2018: Volume 2: Isseu 1
■ Barbara Baumann
This is the topic of the 2nd ANSE Journal. After the first topic “Quality”, to immediately draw attention to the political and social responsibility of supervision - too detached?
We think and hope that the articles in this issue will stimulate reflection on one’s own attitude to the subject, collegial exchange and discussion in many places with different people.
“Talking is working on the meaning of situations; understanding is grasping a situation in its meaning.”
This aphorism by the philosopher Hermann Schmitz was certainly not coined with a view to supervision and coaching and yet he describes in a focused way what happens in the supervisory process.
The issues, cases, questions and concerns that supervisors bring forward are given meaning through speach and the supervisory process is about understanding and grasping their significance. This significance does not only refer to the person of the supervisee, but also to the professional role, the organisation in which she or he works and not infrequently the social significance also becomes visible. And vice versa. Social and political developments influence organisations and the people who work there.
To keep an eye on these interactions, to understand them in their dynamics and to develop constructive possibilities for action and behaviour is always the task and goal of supervisory processes. Therefore, supervisors are repeatedly called upon to deal with political and social changes. Economization, digitalization, globalization, migration - just four keywords that currently shape many socio-political discourses that have a massive influence on the world of labor and on people. These are also topics supervisors have to deal with reflexively, on which they have to develop an attitude.
It is not coincidental that the first two articles in this issue are lectures. Jubilees, celebrations, conferences are always occasions to ascertain fundamental attitudes. Both Sijtze de Roos’ speech on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Croatian Supervision Association and Monique Castillo’s lecture, which was written on the occasion of an anniversary in Mexico but was also held once again this year at a conference of the French Supervision Association, address fundamental questions of orientation and attitude.
The health sector today is certainly an area of many changes, which reflect social and socio-political change processes and in which political and social responsibility must be discussed and assumed. The article by Kristel Kotkas underlines the importance of supervision in this area, taking Estonia as an example.
But how do individual supervisors position themselves on the topic of this issue? The interview conducted by Ineke Riezebos with Seyda Buurman Kutsal gives an example and the questions of the interview can be understood as a model to interview oneself and collegially discuss political and social responsibility and to enter into a collegial dialogue.
The aim of the ANSE Journal is to make the diversity and significance of supervision in Europe visible. For this reason, we have added a new category to the journal. In each issue we now want to introduce a supervisor from somewhere in Europe. Gerian Dijkhuizen introduces a German colleague, Per Wolfrum from Berlin. Both worked together for a long time in an ANSE International Intervision Group.
We hope that this second issue of the ANSE Journal will give readers a lot of pleasure, reading and discussing with colleagues, supervisors, clients and other in many different places. ■
