In Love with Supervision

Robin Shohet has been supervising and training supervisors since 1976 and has published widely in the field, including co-authoring Supervision in the Helping Professions and editing Passionate Supervision and Supervision as Transformation. In addition to teaching supervision, he works with Appreciative Inquiry as part of a commitment to wanting to see people flourish at work. Joan Shohet has been supervising since 1972 and co-founded the Centre for Supervision and Team Development (www.cstdlondon.co.uk) in 1979. She now works as a trainer, supervisor, psychotherapist and mediator. Her passion is in enabling people to find the work they love and love the work they do. Her particular interests are working with systems and using family and organisational constellations work. She is a long-term member of Findhorn Playback Theatre and co-author of the Boxing Clever Cookbook. Her husband, sons and grandchildren, along with her peer supervision group, are her life-long best supervisors and have taught her the joy, beauty, love and humility of being a human being.

• Preface - Michael Carroll. Foreword - Ben Fuchs. PART 1: SOURCES, 1 Supervision: a way of life, 2 Core propositions and principles. PART 2: COURSES, 3 The core course, 4 The seven-eyed model of supervision, 5 The group supervision course, 6 The advanced course, 7 The 'fifth' module: the inquiry process, focusing on the supervisory relationship, 8 Love and fear in supervision: a one-day workshop, 9 The Beast from the East: an account of a challenging supervision training, 10 Beyond otherness: supervision as spiritual practice. PART 3: RESOURCES, The versatility of the seven-eyed model - Joseph Wilmot, Paralleling in the supervision process - Joan Wilmot and Robin Shohet, Exploring the dynamics of complaints - Robin Shohet, How green is your mind? - Robin Shohet, Using improv as a therapeutic and supervisory technique: a beginner's view - Robin Shohet, Residential supervision training - Joan Shohet.

This is a breath-taking treasure trove of a book. Robin and Joan share their lives' work in developing, practising and teaching the art of supervision. They describe in detail not only the models they have developed and the principles behind them but how they teach them - right down to the detailed design of their programmes, the exercises and experiments they use - and even the recipes for the cakes Joan bakes for the participants. But not only that. The book is a delightful read - it zings engagingly along, full of stories and vignettes, quotations and anecdotes. One feels privileged to meet the authors in all their humanity - their mistakes as well as their brilliance, their feelings and their experience. I feel deeply appreciative. - Professor Charlotte Sills, Ashridge Business School and Metanoia Institute, London. I shall return to the book regularly in order to savour each reflection and continue learning from the wisdom and humanity contained within it. - Els van Ooijen, psychotherapist, counsellor and supervisor in private practice in Bristol, a former visiting lecturer to the counselling and supervision courses at the University of South Wales, and author of Clinical Supervision Made Easy.