Sometimes, the value of coaching supervision lies in its power to disarm anxieties ahead of time. This means that a key measure of the effectiveness of supervision can be the sense of anticlimax that comes when one’s worst fears fail to materialise. Meeting by phone for a supervisory session with Neil Williams I decide to share my anxieties about one particular client as part of my preparation for our forthcoming coaching session.

For me, coaching is a bit like exercise: the more regular and sustained your coaching programme, the more you will experience the benefits. So when one client postpones a session I wonder if the benefits that come from regularity and momentum will be lost. An added anxiety is the presence of a third party in the background – my client’s sponsoring manager. Is my client managing the expectations of his sponsoring manager? I don’t know.

Neil’s initial questions focus on the possibility that my client lacks commitment to his coaching. Even though I’ve already considered this possibility it’s good to voice what I know – that my client has shown great commitment during our sessions. There’s no question in my mind: commitment isn’t the issue. I’m also aware of the practical reasons for the delay.

Exploring these questions helps me to sharpen my focus. The issue is not so much “how did we get here?” (where “here” begins to look like a pattern of increasingly long gaps between sessions). Rather, the question is, having got here, how do we move forward in ways which best support my client’s progress and learning? As we explore the options, I take some ideas from Neil’s input and also add some ideas of my own. I leave our conversation with confidence and some concrete next steps which I act on immediately.

And what of my next coaching session with my client and even the one beyond? As so often happens with coaching my client brings an agenda that neither of us could have foreseen just a few weeks earlier. Our work proceeds with no impact that I can discern from the delay between sessions, though we do schedule a session a little sooner next time. Meantime, my client also has feedback from his sponsoring manager who volunteers positive feedback about my client’s progress and specifically mentions the impact of coaching.

My supervision, as so often happens, leaves me with the question: did I even need to worry in the first place? This is not to underplay the value of supervision but rather to underline it. For when I take time out for coaching supervision I am equipping myself to remove barriers to our coaching, to be fully present to my client and to provide the level of coaching support to which I aspire.