Ever wondered how the right supervision can transform a counseling career? Join us as we chat with Dr. Kate Walker, who explains how using theories in supervision is akin to a surgeon using a scalpel. Dr. Walker unpacks how these theories, when employed correctly, can lead supervisees precisely to their goals, and how aligning your goals with your supervisees can be a game changer. Whether you're a supervisor, aspiring to be one, or just wanting to better understand the role, this episode will give you the insights needed.
We also delve into solution-focused supervision, talking about its unique hands-off approach and collaborative stance with the supervisee. Through this, we explore its benefits, the common issues supervisees face like failure to follow directives and anxiety, and how to navigate them. We also touch on how to choose the appropriate supervision theory by understanding developmental models. Lastly, listen to how this approach can highlight strengths in your supervisee, with Dr. Walker providing examples of how to shift between theories depending on the situation. Don't miss out on this enriching conversation that might just be the key to unlocking a successful counseling career.
Get your step by step guide to private practice. Because you are too important to lose to not knowing the rules, going broke, burning out, and giving up. #counselorsdontquit.
Ever wondered how the right supervision can transform a counseling career? Join us as we chat with Dr. Kate Walker, who explains how using theories in supervision is akin to a surgeon using a scalpel. Dr. Walker unpacks how these theories, when employed correctly, can lead supervisees precisely to their goals, and how aligning your goals with your supervisees can be a game changer. Whether you're a supervisor, aspiring to be one, or just wanting to better understand the role, this episode will give you the insights needed.
We also delve into solution-focused supervision, talking about its unique hands-off approach and collaborative stance with the supervisee. Through this, we explore its benefits, the common issues supervisees face like failure to follow directives and anxiety, and how to navigate them. We also touch on how to choose the appropriate supervision theory by understanding developmental models. Lastly, listen to how this approach can highlight strengths in your supervisee, with Dr. Walker providing examples of how to shift between theories depending on the situation. Don't miss out on this enriching conversation that might just be the key to unlocking a successful counseling career.
Get your step by step guide to private practice. Because you are too important to lose to not knowing the rules, going broke, burning out, and giving up. #counselorsdontquit.
You're taking on this consultant role. That downplays the hierarchy, but we're never going to forget that it's there. You're focusing on supervisee strengths. You're inviting the supervisee to participate actively as an editor of who he or she is, as a therapist, and you're helping the supervisee edit their own professional story. So what does that mean? This is the Texas Counselors creating Badass Businesses Podcast with Dr Kate Walker, where I teach you, Texans and non-Texans alike, the latest research-based information to hit your income goals. Stay out of trouble and make a bigger impact in your community. Join me and let's fill the gaps in access to mental health care and create a counseling career you'll love. Let's get to work.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Texas Counselors creating Badass Businesses, for it's all about working smarter, not harder. And here's your host, dr Kate Walker, who loves her chai tea lattes.
Speaker 1:Welcome to episode 62 of Texas Counselors creating Badass Businesses. This is my last supervision podcast for 2023. As a supervisor, you are multiplying your impact on your community and you are actively doing your part to fill the gaps in access to affordable care in Texas or wherever it is that you're practicing. So if you haven't become a supervisor yet and you're thinking, gosh, kate, this episode isn't for me, take a second and grab the discount. If you're eligible to become a supervisor, then grab the discount now. Katewalkertrainingcom forward slash supervisor. The discount ends when December ends. I can never remember if December has 30 days or 31, but whenever December ends, the discount ends. So grab the discount now. All right, hey everybody, welcome to your Tuesday training.
Speaker 1:I'm Dr Kate Walker and this is a definitely supervision related and if you're watching me live awesome, so glad you're here. If you're watching or listening to me on a replay or a podcast episode, you're awesome too, because you're taking time out of your day in the car, wherever it is that you are, you're walking through the grocery store with your earbuds in. Whatever you're doing, you're doing it to make your skills even better and, hey, my job is to make it easy for you, so I'm going to try to come at you in whichever way that I can to make sure that you have everything you need Now, if you're joining me live, if it's actually Tuesday at noon and you're using the link in your Step it Up membership to join me. So here's the meat of what I'm going to give you today. If you are taking the 40 hour training to become a supervisor in Texas, if you're taking the course with me, you are getting a lesson in theories. Now, theories I know it takes you back to grad school and it's not boring.
