Clare and Steve talk with Salma Shah about how to coach under-represented and minority groups in a majority space. We can all learn to listen more intently to what is going on for the people we work with, so as not to make any assumptions about their life experience or entanglements. Salma helps us to pay more attention to the subtleties of difference, no matter whether that is about being an introvert in an extroverted world or being from a working-class background in a middle-class organisation (to name just two that are less frequently talked about). But that in itself is a simplification, given the intersectionalities that exist within all of us.

You’ll find Salma’s book here: https://amzn.eu/d/2tYPWF3

Salma is the Founder and Director of the award-winning Mastering Your Power, a certified coach training programme designed with a wider systemic lens of diversity, inclusion, belonging and equity. Based in London, UK she works with clients at a senior level in public, private and voluntary sectors; supervises and trains other coaches; presents at events both in the UK and internationally.

At some point, we will all transition to working less or not at all. This sometimes comes to supervision. Given that the word comes from the French retirer, to withdraw (back to a place of safety), Clare and Steve discuss the importance of ending well in order to make a great, safe new beginning, finding one’s (new) identity; what it takes to shut down a business safely and satisfactorily.

Clare and Steve talk with Michelle Lucas about stimulating ways to build reflective practice into your schedule. They discover that they all dislike journaling as a form of reflection, but that prompts that are auditory, visual, kinaesthetic and metaphorical approaches that can bring much more joy to reflective practice, and much more insight, compared to simply playing back what happened.

Michelle’s book, Creating the Reflective Habit: A Practical Guide for Coaches, Mentors and Leaders, is on Amazon and in all good bookshops: https://amzn.eu/d/aEGHjyQ

Her monthly reflective practice sessions, where you reflect individually yet in community, can be booked on Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/greenfields-reflective-practice-space-tickets-129774419783?aff=ebdsoporgprofile

And you can connect with Michelle on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelle-lucas-a542223

Arising from Transactional Analysis, the idea of game-play originated by Eric Berne is the subject of this episode. In any human interaction or exchange, game-play is possible.

Clare and Steve explore examples they have experienced in coaching and supervision. They refer to the social and psychological messages that lie underneath games and how our need for strokes might unconsciously draw us into games.

Something to explore with your supervisor!

Clare and Steve wonder whether the anxiety that coaches, and clients, feel about the state of the world, leads to lower levels of courageous intervention in our coaching.

This episode takes us through a model called BANI, developed by Jamais Cascio to replace VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous), which Jamais suggests is becoming obsolete as the pace of change has become even greater.

BANI stands for:

• Brittle
• Anxious
• Non-linear
• Incomprehensible

You can read more about it here: https://thinkinsights.net/leadership/bani/ As always, we encourage you to bring anything to supervision when you feel brittle or anxious and when the situation feels non-linear or incomprehensible. Given the complexities, this may need to be a theme for your supervision for a while.

Clare and Steve welcome Georgina Woudstra to the podcast to acknowledge the growth in team coaching and to ask, what is good team coaching and how do we get good supervision for the challenges that arise for a team coach?

Georgina is a leader in the development of team coaching. She leads the Team Coaching Studio - https://teamcoachingstudio.com/

Georgina's book, "Mastering The Art of Team Coaching: A comprehensive guide to unleashing the power, purpose and potential in any team" is on Amazon and in all good bookshops:https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mastering-Art-Team-Coaching-comprehensive/dp/1838467602

Clare and Steve ponder this perhaps taboo subject. Taboo because it doesn’t rear its head in supervision very often, yet we suspect that there is more of it in the system than coaches like to admit to. We ask questions such as:

What has shifted?
What are you experiencing?
What patterns in other parts of your life might be having an impact?
What might it be like if you looked at it through a different lens?
What agency do you have?

If you sense that you have fallen out of love with coaching, listen in. Or even if something is wrong but you can’t quite put your finger on it. These same questions can apply.

With thanks to Tatiana Bachkirova and her book Coaching and Mentoring Supervision: Theory and Practice, which prompted this exploration.

Prompted by a discussion in Steve's supervision group, Clare and Steve explore what it means to sack a client. Maybe this is more relevant to the corporate client, but maybe we can also do this with a private client? Do we cover this in our terms and conditions?

Where in the lifecycle of our work might we end our arrangement? Early, part way through, before we have started even? What is our response to the word, 'sacking'? What other words might apply - ending, terminating?

What might be the trigger, the basis for us choosing to sack a client? Could it be our values, relationship conflict, failure to meet their commitments, or maybe their terms and conditions? Steve suggests a red light green light exercise.

We chew the cud as usual, delving into the self reflection and exploration that supervision offers us as coaches.

Clare and Steve talk about breaking out of our coaching comfort zone, to do and be something that we are not normally, for the benefit of our thinker. Being and doing the same old routine, holding back or playing it safe, will not serve our clients as they are all unique and deserve diverse and discrete interventions from us, to meet them where they are. But what do we risk when we stop playing it safe; when we hold back?

We also talk about whether you bring diverse, vulnerable and particularly shame-based aspects of your coaching into the supervision room.

In this episode Clare and Steve explore disruption and interruption. Whether they be third party, client or coach interruptions, auditory or visual interruptions in the 'Zoomworld', or disruptions we plan to spark new learning for our clients; how are you impacted by disruptions and interruptions? Do you even think about your relationship to disruption and what beliefs or mindset might lie behind that? Could you explore this more in supervision? We think we certainly could!

Here's the link to Clare's latest book, newly published in September. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Transformational-Coach-Thinking-Through-Coaching/dp/1912300826/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2WZJXYQ1KZW79&keywords=the+transformational+coach+clare+norman&qid=1666002157&qu=eyJxc2MiOiIwLjAwIiwicXNhIjoiMC4wMCIsInFzcCI6IjAuMDAifQ%3D%3D&sprefix=the+tran%2Caps%2C75&sr=8-1