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USING THE MICRO-LEVEL PERSPECTIVE OF CONVERSATION ANALYSIS TO IMPROVE COMMUNICATION IN SUPERVISION ——o— YASMIN AKSU ABSTRACT This paper outlines the self-concept and functions of one-on-one supervision in Germany — which is called for by traditional clientele like therapists and social workers as well as by managerial staff — and describes how conversation analysis can help clarify vital communication strategies such as supporting the supervisee’s problem description and then steering the conversation from free self-expression to a ‘supervisable’ concern. It presents two exemplary excerpts from audio-taped authentic one-on-one supervision sessions which are part of a larger corpus compiled and investigated using conversation analytical methods and concludes with an overview of the most wide-spread strategies employed by supervisors and supervisees. ONE-ON-ONE SUPERVISION IN GERMANY As with many other countries, supervision looks back on a long history in Germany. In recent years, however, there have been certain changes: Supervisors have been increasingly successful in winning supervisees from fields outside of their traditional target groups in psychotherapy, medicine, counselling, social work etc., targeting for instance business management staff. In Germany supervision is being showcased as an attractive alternative or addition to ‘coaching’ (loosely defined as a specific type of conversation between a professional coach and a coachee held “to enhance performance, professional or personal development, psychological and subjective wellbeing, and general life experience”') for everybody in the professional world. 1 Anthony M. Grant, Workplace, Executive and Life Coaching: An Annotated Bibliography from the Behavioural Science and Business Literature, Coaching Psychology Unit, University of Sydney, Australia, 2009, 1, www.coachfederation.org/files/includes/docs/110-CoachingBiographies-%28GRANT %29.pdf, accessed 24 April 2016.
