Anti-oppressive supervision: developing an approach to working within diversity

Myira Khan, a supervisor who specialises in delivering anti-oppressive supervision and training, outlines what an anti-oppressive approach to supervision means, and why it is important when working in a diversity context. She offers three practical steps supervisors can take to adopt an anti-oppressive approach in supervision, and challenges conventional notions about creating safe spaces.

To offer anti-oppressive coaching, therapy or supervision, we must recognise that from the very start we need to make an intentional and conscious pivot into an anti-oppressive position. To be an anti-oppressive practitioner, we are explicitly, consciously and intentionally, establishing the position and approach in our work to:

• Acknowledge structural and systemic inequalities, systems of oppression and the entire power-oppression relational dynamic
• Understand that each person is shaped by their lived experiences
• Understand that each person’s lived experience sits on top of underlying systemic and structural contexts
• Understand which end of the power-oppression relational dynamic they experience
• Offer a relational dynamic of equality in our practice, processes and relationships
• Acknowledge the structural inequalities of the ‘in here’ coaching/supervision context
• Equalise the power dynamics between coach-client or supervisor-supervisee

Anti-oppressive supervision encompasses understanding intersectionality and intersectional identities, balancing power in relationships, recognising how systemic oppression manifests relationally, and applying a systemic, cultural, social, political, and historical perspective to supervisory and coaching processes.

Engaging in supervision with an anti-oppressive and intersectional perspective can be complex. This approach demands a commitment to openness, honest dialogue, vulnerability, authenticity, and cultural attunement towards clients and supervisees. It requires us to comprehend and adeptly navigate coaching and supervision concerning identity, lived experiences, and the power dynamics within oppressive systems, as well as the intersectionality of identities within coaching and supervisory relationships.

To engage in and start to take up an anti-oppressive position in supervision here are some initial steps you can take.

Name your intersectional identities

Naming and identifying our intersectional identity in the supervision relationships helps us to:

• Understand the client’s lived experience, social location and experience of privilege and oppression
• Identify the differences among us and how we each experience the world through and because of our social position and the power and oppression we experience
• Contextualize the lived experiences and social positions of clients, supervisees, supervisors and consultants
• Understand how power and oppression may be played out and re-enacted within our coaching, supervisory relationships and in parallel to one another.

Identify the power relational dynamics

Paying attention to the power and oppression inequality in supervision and coaching relationships enables us to identify where power and oppression exist and how they get enacted.  This means we can then address their enactment and work out how to rebalance and equalise the power between everyone.

Consciously or unconsciously, supervisees and clients can face oppression in their relationships, as supervisors and coaches in our ‘helper’ role can use our role-power and privilege to oppress, marginalize, deny and devalue the experiences, feelings, thoughts and content of what the supervisee or client brings to the session.

Coaches and supervisors can dominate or over-power with their own opinion, which could be perceived as colonising the narrative (taking ownership of it). In return, supervisees and clients can collude with their marginalisation by feeling unable to challenge, voice their opinions or disagree with us, as they are in the less powerful position of ‘helpee’ and are vulnerable because they need help from us, the supervisor or coach.

While power and privilege can mean power over the other, there are also experiences of shared oppression in the same relationships, such as where you both experience similar oppressions – where your oppressions meet. For example, I and my client are both Muslim, and we each have our own experiences of oppression through Islamophobia. So we share an oppressed identity characteristic.

There can also be times where you experience your own but different types of oppression from your supervisee or client, where your oppressions don’t meet. For example, I may experience oppression through being Brown and ethnically-minoritised, and my client may experience oppression through being gay. So we both experience oppression, but due to different identity characteristics.

There may also be times where you might miss each other’s oppressions as they are blind spots, or unconscious to you, and your own experiences of oppression, where oppressions may get missed. For example, I may not be aware of my client being oppressed through their perceived age, such as being treated as less experienced in their workplace or being overlooked for promotion. If I have not experienced this myself, I may not notice my client’s experience as oppression, or recognise the power-oppression dynamics they are experiencing at work, and then fail to sit with this in our work.

We need to be aware of how our power can be present in our work and how we may use our role power or whatever language we use to relate to the supervisee or client from unintentional and unconscious oppressive position. We need to be conscious and intentional in how we work with and treat the supervisee or client’s narrative, material and lived experiences. We can also keep in mind how the supervisee may relate back, position themselves and enact the position of oppressed towards us as the supervisor.

To pay attention and work with oppressions in supervision relationships is to ask ourselves, where do we meet, where don’t we meet, and where do we miss each other?

Facilitate safe supervisory spaces

In the ‘in here’ supervision space and relationship, oppression can be experienced through the lack of safe spaces, so it’s important to recognise, understand and know how to facilitate a safe space for both you and your supervisee.

This is not about ‘creating’ a safe space, but about facilitating a space for your supervisee to feel safe in. We can’t determine if the space will feel safe (it’s why we can’t assume that we automatically ‘create’ safe spaces for everyone), but we look to our supervisee and if they feel safe or not. We aim to facilitate supervisory spaces that feel safe to our supervisees, and it is they who can tell us if it is safe or not.

How we each experience the supervision space is influenced by our intersectional identities, and if either or both of us experience spaces as unsafe ‘out there’, and whether this is being repeated and re-experienced in the supervision relationship.

This can initially be done by having a contract in place, so the supervisee knows the frame and boundaries of the work you will be doing together. But it can also be done through dialogue, by asking what would support your supervisee to feel safe in the ‘in here’ supervision space.

We can then assess throughout the supervision process and relationship, how you and your supervisee relate and experience the space.

Useful reflective questions

• Do you end the supervision space or relationship to shut down or avoid any process or exploration of power and oppression?
• Is there any avoidance of challenge, by bringing or naming something challenging, which leads you to collude in moving away from it?
• What is being missed or not spoken about because it conflicts with privileged and oppressed parts of your identity, or with parts of your supervisee’s identity?
• What space is given to supervisees to think about issues or make decisions, or does your power lead to dictating a decision or outcome to the supervisee?

It’s important that you’re able to acknowledge the impact of your intersectional identity, role-power and own experiences of power relational dynamics, on your supervisory relationships.

You can intentionally work towards creating a supervision relationship in which the power is both acknowledged and equalised, and that you can identify where the power may be re-enacted and re-experienced ‘in here’.

To conclude, this is just a brief outline of a complex topic. If you wish to explore further, my book, Working Within Diversity, has a chapter on anti-oppressive supervision. This offers the ‘Nine-Eyed’ Anti-Oppressive Supervision Model as a useful framework.

It adds the external, social, cultural, political, historical and structural contexts back into the coaching, supervision and consultation settings.

To intentionally work from an anti-oppressive position and practice, by working with intersectional identities, power relational dynamics, and their impact on coaching and supervision relationships, we can offer anti-oppressive and ethical coaching and supervision relationships, experiences and processes, as anti-oppressive practitioners.

About Myira Khan

Myira Khan is a multi-award-winning accredited counsellor, supervisor, coach, trainer, founder of the Muslim Counsellor and Psychotherapist Network (MCAPN), and author of Working Within Diversity – A Reflective Guide to Anti-Oppressive Practice in Counselling and Therapy (2023).