If I could go back in time

If I could go back in time, I would find a variation on clinical supervision for myself in my human resources roles.

From the standalone roles to the executive roles with a team, I have rarely had someone I could discuss, debate, be challenged in my thinking by. Someone I could talk through my thinking with, talk through the complex and the ethical challenges that arise.

Someone I did not report to. Someone external, whose only agenda was my success.

How did I land on this as an opportunity for human resources people in Australia (and elsewhere of course)? Three moments.

1. I knew about clinical supervision in other professions through my work.

2. I follow many random people on LinkedIn, and I started seeing people overseas talking about supervision for HR, which piqued my interest.

3. At around the same time, a manager in a client organisation asked me to be their supervisor.

Those three things connected, so off I went to do training on it. I quickly realised that this was a service I truly would have benefited from in my career.

The connection in my brain about the intersection of my skills and experience came later.

And so, the offering of Reflective HR Supervision came about. Here is what reflective HR supervision actually is, it sits at the intersection of three things I've spent a long-time building:

• 25 years across in-house HR roles and my HR consulting work.

  
  

• Coaching and the qualification to support it - Level 2, IECL organisational coaching; my work with Emotional Culture Deck

  
  

• Formal qualifications - Fellow Certified Professional with the Australian HR Institute, Graduate Certificate in Organisational Leadership and Coaching and a Masters in HR. There are others, I am a learning geek after all, but they are the most relevant.

Reflective HR Supervision is that sweet spot where those meet.

It's a confidential space for HR professionals and leaders to think out loud, make sense of the hard calls, challenge their thinking, discuss ethical dilemmas and different approaches they could consider in their work. It’s a space to look after themselves as well as look after everyone else.

It's the work I'm proudest of, and the feedback recently was that it's the work I talk about least.