Speaker 1:I happen to love theories because the way I conceptualize theories it's like a scalpel for a surgeon. This is how we intervene. This is how we know the words coming out of our mouths are actually doing a thing that we want them to do in order to dot, dot, dot, get our clients, help our clients achieve their goals. Now, when we talk about supervision theory, it's much the same, except with our supervisees. Remember, our supervisees are volunteers, but we are literally getting them to a predetermined goal and that predetermined goal is actually decided by the rules of the state wherever we are licensed. So hopefully that's a common goal. As I've mentioned before and you may have heard me talk about using CBT Supervision Theory. It's always great when our goals are aligned supervisor and supervisee. So if they're wanting to be supervised and they welcome my help, awesome yay. We're all going to be copacetic and kumbaya it's going to be wonderful and hopefully I will help this supervisee upgrade to full licensure.
Speaker 1:If they're not on the same page with me, then definitely see Episode 52 in Texas counselors creating bad-ass businesses, where I talk about remediation but not talking about that right now. So let me get my notes pulled up. I'll put the glasses on and don't worry if you're listening to me or catching this on a replay. If you're not able to see video, I'm not going to screen share today, but I am going to read some notes. So, yes, by the end of this, you'll understand how to use solution focus. You'll have some things that you can hit rewind or pause and listen to. That are actual questions you can ask. You'll know why to use solution focus and all of this can be found. This is actually an old edition, but this book is called Clinical Supervision and the Helping Professions a Practical Guide by Robert Haynes, gerald Corey and Patrice Moulton. Great resource, highly recommend and I get a lot of what I teach in the 40 hour training from this book and several others, but this is a good one. I like this book a lot.
Speaker 1:So let's start with a short review of developmental models. Why? Well, because you have to understand. Your supervisee is coming from a space of I'll just make air quotes here maturity, right. So if they are brand new to the profession, they've only got a few hours under their belt. We might call them level one, level two they've got several hours of delivering services under their belt, and then level three they are on their way. They are about to be your colleague. So is this a function of time, like months or days? Not necessarily. It's actually more of a function of behaviors. And if you wanna dive into this more deeply, just go to the Google machine. Put in developmental models of counseling and you will see this explained in all of its glory.
Speaker 1:But for our purposes today, your developmental model, or even this little brief synopsis I just gave you, will guide which theory you use during supervision. So that's another difference between a supervision theory and a counseling theory. Right, like a counseling theory is gonna reflect my personality, the training that I've received. It's going to reflect how I conceptualize what better looks like so many things and I will be unlikely to change that from session to session, person to person, unless I do it in what we call an integrated way. Right, I'm gonna be very strategic. At least that's the ideal, right? You're not supposed to kind of cherry pick theories. You're supposed to have a theory that really resonates with you, not that it can't change over time, but it's pretty stable for the most part.
Speaker 1:Supervision theories. On the other hand, it may change 10 minutes into your supervision session because your supervisor has just told you about an issue, or you just gave an evaluation to your supervisor and they are still anxious about this, they're still unable to identify counter-transference with that, or you have this nagging feeling that they're hiding something from you, they're not being completely transparent. So specific issues will call for different theories, because each one of the theories and the ones that I teach in the 40 hour training we have a systems overview, cbt solution focused, person centered and psychodynamic. Each theory has a different objective and a different goal. So I'm going to refer to my notes. Glasses go back on.
Speaker 1:So think of it like parenting right, when you are a parent of little kids or teaching little kids, you're very hands on. Right, you're very structured, you're going to teach concepts, you're going to reteach concepts as they get a little older. Maybe you're a little more hands off, laissez-faire and you're going to let them kind of make mistakes. Or you will have calculated choices, like do you want an apple or a cookie? Right, you've already made the choice for them and they can choose from what you've already chosen. So when we think of supervision theories, we're going to use that same continuum.
Speaker 1:Now, in a previous episode I talked about cognitive behavioral models of supervision, or supervision theories are pretty hands on because you're teaching, you're reteaching, you're really guiding your supervisees to a particular concept that you already have in mind, right? This solution focused in postmodern supervision is hands off. This is going to be a little more laissez-faire. And when you think about supervision roles, remember we also slide in and out of different roles during the supervision session, right? So you think about CBT, you're going to put on your teacher hat. If you think about person centered supervision, you're going to put on your counselor hat. You solution focus. We're somewhere in that arena of counselor and consultant coach. We're really taking a collaborative stance with our supervisee.
