the cold, I woke up hungry as well. Guess what I ate! Well I made a quick bowl of Sirloin, and Ground Beef hot (as in temperature, not spices) soup. I savored it. It was deliciously lovely. Now that my stomach is full of goodness, I think I am ready to go back to the topic on hand.
I wonder why I decided to write about supervision as well. I think it is because I recently got an opportunity to be a supervisor to a couple of awesome grad students, who are really doing fantastic work with those who really need the support. This is according to my mentor, whose judgment I trust, absolutely. Since I got this offer, I have been thinking about the supervision approach to use. Needless to say, there are several supervision approaches. I like a couple of these approaches. But, I’m not sure what supervision synergy to adopt, yet. I just realized it might be a good idea to deconstruct the phrase “Supervision Synergy.”
Supervision Synergy
Supervision can be deconstructed as ‘Super’ and ‘Vision.’ To me ‘Super’ means ‘Uber,’ which in turn means ‘Above.’ Hmmm… then I will have to conclude here that Super to me means Greater Than, Excellent, perhaps even Very Good, and/or Very Much Beyond.
Ok, so let’s deconstruct the word Vision. Well, to me ‘Vision’ means ‘Sight’. In other words, some kind of seeing. Oh my gosh! You won’t believe what just came up for me, now. I asked myself, “what kind of sight?” “Is it ‘Insight,’ which comes from the transcendent as one approaches the entrance of the cave (as in Plato’s allegory of the cave)?” Or, “is it the sight you have when facing a blank wall…” I think I am going to go with Insight, which sees ‘Beyond the Ordinary.’ The next question to myself is, “what does Insight mean to me? Aha! I see it clearly. Insight means ‘Intuition’ to me. Additionally, Insight could mean ‘Wisdom.’
In My Mind,
On one hand, Super is synonymous to Uber, Above, Greater Than, Excellent, Very Good, and Very Much Beyond. On the other hand, Vision is similar to Sight, Insight, Beyond the Ordinary, Intuition, Wisdom. Therefore, Supervision means a combination of any of these phrases. For example, Supervision could mean:
- Uber Sight
- Excellent Intuition
- Very Good Wisdom
Bingo!! I think we nailed that one down,
Now, let’s deconstruct Synergy. I think I need a little help here. Let’s go to the Greek root word derivatives. According to Vocabulary.com synergy is thus derived:
“The word synergy comes from the Greek sun, “together” and ergon, “work” (the same root that gives us ergonomic and energy). When one thing magnifies the effect of another, together they have synergy.” If you want to know more about the word Synergy from this perspective go here.
Therefore, Synergy can be interpreted as meaning ‘working together, with the influences from one party, due to various factors, magnifying the abilities, qualities, or capabilities of the other.’ At the end of the day, and in the context of supervision, synergy means producing work that is greater than either parties involves would be able to achieve if they were to work alone. Be it between objects, solvents, individuals, or groups of people and so forth.
Let’s proceed and see what Supervision Synergy really means to me. Perhaps it means the same to you. If not, what does this phrase mean to you?
What is Supervision Synergy?
From the premises above, supervision synergy mean combining:
Uber Sight, Very Good Wisdom, and Excellent Intuition
PLUS
Collaborative work with one party holding the boundaries to ensure development, learning, compliance to the ethics and code of conduct of the profession, correcting, teaching, guiding, instructing while encouraging professional autonomy and independence.
Then,
What is Supervision? Is it an Art, or A Science?
Art has the capacity to evoke feelings and emotions from within us. On the other hand, science uses data, information, and systematic methodologies to arrive at conclusions. Therefore, you can see that Art is subjective, warm and reliant on what the body senses and mind intuits. While science can be seen as objective, cold and reliant on physical facts.
Wait a minute, but some scientific concepts especially in physics and chemistry are birthed because once upon a time these concepts were intuited by the inventor, or theorist. You see, I studied biology, chemistry and physics in high school, as well as during some years in my undergrad program. So, I am familiar with artistry in science. Can we really say supervision is either an art, or science? I truly think supervision is an art and a science. There is some more information on the differences and similarities between Arts and Science.
Supervision as Both an Art and a Science – Humanizing the Process
As an Art
With synergizing the artist and scientist in the supervisor is the way to go from my perspective. Because two forms are synergized, there is a magnified effect. Hopefully in the right direction. I truly believe, science on its own, is cold. What brings the life force into science is the spirit through Arts, which I call Creative Energy. At the onset of supervision, first thing to do is to build a warm, collaborative working relationship, aka rapport between the supervisor and supervisee(s).
Nurturing and nourishing the collaborative working relationship, and rapport between the supervisor and supervisee(s) should be an ongoing endeavor. Remember, whatever you stop focusing on, will over time, cease to exist. Why? Because not focusing on anything means you are no longer giving it life, energy, or food. In my opinion, this phenomenon applies especially to any relationship.
As a Science
As per the science of supervision, my education, training and clinical experiences with certain proven criteria and methods will be used to move our supervisory relationship and processes along. You may wonder what I mean exactly. Well, to cut the long story short, it is my responsibility to come up with supervision guidelines, rubrics, stipulations or whatever else you want to call it. It has been proven that such measures set the bar, and make expectations very clear to the supervisees so no one, including the supervisor is in no doubt when they are fulfilling their obligations, or not.
The supervisor has certain responsibilities, while the supervisee has a different set of responsibilities. These responsibilities held by both parties are dependent on the sector, or industry where supervision is being conducted – banking, cosmetology, clinical, teaching, law, and so forth. However, across settings, like I stated earlier, it is the duty of the supervisor to clearly state the expectations and boundaries of the supervision process. Especially because the supervisee(s) will be evaluated in some form, or the other at the end of the supervisory process.
My Conclusions
In my case, my supervisees will get a grade at the end of our process, which bears a weight on their successful graduation from their program. So, supervision is a Big Deal. I can only hope, like with when I meet new people at my job, that my supervisees and I will connect in such a way to make this journey we are about to embark upon as pleasurable, informative, educative on both side. For in any relationship, at least two people, or parties must be involved. And guess what! Both parties bring things to the table – the good, or bad, or neutral.
As I step into this supervisory role, my goals are to be very open to recognizing the wisdom my supervisees will be bring to the table. Not only that, I shall be open to feedback with the flexibility to make adjustments to my supervision approach to best suit the learning processes of my supervisees. I can only hope they will be open enough to hear, and try out my corrective feedback when warranted. I am also hoping my supervisee are believers in seeking balance in receiving and taking whether in their supervisory relationship, or relationship with their prospective clients, and everywhere else in their lives. We’ll see. If not, that will be ok too.
Fortunately, I am really looking forward to stepping into this role. This role of being an artist, who vibrates at certain high emotion frequencies such vibrating with gratitude, joy, courage, love, wisdom and happiness. These high emotion frequencies will support the shaping of the supervision environment into trusting place for genuine engagement and collaboration. Rather than an environment with the feeling tone of distrust, and chaos.
In my mind, the best type of supervision is one that is able to hold the boundaries clearly, and also bring in the humanness into the process. This is exactly what I plan to do. Additionally, I love the fact that I can flex work.
I just thought about giving you the link to read the book called Bee Better Movement, or Bee Better for short. This will help you raise and maintain high emotion vibrational frequencies that have the potential to shape your environment. I have not read the book, but I sat through a lecture about the highly inspiring and lovely concepts in the book. I shall take out some time to read the book, as well.
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