The Growth We Rarely Talk About

"Your supervisee is eight months into their provisional license. Their progress notes have been late three weeks in a row. When you raise it, they sigh: “I know, I know. It’s been a lot.”

104616 Developing As a Clinical Supervisor: Growth Over Time

Live Event

Thu, Nov 12th, 2026

11:30am – 2:45pm US Central Time

3 CE Hours Supervision

Clinical supervision is an evolving professional role that develops over time. While many supervisors receive training in models and techniques designed to support supervisee competence, fewer are taught how to understand their own development as supervisors or how their developmental stage influences their effectiveness, decision-making, and use of authority.

This training introduces key stages of supervisor development—novice, developing, and seasoned—and...

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1. Supervisor A reaches for the strengths-based approach that works with most of her supervisees, then pushes back when the explanation doesn’t fit: “That can’t be it. Your caseload hasn’t changed.”
2. Supervisor B sets a 48-hour documentation rule, adds a checklist to the weekly agenda, and reassures: “You’re doing great clinically, so I’m sure this will be an easy fix.” 
3. Supervisor C names the requirement plainly, asks what’s behind the pattern, and quietly wonders whether her first read, that this was disrespect, was wrong.

Same supervisee, same notes, three very different responses.

Each supervisor is also thinking something she would never say out loud. I’d argue the difference between them isn’t mainly about skill. It’s about where each one is in her own development as a supervisor.

The growth we rarely talk about

Most supervision training focuses on the supervisee: models, techniques, how to build their competence. Far fewer of us are taught to understand our own growth as supervisors, or how our stage shapes our decisions, our feedback style, and our use of authority.

Part of the reason is how most of us got here. Many supervisors believe they’re competent to supervise because of the supervision they received, so we supervise the way we were supervised. When that was good supervision, wonderful. When it wasn’t, the pattern quietly repeats. And some states require little beyond a clinical license, so formal preparation is often a personal choice.

The encouraging news is that supervisor development follows a recognizable path. The research (Watkins, 2012) describes a shift from uncertainty, anxiety, and ambiguity toward greater comfort, clarity, and confidence, showing up in how we feel, how we think, and how we behave. Goodyear et al. (2014) add that development is more than acquiring skills. It’s a gradual shift in how supervisors think, understand themselves, exercise judgment, and navigate relationships. I’ll use my own path to walk through three stages: novice, developing, and seasoned.

Novice: supervising as I was supervised

A year after receiving my independent license, I was “voluntold” to supervise a graduate student in social work. I was working in community mental health, where I had received my own supervision for licensure, and I had no formal training in clinical supervision. In my experience, this is a common story: a clinician, still new to independent practice themselves, is handed a new role with little choice and little preparation. Their main reference point is what they received, which isn’t always in line with best practice.

That was almost 20 years ago, and I’ve been supervising ever since. It reminds me of being a summer camp counselor from ages 18 to 20, taking young adolescent girls into the wilderness for 3–5 day excursions. As a parent now, I sometimes wonder who thought that was a good idea?! But we all start somewhere. I had never been a counselor, yet I understood the role from my years as a camper at that very camp. Supervision was much the same: I had never supervised, but I understood it from the supervision I’d received, plus some teaching experience (albeit, Wilderness First Aid). In both cases, more training came later. In the meantime, I did what most beginning supervisors do: I emulated what I had received.

I was excited, and nervous about whether I had anything to offer or would get it right. I have no doubt I was great at having an agenda, providing clinical direction, and checking the administrative boxes. Hindsight being 20/20, I can also see where I could have been better.

That is a typical beginning. Anxiety, self-doubt, and a bit of role shock are normal. Beginning supervisors tend to need structure and rules, lean on past experience, focus on caseloads and paperwork, and feel like imposters. Their strengths are real, too: strict adherence to guidelines, a strong focus on client safety, and high enthusiasm. Gatekeeping can be hard at this stage, either overdone or avoided out of fear of conflict (Noble et al., 2021; Stoltenberg & McNeill, 2016; Watkins, 2012, 2013).

When I hear from supervisors who consult with me, their stories sound much like mine: not inappropriately thrown in, but not well prepared or guided either. Lots of hindsight and, most exciting to me, lots of desire for training and growth. Where formal training isn’t required, I’m often in awe of, and proud of, how many clinicians choose it on their own. Most supervisors want to do right by their supervisees and the profession.

103484 Advanced Clinical Supervision: Performance Problems, Constructive Feedback, and Dual Relationships

3 CE Hours Recorded Webinar Supervision

Problematic situations can arise during the course of clinical supervision that can have a significant impact of the supervisor/supervisee relationship and the impact on client services. This webinar identifies some of the most common problem situations, including dual relationships, and offers strategies for providing constructive feedback. Additionally, we will focus on ethics and dual relationships in the supervisor/supervisee dynamic and...

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Developing: what I wish someone had told me

I’m often asked what I wish someone had told me as a beginning supervisor. That’s easy. Supervision isn’t about being the expert, and it isn’t only about caseload management. I wish I had known that a supportive function of supervision existed, and that relational and reflective approaches matter as much as, if not more than, the rest, benefiting not only the supervisee but the clients they work with.

My real development as a supervisor was set in motion, and fortified, during the decade I spent in a college counseling center with a robust graduate training program: about eight interns at a time, on a two-year rotation. I often call it a major turning point in my career. It was the healthiest work culture I’ve been part of, and it grew me professionally and personally. The culture modeled the idea that clinicians are the instrument of our trade, and that instruments are valuable and worth tuning with love and care.

