Starting out as a supervisor? Here are my top five (okay, six) suggested readings to help you succeed in this role!

Until relatively recently, clinical supervision was not recognized as a unique competency. Many mental health providers thought that all they needed to do to function effectively as a supervisor was show up and know a little something about the skill they were supervising. "I had lots of supervision when I was a trainee, so I know what good supervision looks like," newly appointed supervisors would tell themselves as they settled into their chair, awaiting the knock at the door from their brand new supervisee.
And once that supervisee entered, the supervisor would slowly realize, maybe during that first hour, maybe a week or a month or a year later, that being a supervisor is actually quite difficult. Although it's similar to providing therapy or conducting assessment in some respects, it also has elements of teaching and mentorship. Supervisors are required to not only be familiar with the clinical skills they are supervising, but an entire host of related topics, including identities, culture, and diversity; ethical issues; evaluation and gatekeeping; and the provision of feedback. Moreover, supervision comes with specific legal responsibilities and risks that are unique from those associated with providing direct clinical services to clients. In other words, there is a lot to learn before one can become an effective supervisor.
Luckily, mental health providers across various disciplines have realized that there is far more to supervision than showing up and sharing your hard-earned knowledge about clinical practice. An entire literature has developed around the skill of clinical supervision and its many components. While more research is certainly needed in this area, a growing body of articles offer guidance and data to support new and continuing clinical supervisors in their work.
I am often asked if I have favorite articles or suggested readings for new supervisors. Here, I've selected six that I think offer a nice overview of the most salient issues involved in supervision. Are important topics missing from this list? Absolutely. I'd love to list twenty articles here! (And to be honest, I tried to hold myself to five but couldn't do it...) So for now, I will stick to this starter pack of six helpful readings.
*A note about accessing these readings: Click on the DOI link included with the articles in the list below or search the article title in Google Scholar (scholar.google.com). Hopefully, you will have access to the full text, but if not, you may be able to at least read the abstract.
Trainee Therapists' Experiences of Supervision During Training: A Meta-synthesis
By Hannah M. N. Wilson, Jenny S. Davies, and Stephen Weatherhead (2016)
Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, 23, 340-351
I love this article because it summarizes four core considerations in supervision from the perspective of supervisees. Wilson and colleagues present these issues (the supervisory relationship, considerations of power, supervision as a learning opportunity, and the impact of supervision on trainees) in the context of values and traits that all supervisors should strive to embody. Of course, we all probably have some sense that being warm, flexible, collaborative, and sensitive to issues of safety and power are important, but by focusing on supervisees' reports of their experiences with helpful and unhelpful supervisors, I find that this article helps connect me to the emotions behind the data. Ultimately, being a good supervisor is about facilitating positive clinical outcomes and training effective, thoughtful clinicians, and keeping an attachment to those values is just as important as the technical aspects of clinical supervision. If you only read one article on supervision, I'd suggest this one.
The Ingredients of Supervisor Failure
By Nicholas Ladany (2014)
Journal of Clinical Psychology: In Session, 70(11), 1094-1103
It may seem a little daunting to read an article about supervisor failure when your goal is to become a successful supervisor, but I promise this one is worth it. Ladany's tongue-in-cheek approach outlines what not to do as a supervisor as a way to ultimately illuminate how to conduct highly effective supervision. He provides a nice overview of several important components of supervision, covering the gamut from ethical practice to useful teaching tools. One of the things I appreciate most is that many of us have probably had supervision that falls into one of the categories of supervisor failure Ladany identifies, and most of us probably have a sense of specific behaviors or attitudes that we would not want to replicate from our own days as trainees. However, (hopefully!) few of us will have experience with every single one of these supervisory errors, particularly in a single supervisor, and it can be useful to think about them as a package. From this perspective, it's easier to observe the overarching themes of good supervision: show up with a compassionate stance and consider the trainee's learning and well-being as paramount, second only to effective treatment for the client. This article demonstrates that sometimes it can be just as important to know what to avoid as to strive for excellence.
