On Learning of Supervision Skills

I constantly improve my supervisions skills through experience and reflection, and this blog post will be about how I work with improving in this area. Being a good supervisor is not easy, but I do try to be a supportive and coaching supervisor helping students. In a way it is like playing chess to be a supervisor. You always need to think and learn from the new situations that occur.

Participating in Leadership Courses. One way of improving is also through participating in different leadership courses, as supervision and leadership are closely connected.

Discuss Supervision with a Coach. At Uppsala University, you also have the possibility to meet and discuss with a coach, Rabbe Hedengren, which is such a nice learning opportunity.

Book Circle on Leadership. I also very much enjoy reading about leadership, and I meet and discuss leadership books with a group of leaders around once a year. Recently I read: ”Innan floden tar oss” by Helena Thorfinn and we are going to discuss it in relation to leadership and our view of being leaders.

Listen to Pod Casts. I also listen to pod casts on leadership, academia and positive psychology that motivate me to reflect and improve. Some of the pod casts I really like are:

Mentoring other Other Supervisors. One way of learning and improving supervision skills is to talk to other supervisors about it. Since 2011 I am a member of the network of experienced PhD supervisors at Uppsala University. This means that I have the opportunity to discuss supervision of PhD students with colleagues taking the “supervision of PhD students course” two or three times every semester. The visits have three steps:

1) We meet and discuss the supervision situation before a supervision meeting during approximatively one hour.

2) They auscultate a supervision meeting during 1-2 hours.

3) We discuss what happened during the meeting. Often these visits result in new ideas and reflections on improvements of my supervision skills, and they are as much a learning opportunity for me as for the person visiting me.

Writing about Learning of Supervision Skills. Other ways of learning is of course writing! In 2016, I wrote a journal paper on inclusive supervision skills together with Ulrike Schnaas where we elaborate on collegial learning.

Organizing Workshops on Supervision. We also organized a workshop on inclusive supervision skills at the Network and Development Educational Conference (NU in Swedish) conference. The workshop was a success and included a role play and many good discussions on supervision. Such an interesting learning experience!!

Participating in Conferences on Supervision. I also participated in the conference European University Association (EUA-CDE) on the theme “The Future of Doctoral Education” in Delft, 2015 where I presented work on supervision and discussed it with experienced supervisors from around the globe.

Reflection. Most of all I try to give myself time to reflect on what I am doing at work. I am a dedicated believer in Shöön’s The reflective practitioner, and that reflection is key to learning.