Team supervision is a supervision organised with the participation of a group of colleagues working in a unit of an organisation (governmental or local governmental institution, non-profit or for-profit organisation, company) to reach common goals and to execute the regarding tasks. The introduction of the different forms of work of supervision can be found in the publication Rálátás (Overview) of the Koragyermekkori program (Early childhood Programme) [1]
Team supervision differs from the group supervision in emphasis. In group supervision, separately operating experts from independent organisations take part or participants arrive from completely different professional and organisational environment. While in the group supervision the participating individual is the one to determine his/her own learning aims and questions, in team supervision, aims relate to the reach of the aims of the organisation or organisational unit. With luck, the members of the team are devoted for these aims or their devotion appears during the process and the common work performed towards the aims contributes to the personal professional development of the members and head of the team. The team supervision form of work may act as an example for the creation of equivalent human relationships, for the operation of a clearer communication, for the formation of mutual attention, for facing the problems instead of sweeping them under the carpet and for the undertaking of personal responsibility. Many depends on the management of the team – either it participates in the processes or not – whether the head of the team shows personal devotion, whether he/she is able to give and receive open feedbacks, to modify his/her fix thinking and relationship patterns and whether he/she undertakes the necessity of his/her personal development. The interested managers may get further information about the ones above in the book György Sárvári: A belső harcos (The Inner Warrior) [2].
Among the terms and conditions of the supervision contract it is necessary to determine the contribution of the supervision towards the aims of the organisation. The formation of the relationship contract between the supervisor and the participants contributes to the awareness-raising of the elements facilitating or limiting the reach of the aim. Therefore, for instance, in the team supervision form of work, supervision work may be influenced by that the participants are in a dependent relationship and in the manager-subordinate role within the organisational hierarchy. Similarly, the organisational culture, the way of work of the supervision and the values and interests determining them may be different or even opposite. In team supervision, the open communication based on the validity of the points of view of the participants and on the partnership, the focused dwelling on topics, the undertaking of challenges and problems, the responsibility and the search for the possibility of the progress and the solution may be novel and strange.
The effectiveness and the efficiency of the organisations and the teams are determined by the expertise, the competence, the capacity, the devotion, the initiative and the creativity of their members at least as much as by the decision ability, the operating strategy, the way of decisions, the management of resources, the internal cooperation, the external communication and the organisational relationships of the given organisation. Team supervision can contribute to the development of any of the fields above, if, according to the principle of system approach, it serves not the development of a specific field, but the development and the promotion of the interrelated organisational elements. Team supervision does not provide solutions for the organisational difficulties, but it may facilitate the location of such solutions by the common interpretation of the situation, the analysis of the challenging situations from a new point of view, reframing and the formation of common new interpretations. Instead of the culture of defence, blaming, complaining, continuous violation of the limits and the shifting of responsibility, operation can be characterised by the responsibility undertaken regarding professional situation, the undertaking of personality and the reinforcement of cooperation.
Let the list of topics be an example, which was collected as a reflection in the final meeting by the participants of a recent supervision process of mine performed with a team providing information and communication support in the field of equal opportunities and how the supervision work contributed to the development of the team according to their opinions:
- in the field of service provision, the personal inclusion into the client relationships and the discussion of the emotionally difficult situations helped the members of the team in the development of their personal self-awareness, in the determination and observation of the appropriate distance between the client and the expert and by undertaking the event and by supporting each other in the difficult situations, the trust and the association between the members of the team increased;
- the discovery and the processing of the situations not undertaken by the service provider experts contributed to the determination and the observation of the limits of competence, the maintenance of the better energy limit of the experts in the personal and service provider team level, and the attention to the personal differences served the strengthening of the cooperation;
- the undertaking of the conflicts among each other, the expression of the conflicts, the understanding of the oppositions in the background and the search for and the trying of the new pathways for the treatment of such oppositions improved the quality of the interpersonal communication and the relationships within the team, developed the individual conflict handling competences and strengthened the cooperation culture;
- the handover-takeover within the organisation and the discussion of the transition between old and new in the field of positions and access competences helped the communication of the demand for clarification towards each other and the management of the organisation, the formation of new rules, the release of the usual operation, the strengthening of the self-protection of the team and the better handling of the changes and the continuous financial difficulties.
