Supervision within organizations should be an opportunity for one team member to share all aspects of a difficult situation with a colleague; a chance to explore, reflect and adapt. However, it has perhaps become a clinical, processual, box ticking exercise which robs the individual and the organization of transformative time.
In the previous article we discussed how rituals take us out of linear time, our daily routines, into transformative time. The ritual places us outside of routines, and into doing something different. This pause provides us with the potential to reflect on our regular lives, and perhaps return to them with a different perspective, an insight (Han, 2020).
Rituals emerged as a way of productively engaging with what Kierkegaard called the finite and the infinite (Adams, 1999). Kierkegaard identified a fundamental paradox in human existence, we are torn with taking a position in the present to cope (finite) whilst being haunted by the uncertainty and choices of the future (infinite). Whitehead (2010) talks of something similar when he discusses how existence strives for novelty, but frequently the tug of the familiar is too strong.
If the uncertainty of the future, and the endless potential contained within it is not acknowledged and explored, then eventually our routines will become thwarted by the inevitable change which naturally occurs within the environments in which we live (Whitehead, 2010, Nishitani, 1983). In recent history, as McGilchrist (2019) observes, Western society has sought to focus on creating a sense certainty at the expense of participating with uncertainly. This has led to a decline in rituals (Han, 2020) which are now seen as superstitious, but also has led to declines in creativity, nuance, and an appreciation of paradox (McGilchrist, 2019, Nishitani, 1983).
This over focus, perhaps obsession with certainty, is experienced in our regard with procedures and processes. Technical steps have their place, but they should be placed in partnership with intuition and imagination (McGilchrist, 2020). The partnership would allow us to attend to the subtitles of situations and our feelings towards them. This means sensing when a procedure and process has reached its limits and may require adaption, imagining how things could be done differently and better. This approach would not only place procedures and processes in greater contact with reality, it would also ensure that we are participating with our intuitions and imagination rather suppressing them. The Western cultural suppression of intuition and imagination is for McGilchrist (2021) a major source of widespread anxiety and depression.
Over reliance on procedures and processes, of technical steps, places us increasingly in linear time; the repetition of an action, regardless of changes in context. Constant repetition will lead any particle within the universe to fatigue, not just the animal (Whitehead, 2010). This brings us to the topic of supervision, a work based activity where someone working for an organization is able to debrief and off load in a one to one situation with a colleague. If the supervision process becomes reduced to one of routine and technical steps only, it will simply become an extension of linear time; a box which requires ticking. However, surely supervision should be transformative time?
Reflecting on a difficult situation with a colleague should provide an opportunity to talk about how situations felt, what was surprising, what the instincts drew attention to, and not just be a recital of the procedures which were followed. If the felt sense of the experience is discussed, then this could facilitate a noticing of aspect (Wittgenstein, 2010), another perspective and leverage point into what was a familiar situation. This is a step closer to reality for the individual, the organization and if reflections are practically applied, an adaption of procedures and processes to be better fitted to the word around them.
Supervision then, should be a ritual, a step outside of linear time, an encounter between the finite and infinite and a moving closer of imagination and intuition with procedures and processes. It should be transformative.
Reading
Adams, R. M. (1999) Finite and Infinite Goods: A Framework for Ethics, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press
Nishitani, K. (1983) Religion and Nothingness. University of California Press.
Whitehead, N. (1929) Process and Reality. Simon and Schuster
McGilchrist (2021) The Matter with Things. Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World. Perspectiva.
McGilchrist, I. (2019) The Master and his Emissary. The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World. Yale University Press; Expanded Edition.
Wittgenstein, L., (2010) Philosophical investigations. John Wiley & Sons.
