ABSTRACT
All readers, regardless of their experience as a supervisor, come to the New Handbook of Counseling Supervision with a good bit of knowledge about the supervision process. Those of you who have been in the role of supervisee only still have ideas and opinions regarding what works and how you would “do supervision.” Chances are likely that you are right about many of your ideas. Those of you who have extensive supervision experience, whether trained as a supervisor or not, at the least have some practice-based observations and conclusions that probably can be found in the supervision literature. Quite simply, even untrained supervisors arrive at their first supervision session with a good bit of relevant training and experience. Certainly, all arrive with extensive training as a counselor, and everything learned in one’s master’s or doctoral program in counseling is relevant to supervision. Every Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Education Programs (CACREP) area addressed in our counselor education accreditation standards (CACREP, 2001)—counseling theories, assessment devices, helping and consulting skills, change interventions, ethical and legal guidelines, lifespan development and career development theories, family and group dynamics, social and cultural foundations, research and evaluation-has obvious application to helping a supervisee better understand and work with a client. Less obvious is the application of one’s counseling background for better understanding of and working with a supervisee. However, as a trained counselor, you know how to establish rapport and create a working relationship with your supervisee, you understand the implications of a supervisee’s life stage to his or her approach to clients, and you are aware of the varied influences (e.g., family history, ethnicity, and gender) on your supervisee’s behavior. Your knowledge of change mechanisms, including motivations toward and resistance to change, also are rele-
vant to a supervisee’s growth as a professional counselor. Both your empathic and your confrontive skills will be needed.