I would like to mention some situations and aims in the fields close to the health visitor service where the head of the organisation or the controlling body selected the application of team supervision support. With this list my aim is to bring the situations closer, in which this form of consultancy is worth applying.
- The reorganisation of the child welfare basic services and the preparation and the execution of the establishment of the family and child welfare service and centre due from the beginning of 2016 arose many questions among the experts affected and the heads of the organisations. Back in 2015, I had the possibility to manage an institutional team supervision the main topic of which supported the clarification of the tasks and roles of the new service providing units and their employees and facilitated the release of the old operation and facilitated the taking of the personal decisions with the inclusion of the heads and employees of the family support and child welfare service.
- In the field of social care, in national level, the most challenging and the most expressed innovation work was the demolition of the large residential institutions of mentally disabled and psychiatric patients and the formation of the conditions of supported housing integrated into the society for these people. The substitution of the full capacity of the first six institutions finished at the end of 2015 and at the beginning of 2016. In the deinstitutionalisation process, the managers participated in coaching, while the employees in team supervision serving the formation of the aspect necessary for the change, the discovery of the personal relationships and the treatment of the fears regarding changes.
- Maybe it was an issue of less gravity, but the team supervision provided a very important development in the life of the affected organisation and team, in which the experts of a group of the special school took part. The work aimed the treatment of the conflicts and internal intergenerational stress revealed regarding the methodological developments, as a result of which the culture of competition was successfully shifted towards cooperation.
The discovery of the personal attitudes of the experts and their comparison with the real environmental challenges and the development of the cooperation have particular importance in situations where the experts of public services perform very unique tasks of high responsibility, such as in the field of basic care and where the changes of goals and methodology occur mostly via decisions from above by the modification of the control and by methodological letters. In order to reach that the employees of the basic health care of a region are able to operate not only upon their own discretion, professional ambitions, capacities and financial interests, but based on the composition and the health and social conditions of the client receiving the services, by representing common aspects and goals and by completing and supporting each other, regular common thinking and aim determination and the best utilisation of the scarce resources are necessary. This work may be supported by that the participants get devoted to the changes in developing processes and supported by an external consultant. It is a specific difficulty of the basic healthcare that there are often no classic teams, since the different services authorised by the local governments work in different contractual forms and different organisational and supervision frameworks. In this situation, by including the affected people I consider it important to
- support the changes generated by the change of the approach and the aims, by the execution of new strategies and by law;
- discover the competing priorities and their consideration, to find the local and individual emphases and support the execution of such emphases;
- clearly define the mission of the service providers and the tasks and to promote the representation and the change of culture;
- develop the cooperation, to develop the organisation to reinforce the synergies in the work of the cooperating people and to handle conflicts.
The tool of regulation would not be applied as the only solution of the problems. The institutions providing methodological supervision and support and the controller of the services shall also consider the experiences of the expert and that it is worth to support the development of these experts. For the controller of the services I warmly recommend the possibility of the organisation of the team supervisions acting in the pathway between the organisational consultancy and the development of the professional personality.
[1] Borbás, K. et al. (2015) Rálátás – Szupervíziós folyamat területi védőnők számára. ÁEEK Budapest, pp. 52-53. (Overview – Supervision process for district health visitors)
http://www.gyermekalapellatas.hu/kepzesi_anyagok/ralatas.html
(downloaded on 31st August 2016)
[2] Sárvári, Gy. (2008) A belső harcos útja - Coaching kézikönyv. Sanoma Budapest Zrt. Budapest (The way of the internal warrior – Coaching handbook)