Speaker 1:So think about their developmental level, their level of maturity, making those air quotes again. Level one you may be teaching and reteaching concepts. Well, level three maybe you're kind of gone. You know what you really need to figure this out on your own. So, solution focused supervision comments, right? So those things are all to be taken into consideration the developmental level, the role you're taking on, whether you're trying to be more hands-on or hands-off, and maybe, even more importantly, the supervisee issue. So again, this is how supervision theories are different from counseling theories.
Speaker 1:Your supervisee may be having a great supervision session and then they reveal something and you're like wait, what? So this could be anything from a failure to follow a direction, like if you had told them in the previous supervision you needed them to report to Child Protective Services, and they just casually tell you in this week's session that they didn't do that. So, failure to follow a directive. You might notice some supervisee anxiety and that could be anything from a desire to please you to a desire to make sure that you think that they're a star and they always want to give you the right answer, or they have maybe been a part of or witness to a critical incident and they're just not quite with you that day. So when we have those issues, then the danger is that they may be hiding something from you, right? If they're full of anxiety and they're trying to appear wonderful, they may not want to tell you more of their mistakes or some difficulties they're having. If they've been a part of or witness to a critical incident, they just may not be connected to it, they may not know to bring it up.
Speaker 1:And so in those instances we have person-centered, we have psychodynamic or, in this case we're going to talk about solution-focused supervision theory in order to help them get to the place again where the supervisor, the place where we want them to be. So we have an end in mine, and I guess one of the things I didn't mention will not, I guess I know I didn't mention earlier. Even when we talk about these more hands-off, more laissez-faire kind of theories, we can never forget our gatekeeping function. There is a hierarchy in the room right, there is a power differential. I've got the power, I have the authority and I have the blessing of the state to wield that authority and so, no matter which theory I engage or which hat I put on, that is always in the room and as the supervisor, it's my responsibility to be mindful of how that affects the relationship. So let's talk about actual questions.
Speaker 1:Again, if you want to get the Haynes-Cory and Moulton book great place to get these interventions. So let's say you're using your solution-focused, postmodern supervision theory and you might notice that your goal is to help the supervisee learn to edit the client story. So you're actually teaching your supervisee solution-focused or narrative postmodern techniques. But you're also helping your supervisee edit their own story or develop their counselor identity. You know one of the stories I share I was the counseling orchestra teacher. I just kind of kept a foot in both worlds. I didn't want to give up my orchestra teacher identity and I just hadn't really developed that counselor identity. So editing my own professional story was part of my supervision journey. Now you're going to help your supervisee do that.
Speaker 1:You're taking on this consultant role that downplays the hierarchy but we're never going to forget that it's there. You're focusing on supervisee strengths. You're inviting the supervisee to participate actively as an editor of who he or she is, as a therapist, and you're helping the supervisee edit their own professional story. So what does that mean? Sample interventions rather than be didactic and that's just another word for teaching, which is a very CBT theory, supervision theory intervention. You're going to help the supervisee draw on his or her own resources, behave independently and make changes. You're going to be aware of resistance and you strive to establish a collaborative relationship. You believe in the snowball effect. You focus on small changes rather than only attempting large ones, and you work to achieve what is possible rather than radical change. You accept that there is no one correct way to understand or intervene. So that should be thinking for a second about developmental. Level two, when they're striving for autonomy and they're developing their own way of doing things. Then, of course, level three, when they're actually creating their own style and their own way of practicing. You will use language and remember solution-focused and postmodern theories are all about the language.
Speaker 1:None of these closed-ended questions. Did you have a great day counseling clients? Yes, no, those are closed-ended questions. With solution-focused supervision, you're speaking in a way so that the possibilities are opened. Tell me a great thing you did today counseling your client. Tell me about a strength you notice within yourself as you have entered into your six-month of supervision with me. Other questions are what aspects of your counseling have you noticed getting better since we last met? Tell me the best thing you did with your client this week as you begin to get better at dealing with this situation. How will you know that you have become good enough at it so that you can take it on your own? What will you be doing differently?
Speaker 1:Then we have the scaling questions on a scale of one to 10. Tell me how you think you handled that. If they say, oh man, I think I handled it like a three and you say, well, that's fabulous, what made it not a two? That still forces them to highlight their strengths. Of course, if 10 is great and one is not great, we're looking at scaling as a way to highlight their strengths. Where in CBT, when you ask a scaling question, it's to set a baseline. Right, you're a three. Okay, let's assign this homework, let's do this exercise, and then next week we'll take another, like a temperature reading. Right, let's see if you're still at a three or if you've managed to get yourself to a four.