There I learned what it meant to cultivate an emerging clinician, not just oversee hours for licensure. I learned to meet each supervisee at their stage of learning rather than engage everyone the same way. I learned my job wasn’t to have all the answers, but to engage my supervisee in their own learning. I learned the importance of giving and receiving feedback. I learned that being professional can include appropriate vulnerability in service to the work. I learned to critically think about my multicultural journey and how that consciously and subconsciously presents. And I learned to weave seamlessly between the administrative, educational, and supportive functions of supervision.

Most of all, I learned to hold the tension of many dialectics (Tortolani et al., 2026): structure and flexibility, dependency and autonomy, support and challenge, art and science, content and process. This list began in a graduate course with Jungreis and has evolved through my own experience. That’s the heart of the developing stage: a growing comfort with ambiguity, a model or style you can actually articulate, structure individualized to the supervisee instead of the same questions for everyone, and a clearer separation from the supervisors who shaped you (Goodyear et al., 2014; Gosselin et al., 2015; Watkins, 2013). It was also when I realized there was more to supervising than I had ever imagined, including the gravity of the role in the context of liability.

This stage has its own trap. With confidence emerging, it’s easy to become overconfident, to personalize a supervisee’s feedback or resistance, or to give the benefit of the doubt a little too freely when gatekeeping (Gosselin et al., 2015; Stoltenberg & McNeill, 2016; Watkins, 2012, 2013; Ybrandt & Armelius, 2009).

Seasoned: from knowing it to integrating it

I love teaching, I love clinical work, and I have strong values around accountability and growth. Those fit well with what I see as the pillars of clinical supervision: quality of care to clients, growing the emerging clinician, and stewardship to the profession.

For years I had been eyeing advanced training in clinical supervision, and in 2022 I completed my certificate in advanced clinical supervision through Smith College School of Social Work. During that time, my experience and my new learning seemed to download, synthesize, and integrate. I could finally articulate what I had been doing that aligned with effective supervision, using language and understanding I hadn’t had before. Most importantly, I learned what it really meant, not just cognitively, to put the relationship at the heart of the work. Through work with my own consultant, I was called to elevate my use of self, specifically how my identities, and therefore my power, position me as a supervisor. Again, not just cognitively.

Seeing even more opportunity for growth, and wanting to clearly articulate my supervisory style, I sent a survey to all of my past supervisees and supervisor colleagues. I asked for adjectives that described me as a supervisor, and what they experienced as important to me in clinical supervision. I reflected on the same questions myself. If you’re curious about your own style, it’s an exercise you could try.

Out of that process came my SELF framework, grounded in the belief that technical skill and theoretical knowledge matter, but the most powerful tool we bring to our work is ourselves:

• Scaffolding the learning environment

• Elevating clinical competence, ethical practice, and professional character

• Leveraging the interpersonal relationship through bi-directional feedback

• Fostering socio-cultural identity awareness and humility

SELF is a lens for working with supervisees, and it also works for assessing our own development as supervisors and supporting our ongoing growth.

Seasoned supervisors tend to be confident, integrated, and relationally attuned. They use mistakes as opportunities for learning, weave identity and power discussions into the work, seek out deliberate practice and feedback, and tolerate the discomfort of conflict, liability, and gatekeeping, even if they don’t love it (Goodyear et al., 2014; Vaz et al., 2025; Watkins, 2012). The risk at this stage is complacency and drift (Gosselin et al., 2015; Watkins, 2012, 2013).

103784 Supervision Essentials: Building a Strong Foundation for Clinical Supervision

3 CE Hours Recorded Webinar Supervision

Clinical supervision is a cornerstone of professional growth and ethical practice. This 3-hour webinar focuses on the administrative function of supervision, offering a structured approach to guide supervisors in creating effective and meaningful supervisory relationships. Participants will explore how to define their vision of who they want to supervise and why, and they will learn to navigate the planning and...

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Growth isn’t a straight line

If there’s one thing I’d want you to take from all this, it’s that stage isn’t linear. We can be beginning in one area, such as giving difficult feedback, while feeling seasoned in another, such as ethical decision-making (Watkins, 2012). And just as clinicians benefit from clinical consultation, supervisors benefit from consultation of supervision (Calvert, 2016; Vaz et al., 2025; Watkins, 2013).

What changes across the stages isn’t only skill. It’s our tolerance for ambiguity, how we integrate authority, how we regulate anxiety, our capacity for self-reflection, and how we own power. Just as we teach our supervisees about stages of development and grace for growing, we deserve the same. We start where we start, we learn from our successes and mistakes, and ideally we keep fine-tuning the instrument.

If this resonates, I’d love to have you join me for Developing as a Clinical Supervisor: Growth Over Time. Through guided reflection and case-based learning, including the late-notes scenario above, we’ll look at the strengths and challenges of each stage, how your professional history shaped your supervisory self, and the strategies that support your next stage of growth.

Until then, here are two questions to carry with you: How clear is your sense of yourself as a supervisor right now? What would you need for greater clarity? ◼

104616 Developing As a Clinical Supervisor: Growth Over Time

Live Event

Thu, Nov 12th, 2026

11:30am – 2:45pm US Central Time

3 CE Hours Supervision

Clinical supervision is an evolving professional role that develops over time. While many supervisors receive training in models and techniques designed to support supervisee competence, fewer are taught how to understand their own development as supervisors or how their developmental stage influences their effectiveness, decision-making, and use of authority.

This training introduces key stages of supervisor development—novice, developing, and seasoned—and...

  Register Now

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