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WOLFGANG KNOPF
member of ANSE. But how to draw up, and agree to guality standards in a
culturally diverse field? To overcome the disparities arising from differing
theoretical approaches and historical roots, and to at least establish the
initial base for a cross border, professional understanding of supervision and
coaching, long and intensive discussion proved necessary. But we succeeded in
establishing consensus on a minimum level, representing the first important
definition of quality criteria all concerned could agree to
Up till now, these initial ANSE standards have proved to be workable. But
at a minimal level only.
Times are changing, however, and confronting us with more complex quality
issues. Around the beginning of this century, the rise of coaching confronted
the community of supervisors with new challenges. In intensive discussions on
both policy and content level, ANSE and its members tried to clarify whether
coaching could be an option for supervisors. Clearly, there appeared to be more
under the sun than just reflecting on the dyad ‘person and work’. An so, the
appearance of coaching, thus far mainly applied to the support of managers,
forced the community of supervisors to face the role of organisational matters
within supervisory processes in a new way, and challenged them to self¬
reflect: is our traditional approach still ‘state of art’? Do we act on behalf of
the supervisee, on behalf of the organisation or on behalf of both, managing
tensions and contradictions within the supervisory process?
Yet, partly because of these discussions — and the heightened awareness
of the system character of supervision they brought with them - the recent
decades may be seen as a success story of theoretical and practical development
of supervision and — in later years — of coaching as well; supervision influencing
coaching as much as the other way round. So far, the provisional conclusion
of the ongoing discussion on the interaction between “Person — Work —
Organisation” is that supervision and coaching have assumed an important and
relevant role in a world of rapid changes and developments in the workplace,
offering critical reflection together with task orientation.
ONGOING DEVELOPMENT:
WHAT DO SUPERVISORS AND COACHES NEED TO MASTER?
For further quality development, the initial standards soon proved too limited to
properly serve the mission of ANSE. Luckily, already from the eighties onward,
the gap between science and consulting has gradually diminished, leading to
a broader definition of supervision and coaching. Supervision and coaching
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