Speaker 1:Scaling with solution focus is all about highlighting the strength. So when we think about our issues here for instance, failure to follow a direction well, that takes a very directive approach. So you're going to want to start that CBT. First of all, what'd you do? What didn't you do. You needed to report to CPS. Okay, let's march over here to the computer and you are going to make the CPS report while I watch Very directive, very hands on.
Speaker 1:Once that has passed and you're processing now, you'll sit with your supervisee and you may ask these questions that I mentioned earlier. Tell me the best thing you did with this client? Right, we just focused on you, failed to make a report, right? That's horrible and we're going to have to talk about that. We may even have to contact the board. We may have to take these other steps, but I'm going to still ask you a solution focused question to highlight your strength. Or I may ask tell me how you'll know you're better at handling this in the future? How will you begin to notice that you're getting better, right?
Speaker 1:So I started off with my teacher hat, took care of the crisis, made sure the report was made and then, in the same supervision session, I was able to put on my counselor hat, or even my consultant hat, to make sure we were processing what was going on there, with some counter-transference with a family member in the room. Were they having some issues, isomorphism from their own family of origin? Right, I want to make sure that we work together so that this doesn't happen again. Again, I'm not getting into remediation today. Remediation is always a tool at your fingertips if you'd like it. That's in episode 52 of Texas Counselors Creating Badass Businesses podcast. Also, you want to make sure you talk about these things in your orientation when you're onboarding these new supervises, and that's episode 50. You want to go back and check that in Texas Counselors, creating Badass Businesses.
Speaker 1:So my goal today was to get everybody familiar with this idea of using a theory and supervision. Honestly, I'll even catch myself like moving my hand, like I'm driving my old pinto back in the day, right, long time ago, right, because it's almost like shifting gears, like, okay, I'm very CBT. Ooh, I'm going to shift into some person centered because we need to process. Ooh, let me shift over here to systems, because I want my supervisee to create a genogram and do some internal work. Oh, let me shift down into psychodynamic because, ooh, my supervisee is level two and they are still not able to identify some counter-transference they're having.
Speaker 1:So, as a supervisor, we want you to be really familiar with these theories, because you have to understand why the words are coming out of your mouth and you have to understand what you're hoping will be the outcome with your supervisee. And if you're taking the 40-hour training, if you're in the middle of taking that right now, or if you just recently finished it you are in your first year supervising you know it's really important that you do ask questions. So if you're in the Texas Supervisor Coalition Facebook group awesome, you can ask questions in there. If you attend the workshops that we host every month, you can case consult in there. So if you're working through a difficult issue or you just have questions, you can always ask questions in there as well.
Speaker 1:So, in a nutshell, solution-focused supervision is to help your supervisee identify their strengths, to help them process why they're failing to do a thing or they're struggling with feelings of anxiety, and it's not supposed to be something that takes the place of being directive. Right, there's a hierarchy in the room. You are still the gatekeeper, it's still your license, so you still must engage. Right, there I go doing my hand again like I'm shifting gears. You must engage the theory that you need to meet the issue at hand, the supervisee's developmental level and the outcome you are trying to get.
Speaker 1:Oh, the gear shifting. I know, I've always thought of it that way and when I was supervising, I remember I would tell my supervisees when they were having resistance or they my clients are resistant, or they're just not making change. I'd be like, okay, let's shift into Rogers when in doubt. Shift into person centered right, because something in the room they're defending against you instead of collaborating with you, right? So I've always thought of that gear shifting thing. All right, guys, thanks for joining, see ya. All right, I want to make sure that you know how to sign up for that webinar in January with Christina DeLuna, because I know you want to make sure that you have all of the updates for 2024. And it's so easy to do. Just go to katewalkertrainingcom, forward, slash free webinar and grab your free ticket and share it with a friend. It's free and you get one CE. So if you're looking for continuing education, that's super cheap. You can't do better than free, right. So grab your ticket today.
Speaker 2:I'm Dr Kate Walker. Thank you so much for listening to Texas counselors creating badass businesses. Thank you to Ridgely Walker for her lovely voiceovers at our introduction and do me a favor when you get a second please like, share and subscribe and write us a review. That's really how we get picked up by other RSS feeds and we get this information out to the mental health badasses who need it. Thanks again, and keep saving the world with excellent therapy. You.