| Wednesday, 11 June 2008 08:32 |
| Sitting here reading the Supervision Paradox Whitepaper and enjoying it very much. I like your idea that the path one took to get to working in outdoor ed conditions how one expects to be supervised. I'd say NOLS stressed the informal path, at least for backpacking staff, and certainly that was the case for me (hiked the Applachian Trail, etc.) So I expected to be supervised informally, with a lot of reliance on my judgement. Never thought that it might be different for others! Second, I really liked your observation that supervisors promoted from the ranks of field staff lack the skills to manage staff. It's probably not always true, but it strikes a chord of rightness in me. Third, I really liked your Figure 4, the table of supervision tools and what they don't do. It strikes me that the crux of supervision is knowing what is going on in the field. That is, if you had perfect knowledge of what was going on on your courses, it would be trivial to deliver the kind of briefings, feedback, and training the staff needed--assuming you understand individual differences in supervision preference. It's this figuring out what is going on on your courses that supervisors spend most of their energy on. (Is that true?). And if you consider the question of knowing what's going on in the light of post-modern theory about reality -- that even people who were all THERE will disagree about what happened, and that there really is no objective account we can settle on of what went on -- you realize that in a practical sense one *can't* know what goes on, even if one is there. So perhaps supervision is quite real and quite valuable, but is happening on another plane from "I will deliver such-and-such to this staff because here's what went on on their course." Perhaps the supervisor *doesn't* need to know what went on, or at least needs to be comfortable with not knowing. Acting from the assumption that he doesn't know exactly what went on, and can't know exactly what went on, the supervisor still delivers briefings and training. But rather than being based on what he thinks these individuals "need," it is based on renewing everyone's knowledge of the consistent set of practices, values, and tone that are the "signature" of the organization. (An exception would be that when staff come with specific questions, like "What would you have done in such-and-such situation?" a supervisor meets that request with specific ideas and suggestions.) Staff are, in essence, continually directed and redirected in a consistent direction, rather than being directed away from various misdirections. If the values and tone are not shallow, they continue to be meaningful themes that even the most senior staff get benefit from working on. (The metaphor is that you get the crew to sail the boat well by continually talking about how a masterful crew works, rather than what went wrong on the last voyage.) To me, the supervisor not assuming he can know what went on on your course communicates a kind of respect, and that respect in turn makes this person a good supervisor. But maybe that's just the perspective of a person who came through the informal route. Gee, look at that: I can still crank out an essay on outdoor ed.... :-) - Morgan Hite |