Coaching supervisor and researcher Beth McManus explores how arts-based approaches can enrich and enliven supervision, opening up access to new information. Beth also outlines ethical considerations involved in working with arts-based approaches, as well as her tips and ideas for different ways to experiment with bringing these into supervision. For example, taking supervision sessions out into art galleries and museums. Beth’s work is featured in the forthcoming book: Arts-Based Coaching: Using Creative Tools to Promote Better Self-Expression.
Hear Beth read this blog below.
Many practitioners and researchers are now investigating the area of creative coaching located in the experience of coaching clients. I’m exploring the impact of bringing novel, arts-based approaches into supervisory spaces. I’m certainly not the first supervisor to integrate art-based approaches into my practice. But I’m seeking to understand how arts-based approaches might influence both coach and supervisor capacity for reflection and our development as practitioners. I’m also wondering if they might have anything to offer us in understanding our professional identities.
Arts-based approaches won’t align with each idiosyncratic philosophy of coaching, or indeed every style of practice. But I have found that barriers to embracing this way of working for those who do find alignment might come more from inherent beliefs we hold about ourselves and our relationship to creativity. I’m hopeful that this article and the resources signposted here will support you to believe that you could experiment with arts-based approaches in your work.
For those who are already pioneering in this space, what I offer may support you to strengthen these existing explorations and perhaps to consider some new perspectives.
For those who are intrigued to explore such approaches, perhaps for the first time, my intention is to embolden you to invite, safely, more creativity into your supervision spaces.
There is an increasing number of arts-based techniques and approaches to supervision surfacing within the therapeutic literature (e.g. Berger, 2017; Wood & Pignatelli, 2019). However it could be argued that coaching supervisors have an over-reliance on academic literature from therapeutic and counselling spaces. Bachkirova and others (2020) found that it is mostly practitioners who are contributing the majority of published thinking on coaching supervision to date, rather than academics and researchers.
While arts-based approaches have been successfully used in therapy for years, because they can enable our subconscious to surface quickly, coaching presents a different way of working. Practitioners therefore need to be ready to respond to whatever arises with clear, appropriate boundaries, and deep care for their clients in the process.
In my own research and practice, I have found that arts-based invitations can offer coaches a different way of accessing information, and of surfacing a deep knowing without the cognitive gymnastics that sometimes get in the way of achieving true clarity of thought. The work coaches typically bring to supervision with me involves itches they can’t quite scratch alone (with thanks to former EMCC UK Director of Coaching Hannah Butler for sharing this particular analogy).
Those who have used my creative invitations as part of their session preparation, or who are open to exploring their thinking in the session itself using movement, metaphor, lyricism or imagery, are able to arrive with a strong sense of what precisely needs to be resolved or unpicked in order for them to move their thinking on. Occasionally there are moments of revelation, but more often there is a sense of appreciation for the additional insights that originate from within, albeit with a creative stimulus.
In early 2024, I co-created an illustrated guide, Playing It Safe, to working ethically with creativity in coaching with my colleague and co-lead of the EMCC UK Coaching Psychology special interest group, Sally Waters. The guide is open access, available to all. Within the guide, you will find a collection of thoughts and reflections designed to help you consider how this approach might align with your competence as a practitioner, and with consideration for implementation and contracting for experimental coaching practice.
The guide is designed for those new to this work, but is equally valuable for those wishing to deepen their practice, or for supervisors seeking to better support coaches in their explorations. Framed as a series of reflective prompts rather than definitive answers, it is designed to support practitioners to interrogate their own beliefs, experience, practice and philosophy, alongside questioning their relationships with both ethics and creativity.
You might be asking, is all this preparation necessary? Put simply, it is my firm belief that coaching with creative and arts-based approaches constitutes advanced coaching practice, requiring due care and consideration before introducing it into our client work.
One key suggestion is to explore any tools or approaches you are considering yourself, with the recognition that everyone will have a different, and potentially unpredictable, reaction to your chosen tool. Your experience of engagement and enjoyment as interested practitioners motivated for successful implementation do not necessarily represent the litmus test of suitability for client work. However, exploring novel approaches in our own reflective practice, peer supervision, and supervisory relationships, is certainly an excellent place to start.
Below I share a few thoughts with an intention to support you to consider how this might integrate with your own philosophy and style of supervision practice.
If you’re a supervisor seeking to offer your supervisees some arts-based reflective explorations – or a coach looking to work with your supervisor in a more creative way – you could consider working through some of the following:
Inviting the coach to select a soundtrack for their supervision session as an adaptation of a technique explored by Wilcox & Nethercott (2024), who found that music could both prime thinking and act as a motivational reminder of a coaching session.
Building on somatic work (e.g. asking ‘how and where does this feeling show up in your body?’) by asking supervisees to assign a movement or ‘pose’ to their feelings. Inviting the coach to make a human statue that represents their current experience with their client, or their topic of exploration, can be hugely informative. It can allow the coach to physically experience their current standpoint and gain further insight through describing their experience. Additional explorations of how it might feel to move or dance out of that pose into a more generative or perhaps kinder stance could be both liberating and enlightening for the coach.
Choosing an artist or a specific piece of art, and writing a prompt in response, before sharing this as an invitation for your supervisee as part of their pre-supervision preparation. One example from my own practice was using Hilma af Klint’s ‘Paintings for the Temple’ as inspiration to invite coaches to imagine their future work, sitting with the senses and reflecting on how it might feel, look, sound, smell and taste, before drawing, painting or collaging this future vision.
Using a public building such as an art gallery or museum as an environmental prompt, allowing the supervisee to use the space as inspiration, or to respond to when considered against a specific question they are holding. I outline some specific ideas about this technique in my chapter in an upcoming book: Arts-Based Coaching: Using Creative Tools to Promote Better Self-Expression, which is due for publication by Routledge in December 2024.
Finally, my advice for both new and established arts-based supervisors? Spend regular time considering and building your relationship with creativity and ethics. And ensure any experimentation is both ethically sound and supported by your own reflective practice, peer spaces, and ideally experienced arts-based supervisors.
Beth Clare McManus is a psychologist, artist, and researcher living in Manchester. She is founder and co-lead of EMCC UK’s Coaching Psychology special interest group, alongside volunteering as Deputy Director for Research in Coaching Practice. Beth enjoys working as a coaching supervisor with specialisms in coach wellbeing and the creative self. Her best work happens at the intersection of psychology, coaching and creativity.
Bachkirova, T., Jackson, P., Hennig, C., & Moral, M. (2020). Supervision in coaching: Systematic literature review. International Coaching Psychology Review, 15(2), 31-53. https://doi.org/10.53841/bpsicpr.2020.15.2.31
Berger, R. (2017). Shifting roles: A new art based creative supervision model. The Arts in Psychotherapy, 55, 158-163. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aip.2017.04.010
Waters, S., & McManus, B.C. (2024). Playing It Safe: An illustrated guide to ethical practice in coaching with creativity.
Wilcox, D., & Nethercott, K. (2024). Coachees’ Experiences of Integrating a Self-Selected Soundtrack into a one-off Coaching Session. International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring, 22(1), 51-67. https://doi.org/10.24384/bwa7-sn95
Wood, L.L., & Pignatelli, E.C. (2019). The scribble story technique: An arts-based supervision process. Journal of Creativity in Mental Health, 14(2), 229-242. https://doi.org/10.1080/15401383.2019.1566041
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