#152 Supervision: seeing through the shame

Let’s name the elephant in the coaching room: supervision sounds like surveillance. Its etymology - ‘super’ (above) + ‘vidēre’ (to see) - evokes control, oversight and judgment. No wonder coaches sometimes shy away. The term conjures memories of being watched, corrected or found wanting. But what if the discomfort isn’t just semantic? What if it’s covering something else?

Many practitioners have tried to rename supervision - Co-Vision, Intervision, Extra-vision SuperVision (to name a few) - but perhaps the impulse to rebrand masks a deeper fear: being seen too clearly. Supervision in coaching isn’t about oversight. It’s about insight. It’s about seeing through.

Anne Kearns tells a delightful story of a child who believed a friend’s mum had ‘X-ray vision’ because she was going to ‘supervision’. That child wasn’t entirely wrong. Supervision involves seeing the client through the coach’s lens, seeing parallel processes in the supervisory relationship and seeing beyond the coach’s growing edge to their potential.

But this ‘seeing through’ can feel exposing. Coaches fear being found out as a fraud or feeling they are not good enough. Imposter syndrome thrives in silence. Supervision invites us to speak the unspeakable, to test the assumption that shame must be hidden. As Shohet & Shohet write, ‘We are all frauds, and we are all not.’ Owning the fear makes us real.

So, if you’ve avoided supervision, ask yourself, is it really the name? Or is it the fear of being seen? Supervision isn’t a spotlight on you; rather, it’s a torch we share to illuminate the path forward. It’s not about being judged; it’s about helping you discover you; it’s about learning together. We may be stuck with the word, but we’re not stuck with the shame.

Lean in. Be seen for who you are. That’s where growth begins. Become the coach you always imagined.

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