Task and Process – the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of your work

The term ‘supervision’ has different meanings in the various professions

A supervisor in management is defined as:
"A supervisor is responsible for the day-to-day performance of a small group. It may be a team, or a shift. The supervisor has experience in what the group does, but is not necessarily better at it than everyone he/she supervises. The supervisor’s job is to guide the group toward its goals, see that all members of the team are productive, and resolve problems as they arise."
In psychology and therapy, clinical supervision does not emphasise the hierarchical functions of the supervisor in terms of overseeing the work. What’s more important are the containing and reflective aspects, with the aim of further developing the practitioner’s work and authority.

Here are some questions that apply to almost any working situation where two people communicate as part of the job:

What goes on between you and the other person whilst you are engaging in the task at hand ?

Do the other person’s feelings, attitudes, behaviours intrude on the task, or interfere in any way?

For example, does their self-esteem, their anxiety, their self-confidence colour their performance or contribution ?

Could they be working more effectively, if it wasn’t for certain habitual patterns of thinking, feeling and acting ?

 

Generally speaking: whatever the particular work situation, how does your relationship help or hinder the work ?

How does the fact that there is a human relationship existing alongside the working relationship affect the outcome ?

In the world of dealing with people and communication, we make the long-standing distinction between:

a) task/content and

b) process.

 

Task or content is to do with WHAT we do together, WHAT the task is, WHAT we are trying to achieve.

Process is to do with HOW we go about that, and specifically HOW we relate to each other whilst we do the task; process is to do with communication, rapport, mutual understanding, feelings and the capacity to sort out differences and conflict. It’s the relationship aspect of working together.

Process: relationships ‘at work’

Which professions can enhance their practice and benefit from psychologically-informed supervision ?

Most times, when work is not working well, people report a combination of problems, usually a mixture of content and process. How they feel about the work reflects how they feel about each other; how teams get on with each other is reflected in their output and performance.

Here it can be useful to distinguish content and process, and to attend to process separately.

The disciplines of psychology, counselling and psychotherapy bring a lot of expertise to understanding the process aspects of people working together. We have an established tradition of supervised practice, and specific supervision arrangements to support our work.

Transferring the learning from therapeutic supervision to other professions

Here I am suggesting that the specialised skills, practices and theories of therapy supervision can usefully be applied to other professions. In the first instance, this makes sense in the case of allied professions, such as the helping professionals generally (doctors, health visitors, complementary therapists, etc), coaches and mentors, consultants and facilitators, HR managers. All of those professions already understand the distinction between content and process and are used to working within it. Still, the depth experience of therapeutic supervision and its potential have been largely restricted to therapists.

I have been supervising business consultants, facilitators, coaches for some years now, with often astonishing and transformative results.

What are the possible benefits ?

People’s professional practice can blossom and they derive more satisfaction from their work.

They feel less exhausted, overwhelmed and ground down by destructive interpersonal dynamics because they have a space to process them. Their relationships with clients, colleagues and superiors deepen and become more robust. Another by-product is that they often make more money.

Their work becomes more effective, elegant and smoother. They anticipate interpersonal difficulties and develop a wide range of options in tackling them (rather than just confront versus avoid). Their sense of authority at work increases. They feel more fulfilled and purposeful at work.

Conclusion: supervision and the ‘reflective practitioner’

Counselling and psychology services have developed a useful distinction: between managerial supervision (line management) on the one hand and clinical supervision on the other. This separates the task management from the management of case work. Such psychological services are – of course – a special case, but they do show us something that many professions can benefit from: to reflect on the interpersonal processes at work separately from the work itself, and to look at them within the framework of psychological understanding.

Even without knowing anything about the particular subject matter or expertise of a particular profession, as a psychological practitioner I can be extremely helpful in helping people reflect on the process and relationship side of their work. The interpersonal dynamics often make or break a project, a team, an organisation. I don’t have to understand rocket science to help rocket scientists work together or reflect on their process at work.

In conclusion: almost any profession I can think of can benefit from attention to the process aspects of HOW people work, and HOW they work together – or don’t.

 

When we have pushed technological improvements to the limit of diminishing returns, maybe it’s time to look at the process between people and see whether we can enhance our work – our productivity, satisfaction, effectiveness – by attending to the relationships between people at work.

Psychology as a discipline carries much outdated baggage from the 19th and 20th centuries – one avenue for bringing modern psychology to bear on process ‘at work’ – in all kinds of professions – is the extension of depth-psychological supervision to other ‘reflective practitioners’. This can happen on an individual basis or in a group format.