Shame: A barrier to coaching supervision?

I recently attended a day exploring ‘shame’ in coaching supervision. It was such a thought-provoking day, and it inevitably led to me connecting with my own shame. As Brene Brown highlights, shame, is something we all experience, and it is an intense feeling linked to not feeling good enough or worthy. I can relate to this big time! It is also about what we don’t like talking about and want to avoid confronting.

When thinking about this topic I am reminded of Linda Aspey’s powerful blog about coaching supervision “who is the expert in the room”. In this blog Linda highlights the shame she felt when with her supervisor and how she then hid things from him. I have also written about how supervision can be a place of self-deception rather than self-awareness when we avoid confronting and discovering what we need too.

Shame can arise in so many ways. We may have identified the feeling of shame before the coaching supervision session and are debating whether we can take it or not, do we want to take it and what are we fearful of? Equally it can emerge in a session because of a question posed or observation offered – this happened to me when I was reflecting on a particular client session. At the time I was lucky enough to have a supervisor with whom I was able to face the shame and gain rich, valuable learning and thereby deepen my practice. This is a real challenge for supervision because without it being a place where we can tackle our shame, we end up carrying it with us, then possibly unconsciously projecting it onto our clients and into our sessions.

For supervision to be effective it must be a place where shame can be confronted and explored with a spirit of compassion, reflexivity and learning – because without doing this how can we really deepen our self-awareness? If we don’t then we are truly on a path of self-deception.

With that in mind it is imperative that as coaching supervisors we start with our own self-awareness, recognizing and addressing our own shame and vulnerability. It’s important to note that shame is a complex emotion that can be influenced by a variety of factors. Understanding the root causes of shame can help us to address and overcome it.

It may be helpful to reflect on:

• What does shame mean to you?
• How does shame show up in your life and work?
• What do you need to work on so that you can sit with your shame and the shame of others’?

The antidote to shame is love, compassion and kindness so how as supervisors can we create a space of compassion whilst being able to evoke new thinking in our clients?

How might we as coaches confront shame and more importantly take it to supervision? The first stage is inevitably self-reflection where we identify the feelings of shame and name them. It is important that we then choose a supervisor with whom we can have an open and honest communication, and open our soul. We must have the courage to be vulnerable and it takes both supervisor and client to step into this space because both must have the capacity to sit with the discomfort that shame generates. This is where the learning and self-awareness is. As coaches you may wish to reflect on the following (adapted from my learning with Robin Shohet):

• What are you most afraid your supervisor will say? What is the worst response your supervisor can have?
• And that is because …………..

By tackling shame we can build greater self-acceptance and self-connection.