Embracing Challenge in Supervision.

Leisa Moorhouse
July 11, 2025
•
5 min read

Some of my most recent posts

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Organisational pressure, how to cope.
Are you someone who finds the stress of your organisation or workplace is greater than the stress of your actual mahi / work? I find organisational pressures are increasingly the major stress supervisees are dealing with, rather than the work itself.
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Applying Māori values and concepts.
Do you struggle to know how to ground your practice in Māori cultural values and concepts? Cultural competence is a requirement for all registered professionals, and while cultural competence looks different in different countries, communities and organisations, it is something we all can ultimately benefit from.
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Struggling to connect to a client?
Building true cultural competence takes more than ticking boxes — it takes reflection, support, and practical tools we can bring into our mahi. In this piece, Leisa shares how supervision can help practitioners ground their work in Māori values, no matter how Western their workplace might be.
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I am often surprised to hear supervisees say that they enjoy the challenging questions raised in supervision, stating that they like that their thinking and approaches to be questioned. Rather than feeling threatened by considering the possibility that they could have responded differently to a situation, they appreciate the opportunity to consider their response, and contemplate whether next time they might take a different course of action. I think this approach to challenges grows our practice skills.

Utilising supervision to explore the ‘tricky’ questions

Supervision, as a safe, supportive, learning environment should encourage the sharing of situations and responses where workers can be honest about whether they ‘dropped the ball’ and whether a different response might have resulted in a more favourable outcome. Sometimes that requires me as supervisor to ask the prickly questions, or suggest a perspective on a situation that the supervisee hadn’t previously considered. Supervision is a space to grow practitioners and managers, supporting them to be the best they can be, so that ultimately they provide a better service to whoever their client group is. This can involve asking the tricky pātai /questions, or offering a suggestion that another explanation might be valid.

That said, supervision also needs to be a space where supervisees can celebrate when they responded well to challenging situations, and brought their ‘A-game’. Celebrating is not about being proud or self-righteous, but about acknowledging that the supervisee did a great job of drawing on their experience, knowledge, training, and personal strengths to do the kind of work they envisaged when they set out on the professional path they chose. Hopefully there are more of these than challenges, although sometimes it takes a few challenges to get to the successes.

The courage to consider we could have responded differently

“Sammy” (not their real name) brought a challenging situation to supervision, one where they’d thought they’d botched up. Sammy supports young people to manage their addiction issues and work towards education and employment goals. They had been supporting a young person with significant trauma history to identify future goals. The young person was in the care of a relative, due to their parents’ inability to look after them. The young person’s relative had abruptly withdrawn consent for service, taking exception to the nature of support Sammy was providing the young person. Sammy was upset by the events, and concerned that they had made a grave ethical error and their practice was not up to scratch.

We used our time to look at the scope of Sammy’s mahi, how their scope was communicated to the young person and their whānau member, what processes were used to gain consent and what support the young person had requested. In considering these processes and the checks and balances in place, we explored whether any ethical standards were violated, and reflected on some other theoretical approaches. This process of considering what had occurred and whether there were any inappropriate interactions showed that Sammy had behaved professionally, ethically and in a way that respected the needs of their client. It seemed that for some reason the young person’s relative had misunderstood the scope of Sammy’s practice, and the relative’s response appeared to be based on her own issues and concerns, rather than reflect slip-ups Sammy had made.

Taking the learning from challenging situations

The process of reflecting on this situation in supervision resulted in Sammy having a clear plan going forward of how they needed to respond to any further contact from the client. It also highlighted that when working with future clients, Sammy could continue to gain consent the way they had, while also perhaps clarifying some processes internally to increase the understanding future clients may have about the scope of work. Sammy consequently left supervision feeling relieved, and although disappointed that they were unable to keep working with the client, reaffirmed that they are a solid practitioner with strong ethical practices. So, rather than our kōrero confirming her fears that she had slipped up and was not good at her mahi, the opposite happened, and Sammy was affirmed in their mahi and their skills.

Alternative perspectives in supervision / kaitiakitanga

Events such as clients (or their guardians) withdrawing consent, or making a complaint can be threatening to practitioners. How practitioners respond to incidents such as this, reveals a lot about their moral, professional and ethical standards. Another supervisee of mine outlined a workplace situation that they found upsetting and were considering how to respond to, looking to escalate their concerns. I asked what the range of options for responding might be, and was surprised that leaving the issue to settle (rather than escalate it) was not an option they had considered. Given the relatively small-scale nature of the situation, and the possibility that escalating it could make a much larger (and messier!) situation, I shared my observation with the supervisee. I also asked if they thought that perhaps their work history of having previously been in unsafe work environments might have influenced their reaction and consideration of options. They acknowledged this was a big influence, and identifying it as such helped to consider the options more impartially.

After discussing the range of options and possible outcomes, the supervisee decided the most appropriate option was to let the issue settle to the natural conclusion it already seemed to have come to, rather than ignite further discussion around it. Not only had they raised the issue for discussion, which showed professional and personal integrity, but they responded to questions about their response to the situation honestly, and without defensiveness. This demonstrated great professionalism, and their ability to consider the “crunchy” questions objectively and come to a well-considered, appropriate response.

The ability to consider challenge does not come easily to everyone, and for some people takes years of practice to refine. One of the things that assists us to do this, is having a space that we feel secure enough to share the ‘sharp edges’ of our practice without being worried about negative, judgemental, or unhelpful responses. Supervision needs to be such a space, where we can be stretched, and challenged in a respectful and helpful way, as appropriate. It could be that such conversations highlight the need for outside support to address issues in a therapeutic or other healing space. Other times it is a case of brainstorming solutions in our supervision time. Seeing challenge as something which supports and grows our abilities, rather than undermines it, is essential. And having someone you respect, and whose guidance you trust in these “crunchy” situations is key. I think this is part of why I consistently hear from supervisees that they enjoy the challenge I offer – they know it comes from a place of encouraging their ongoing growth, built on a foundation of mutual respect.

Glossary

Kōrero – talk, discussion
Pātai – question/s
Whānau – extended family group

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