Methods and Techniques of Clinical Supervision

Those who will attend this webinar will be introduced to helpful methods and techniques that are available for clinical supervision that will be effective in whatever modality is used. Quality clinical supervision is founded on a positive supervisor–supervisee relationship that promotes client welfare and the professional development of the supervisee. You are a teacher, coach, consultant, mentor, evaluator, and administrator; you provide support, encouragement, and education to staff while addressing an array of psychological, interpersonal, physical, and spiritual issues of clients. Ultimately, effective clinical supervision ensures that clients are competently served. Supervision ensures that counselors continue to increase their skills, which in turn increases treatment effectiveness, client retention, and staff satisfaction.

A variety of methods and techniques could be selected to use with the various supervision formats. For example, methods such as case consultation, written activities, audio- and videotaping, live supervision, and co-therapy can be utilized within the individual, group, team, or peer supervision. Then techniques such as modeling, demonstration, role-play and role reversal, Gestalt empty chair, and psychodrama could be employed with each format or method. In other words, formats, methods, and techniques can be combined in a vast array of combinations to increase the effectiveness of supervision.  Regardless of the format selected—individual, group, team, or peer—it is important to determine what method or technique might work best to help each supervisee learn and grow. This task first requires supervisors to be familiar with the methods and techniques available to them. It also requires a familiarity with each supervisee’s strengths, deficits, and preferred style of learning as well as a willingness to adapt to those needs.

The rationale for using a variety of methods and techniques in supervision is it not only improves the clinical supervisor’s training function, but it also assists in the critical role of monitoring by providing the supervisor a much broader picture of what is occurring with supervisees and their clients. For example, by adding written assignments, role-play with role reversal to individual case consultation, or videotaping and co-therapy to group supervision, it provides supervisors with a more complete picture of supervisees’ skills and ability to work competently with clients. Hence, it is essential for clinical supervisors to expand their repertory within each format to include a variety of methods and techniques and be able to combine them for maximum learning and monitoring benefit.