Teaching Not-Knowing: Strategies for Cultural Competence in Psychotherapy Supervision
By Priya Watson, Priya Raju, and Sophie Soklaridis (2017)
Academic Psychiatry, 41, 55-61
I came across this article unexpectedly, and I am so grateful I did. It addresses what I think is one of the central tensions when approaching identities, contexts, culture, and diversity in clinical work, which is the challenge of holding a stance of capability and competence as a therapist while also recognizing that you can never know everything. To me, trainees (as well as licensed therapists) are often afraid to make any mistake around issues of culture and diversity or to seem unsure when working with clients who hold identities that are different from their own. And yet, none of us can know everything about everyone, so mistakes, gaps, and misconceptions are likely to be an inherent part of working with people who are both similar to and different from ourselves. This article presents a lovely framework for teaching supervisees how to approach their work from a stance of not-knowing, but rather than ignorance, this stance is characterized by self-reflection, humility, and openness. Watson, Raju, and Soklaridis demonstrate how to embody a grounded, thoughtful approach that welcomes discussions of diversity. Since I began assigning this article to students taking my supervision course they have universally loved it and spoken to how validating and empowering they have found this way of thinking about their role.
Broaching as a Strategy for Intercultural Understanding in Clinical Supervision
By Connie T. Jones, Laura E. Welfare, Shekila Melchior, and Rebecca M. Cash (2019)
The Clinical Supervisor, 38(1), 82-99
I originally set out to include no more than five readings in this list, but this article on broaching is one I just couldn't leave out. Jones and colleagues offer an incredibly thoughtful overview of broaching, an intervention in which the supervisor invites discussion of identities, contexts, and cultures, including naming similarities and differences between the supervisor and supervisee, at the initiation of supervision and seeks to revisit this conversation throughout the relationship. I'm a big fan of broaching in both supervision and therapy (see this previous post for a more in-depth discussion of this topic), and the literature is clear regarding its benefits. What makes Jones and colleagues' article so special is that it not only discusses the benefits of broaching, but provides a number of useful prompts to help clinical supervisors consider ways to effective broach a discussion of identities and culture at the beginning and during ongoing supervision. Even more critically, the article offers prompts around how to acknowledge and repair missed or ineffective attempts at broaching cultural issues with trainees. Acknowledging mistakes is a huge part of effective work as a culturally humble and engaged supervisor, and this article really gives supervisors language for ways they can do this effectively.
Clinical Supervision of Psychotherapy: Essential Ethics Issues for Supervisors and Supervisees
By Jeffrey E. Barnett and Corey H. Molzon (2014)
Journal of Clinical Psychology: In Session, 70(11), 1051-1061
Even though clinical supervision is inherently a legal agreement between supervisors, trainees, and clients, it's all too easy for everyone involved to forget this fact. Clinical supervisors are taking on a risky endeavor: allowing unlicensed trainees to conduct high stakes mental health treatment under the auspices of their license. Barnett and Molzon's article offers a useful primer around relevant ethical and legal issues associated with the practice of supervision, including the importance of best practices such as taking a developmental approach to working with trainees, maintaining effective boundaries in supervision, appropriate documentation of supervision activities, and the function of the supervisor as a gatekeeper to the mental health professions. If you are looking for an overview on the basics of ethical, legal practice as a clinical supervisor, this is it.
Supervision as Pedagogy: Attending to Its Essential Instructional and Learning Processes
By Rodney K. Goodyear (2014)
The Clinical Supervisor, 33(1), 82-99
I saved (one of) the best for last! This is one of my favorite articles of all time, mostly because it succinctly covers some of the essential supervisory skills related to teaching. To me, this article gets to the heart of the difference between the outdated mindset of 'if I know how to do therapy, I know how to supervise' to recognizing supervision as a distinct competency. Goodyear provides explanations for four important teaching tools that you can use as a supervisor to help your trainees grow in their clinical skills:
(1) modeling effective behaviors for the supervisee,
(2) providing specific positive and corrective feedback to the supervisee on their
performance,
(3) direct instruction or teaching, including providing sufficient scaffolding to give the
supervisee the appropriate amount of support based on their current skills, and
(4) fostering the supervisee's skills in self-reflection to help them engage in self-directed
learning throughout their career.
Each of these topics could easily be the basis for an entire article of its own, but including them all in one article provides an extremely helpful overview of specific teaching techniques in a clinical setting.
Whether you have been supervising for decades or are about to begin overseeing your first trainee, I hope that you will consider the research literature on clinical supervision as a valuable tool. It can certainly seem daunting to wade into a sea of articles, but I hope that these readings will serve as a useful starting place.
And if you have suggestions for additional helpful readings that have shaped your practice as a supervisor, please don't hesitate to let me know in the comments!
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