Steve and Clare notice the imbalanced diversity in the pool of trained supervisors, which is a parallel to the lack of diversity in coaching which is also a parallel to a dearth of diversity in other parts of society. They discuss the matrix of history, skills, experience that make us each unique as coaches and as supervisors and they talk about matching and mismatching and what is most useful to our learning and growth. Psychological safety plays a part here, for those people who feel like they are in a minority, so that supervisees can bring the whole of themselves to supervision without hiding parts of themselves.

How do you find a supervisor with whom you feel enough psychological safety AND who can challenge you to look through different lenses? Might you choose one supervisor who is a match and another who is a mismatch?

What about what you bring to supervision? How diverse are the issues that you bring to supervision, especially if you believe you need to bring things that are similar to what others in your group bring?

How comfortable are you, talking about diversity? Clare admits to some nervousness about saying the wrong thing.