The ‘Transform and Evolve’ therapeutic supervision, is a medium first developed for behavioural science entrepreneurs in Jamaica. 

The short story of its application is a number of us as practitioners travelled to Jamaica in the early years of the millennium, to live, create and practice free-lance Social Work from different parts of the world.

In hindsight, we were idealistic dreamers, with no knowledge of business, its nuances in Jamaica, no professional contacts, and little knowledge of how to generate our own income, let alone wealth. 

Yet we’d all sunk our meager nest eggs into our new enterprises and were dependent on our efforts to sustain ourselves and our families.  This may sound like it was a set of crazy endeavours, but we were in our thirties, passionate, and thought we were smart enough, to work it all out! 

After many, thwarted, but enthusiastic attempts at creating sustainable incomes, our failures and rejections necessitated that we developed resilience tools to continue to meet our goals. One of which was a supervision model that promoted our most crucial personal work requirements:

• A medium that focused on transformational change at micro, macro and international levels, utilising skills from Social Work and Psychotherapy. 

• Sourcing good quality work with high financial rewards for our best efforts. 

• Construction and maintenance of excellent businesses and professional relationships and reputations. 

• An ethos of commitment to realising our entrepreneurial goals and aspirations. 

• Use of work-life balance markers which endorsed holistic well-being, inspirational and innovative work. 

• A space to reaffirm ethical professional values, in a country constantly engaging in the exhausting, firefighting brand of Social Work.

This supervision revolutionised our individual and collective work outcomes.

• Our individual and collective reputations became renowned.

• A number of our practitioner’s work became nationally recognised.

• We entered the public speaking circuit, in our areas of expertise and achieved Keynote speaker status.

• A number of our practitioner’s realised their dreams of working in an inspired and international way.

Our Working Agreement:

There are a number of things that fuel transformation outcomes:

• Scheduling an uninterrupted 60 minutes, with a commitment to work through the processes that emerge between sessions. 

• Keeping a professional boundary, including reflection on how your work impacts your personal life and vice versa. 

• Taking full responsibility for what you wish to action. 

• Owning any ingrained short cuts or low games and focusing on your growth with integrity. 

• Utilise new and dynamic learning to assist you to operate at your A-game level. 

A Note for Traditionalists

The closest traditional behavioural science version of supervision, that I align my practice to is encapsulated in the following statement: 

As described by the BPS, supervision is a professional and ethical activity for reflection on the work that allows for ‘playful reflection’ for the purposes of future action and is distinct from therapy. Supervision is a process of ‘ongoing collaborative, experiential, and transformational learning’ that draws on practice and research-based knowledge. It is a ‘flexible’ relationship of ‘mutual trust, respect, and integrity’ that takes into account the learning needs of the supervisee. Finally, it is a practice that is bounded by an explicit contract and draws on ‘shared and explicit models of supervision’. The meaning of supervision and how it is implemented in counselling and psychotherapy have evolved significantly over many decades, but the key purpose has remained relatively constant. In essence, supervision exists to facilitate the professional development of the supervisee at whatever their level of experience with a view to enhancing therapy outcomes.  

“The British Psychological Society (BPS) Division of Counselling Psychology, in their Guidelines for Supervision Ellis and Ladany, (BPS, 2007: 4).