Accountability, effectiveness and professionalism are core values for coaches and mentors. Supervision is a mechanism to provide the coach/mentor, the client and the organisation with best practice and quality management. Supervision can be described as a collaborative, co-constructed space in which coaching and mentoring competence and professional development are explored.

The use of supervision serves to help the coach/mentor manage high levels of complexity, especially when working in an organisational context, maintain continued professional development, and have a mechanism for ensuring accountability and ethical practice.

At CoachMatching we offer and include one to one and group supervision with experienced supervisors, in our organisational coaching projects. The feedback from the supervision is fed back into the organisation by means of a monthly update.

Supervision takes on different forms: one-to-one, one-to-a-group, or peer supervision. It also depends on the different needs of the coach or mentor, the specific activity, purpose or the context in which the coaching or mentoring is taking place.

The purpose and use of supervision is to:

• Provide a learning environment in order to understand the coach/mentor, and the client and the relationship better
• To raise awareness of the coach’s/mentor’s own reactions and responses to the client
• Understand how the coach/mentor, the client and the organisation are interacting
• Explore other ways of working with client situations.

All our coaches and mentors receive regular supervision with a suitably qualified supervisor who regularly assesses their professional development, competence and provides support to this end.

Coaches/mentors need supervision in order to enhance their skills. However, the supervision given to coaches is quite different from the management supervision in companies. Coaches/mentors undergo supervision to hone their skills because it allows them to reflect and review their job performance.
Organisations like European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC), ICF and COMENSA are involved in the promotion of good quality coaching as well as mentoring. They link the buyers of coaching, and those who offer coaching services, to promote quality.
People who buy coaching or mentoring services gain confidence because they know that their coach/mentor is being professionally supervised. This means there will be control over the quality of the services, and the results of coaching/mentoring are also able to be monitored and measured better. Some organisations consider it mandatory for the coaches they hire to receive supervision from an experienced supervisor.