Week 15 of 36
Coaching Coaches
ICF competency anchor: Maintains Presence — Markers 6.1, 6.5 at MCC depth · Listens Actively — Markers 5.5, 5.6 at MCC depth · Demonstrates Ethical Practice — Marker 1.1 at MCC depth
90 min
This week
The master coach can coach other coaches. This is supervisory work, not technical training. The coach-of-coaches sees what the working coach cannot see about their own work and offers the precise reflection that allows the coach to grow. This is the most demanding form of coaching because the client knows the field. They will recognize a constructed question, a missed listening, a moment of slipped presence. The supervisor must operate at higher master depth than the supervisee.
Contemplative practice of the week
The Coach-of-Coaches Witness
Twenty minutes daily. Sit. Establish the witness. Then bring to mind a coach you have known well — perhaps a peer, perhaps someone you have observed work. See them in their fullness as a coach: their genuine skill, their characteristic patterns, their growing edges, their lineage. Hold the seeing without judgment. The practice trains the capacity to see another coach with the master's full sight, which is what supervision requires. The same practice can be applied to oneself before a session — seeing one's own coaching work with the master's full sight, without sentiment, without harshness, with the bestowal still present.
Learning objectives
- Articulate the dynamics specific to coaching coaches (supervision).
- Practice the supervisor's particular presence — neither performing mastery nor hiding it.
- Recognize the typical avoidances of coaches when receiving supervision and develop master responses.
- Identify the ethical considerations specific to supervisory relationships.
- Conduct one supervisory session with another coach (peer, not full supervisor-of-record).
Session architecture
- Hour 1 — The dynamics of coaching coaches. Lead Instructor teaches what is specific to supervision — the client's existing skill in the field, the supervisor's responsibility to the lineage, the difference between coaching the work and coaching the coach themselves.
- Hour 2 — The supervisor's presence. A teaching on the particular quality of presence required. The supervisor must be at master depth or the supervisee will recognize the gap. Specific markers of supervisor-presence.
- Hour 3 — Supervisory practicum. Students pair up. One brings a real piece of work they are uncertain about — a recent session that did not land, a client who is stuck, a personal pattern that interferes. The other supervises for 25 minutes. Switch. Detailed faculty feedback on each pair.
- Hour 4 — Ethics of supervision. A teaching on the supervisory contract — boundaries, confidentiality (especially of the supervisee's clients), evaluative versus formative supervision, when supervision is appropriate and when it is referral-territory.
Reading
- The Transpersonal Leader — chapters on coaching coaches and the lineage transmission
- Peter Hawkins & Robin Shohet — Supervision in the Helping Professions (selected chapters)
- Edna Murdoch & Jackie Arnold — Full Spectrum Supervision (selected chapters)
- Selected reading on the master-disciple tradition across contemplative practice
Lineages at work
Coaching (anchor) — supervision at MCC depth · Contemplative — the master-disciple relationship · Transpersonal — the coach as transmission vehicle for the lineage · Hypnotherapy — IIH supervision lineage protocols
Milestone
Dynamics of supervision articulated. One peer supervisory session conducted with detailed self-assessment. Coach-of-Coaches Witness practice integrated. Ethics of supervision protocol reviewed. Faculty feedback on supervisory practicum noted.
Reflection prompt
What is my actual experience of being supervised? What did the best supervision I ever received do for me? What did the worst do? When I imagine supervising another coach, what is my hesitation? What is my readiness? What does the lineage require of me as a coach-of-coaches?
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