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RISKS AND SIDE EFFECTS OF SUPERVISION
and devaluation. About 79 of the injuries happened in training supervision.
3896 of the injuring supervisors are psychologists, 2696 social workers, 1196
theologists and 896 medical doctors.
6396 of the harming supervisors were male and 3696 female (6096 female
supervisees, 28% male supervisees, 12% unknown), that means that the most
frequent harmful combination is a male supervisor and female supervisee — a
problem arising from doing gender in supervision®. This can also be seen in
the kind of injury, which differs by gender: Male Supervisors’ main injuries
are humiliation, showing up supervisees in group/team and violation of their
personal borders. Female supervisors are reported to give the feeling of being
incompetent as main hurting factor, especially in the female dyad.
The frequency of the reported injury is in 50% often to permanent (that
means in nearly every session) and the reported severity is in 49% substantial
up to severe. Supervisees react with depression and some change their job.
Only 8% were able to communicate the injury to the supervisor directly, most
get help in their private social network. Ehrhardt conducted also a series of
interviews with answering supervisees to select examples and collect more
narrative data for illustration of the injuries™.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
The first data overview shows that (as in psychotherapy) it is naive to believe that
supervisory interventions are harmless and do not bear risks. All interventions
made by humans with humans can leave the rails and lead to unwanted (side-)
effects with some individuals. Supervisors in their daily work often are not aware
of this danger.
The following overview shows the main variables of structure and process,
which can bear risks in supervision (Table 1)
30 Brigitte Schigl, Welche Rolle spielt die Geschlechtszugehörigkeit in Supervision und Coaching?,
in Heidi Möller - Ronja Müller-Kalkstein (eds.), Gender und Beratung: Auf dem Weg zu mehr
Geschlechtergerechtigkeit in Organisationen, Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014,
89-105.
31 Ehrhardt — Petzold, Wenn Supervisionen schaden.
e 107 "