First publication! Chapter in The Coaching Supervision Casebook

Notice the windscreen. Then check the mirrors.

I was talking to Jeremy Lewis this week, for his podcast series on the Coaching Supervision Casebook.

My case study sits inside it, one of eighteen.

If you know me, you’ll know that I have a central theme to my work, or lets say metaphor, that sits at the intersection of coaching, coach supervision and being well.

When I use it with supervisees, we talk about noticing, I remind them, that ‘you are in the driving seat’. Noticing is at the core of the supervision model.

For visual people, my take on the concept is to use it to think through;

Noticing...

What's coming through the windscreen right now? What's in the side windows, moving past too fast to name? Turn around. What's in the back seat that you brought with you and didn't mention? Check the rearview mirror. Check the wing mirrors. What about the literal ‘blind-spot’? You can even stop and get out of the car. Walk round it. Look at the whole thing from outside.

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Most people stop at the windscreen. I work as a supervisor, and a coach. That distinction matters more than people think. A coach can hold space for almost anything a client brings. A supervisor sits with another practitioner and asks the harder question: what is this doing to you, the person doing the work?

Novice coaches arrive at supervision often assuming it's about their clients. Session structure. Technique. The stuck moment in session four.

It might still be to come, the experience that the whole point of the room is them.

One supervisee brought a client to me, sessions ending, feeling unresolved. Not urgent. Not framed as a problem. Just a little thing, she said. Little things are never little.

I invited her into a reflective activity (read more in the book!). What came up wasn't about the client at all. It was something else. Things that hadn't been named because they felt unprofessional. Questions surfaced that were getting in the way of leaning into her full confidence as a coach. As a solopreneur, she was now alone with her calendar and her clients and nobody checking the mirrors for her. I offer this question to everyone; who is helping you check your mirrors right now?

In the podcast, we discussed this ‘third leg’ of supervision, the one Peter Hawkins called ‘neglected’. Am I resourcing myself well enough to be fully here for the person in front of me? Am I full of the 'right' fuel?

I think about many things differently. My metaphorical vehicle model has evolved to an acronym: TRAVEL. It starts with Tune-In. Before anything else, before technique, before the model, before the eight-eyed anything. Tune in to what's actually happening in, for and to you. Not what should be happening. What is. Sit with it.

I read the case study back before the conversation and barely recognised the person on the page. She's not a novice coach anymore. It wasn’t about techniques. It was because she stopped treating her own wellbeing as something to apologise for bringing into the room.

Slow down.

That's the whole tip, if you want one!

My journals are full of it, written in the margins of decades of reflections, the same two words circling back whenever I wasn't listening the first time. My body has stopped things for me before. A broken ankle. A knee that gave out at exactly the moment I needed to notice something I was ignoring.

Get in the driving seat. Check every mirror before you check the client's.

The full episode with Jeremy will be up soon. I'll drop the link here the moment it's live.

Thinking about Supervision for your Coaching Practice?

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www.bluegreencoaching.com

September 2026

FAQ

Is a book on Coach Supervision suitable for a Coach?

Yes! In many ways, this book will be useful for Coach Supervisors' AND Coaches. It might help you think about what to bring to supervision. It offers reflective practice techniques you can play with in your own space, and of course, ideas for work with your clients.