2020: Volume 4: Isseu 2
■ Sijtze de Roos
Trust, it would appear, is no longer self-evident. In the past, so they say, people ‘knew their place’ and more or less blindly trusted and followed the leaders of their particular social group, class or political party. nowadays trust seems to have turned into work. Trustworthiness must be demonstrated by, for example, transparency, authenticity, openness and integrity, all of which need guidance by codes of conduct and action protocols, and documentary proof by audits and visitation reports.
But how reliable are organisations if they conveniently park their responsibilities with a special Chief Integrity Officer? Would that not amount to sheer tokenism, as, for instance, the conduct of commercial banking often shows? And how trustworthy are social professionals if they have their moral dilemma’s formally solved for them by referring to the code of conduct of their professional organisation? Morality by ticking off items on a checklist?
How about supervisors and coaches? Clearly, in the course of their dealings with supervisees they live their ethical standards, or at least should try their best to do so. Their ethics are not only vested in personal experience, they are also grounded in the profession they share with colleagues and which they together shape in their professional associations.
Hence the importance of shared ethics. So it came to be that, in Berlin, on the 22nd of September 2012, the 14th ANSE General Assembly adopted the ANSE Code of Ethics. According to the preamble, it is meant to serve as a guideline against which national organisations could measure their own codes of conduct, ethical guidelines and general moral principles. Its main purpose is to challenge supervisors and their professional associations all over Europe to always act according to moral requirements arising from the nature of supervision.
Supervision is a communicative trade. Supervisors will radiate trust in their supervisees, in his or her potential, uniqueness and humanity. As trust implies the recognition of shared humanity, supervisees need to feel accepted, to feel at home with themselves, with others and the world around them, and to be free to be (or become) what they want to be. It should, therefore, come as no surprise that we open the thematic part of this issue with a long read by our Croatian colleagues Maca Cicak and Kristina Urbanc, titled The role of ethics in creating supervision a safe space.
Jean-Paul Munsch (Switzerland) goes on to show what is needed to achieve ethical competence by practicing theory. The path to mastery is a never ending learning process, in which theory and practice merge. In other words: ethical conduct presupposes ethical reasoning and ethical reasoning informs ethical practice, as Liisa Raudsepp and Helena Ehrenbusch from Estonia make very clear. They share their experience with the creation of a development process to enhance ethical reasoning among the members of the Estonian national organisation for supervisors (ESCA), on their way showing the importance of institutional guidance and support.
What kind of moral challenges may supervisors run into? In our second long read, Dr. Hans Bennink (The Netherlands) analyses how all of us are regularly confronted with d ilemmas due to conflicting moral obligations. In order to help supervisees reflect on these, supervisors need to understand the complexity of loyalty issues and are challenged to find ways to discuss these in a learning manner. But what to do when supervisees themselves display an ethos that is totally contrary to the moral foundation of supervision? In his captivating article’, Dr. Daniel Trepsdorf (Germany) explores ways to confront ‘the language of hate’ by empowering, democratic and non-violent means. Christof Arn (Switzerland) moves on with an overview of thousands of years of ethical deliberation relevant to present day consultancy, and Attila Szarka (Hungary) presents us with a literary account of the moral effects of clothing. What should a supervisor wear? It is not as easy as it sounds.
We complete this issue with The use of creative techniques in supervision by Ineke Riezebos (The Netherlands), which may serve as the starting point of a regular column on this topic. We are working on that. Ideas are very welcome.
Finally, Ulrike Mathias Wiedemann (Germany) reviews the (very) critical study Supervision auf dem Prüfstand for us. She presents an overview of research outcomes which the community of supervisors is well advised to take proper notice of. Are we really as effective as we think? Reality testing is the groundwork of reflection.
And last but not least (but at the same time first of all), Gerian Dijkhuizen (The Netherlands) tops all this off with her regular column - right after this page - and her interview with our Spanish colleague Ioseba Guillermo.
This interview is one in a long string which Gerian published in both the Dutch LVSC Newsletter and partly in our journal. They are now collected in a magazine that LVSC will make available free of charge to the visitors of the ANSE Summer University, next year in Riga (Latvia), and those of the 40th Anniversary Conference of the LVSC of 6 April 2021 in the Netherlands. For particulars and registration, please check the ANSE website and/or the website of your national organisation.
I hardly have to say that - due to corona (and some other worries) - we now live through barren times. That should, however, not deter us from enjoying our trade and the possibilities of professional exchange this journal offers. The topic of our next issue is ‘digitalisation and supervision’, which is, I think, a very timely theme. Please show us the (digital) loopholes you found to keep communicating, and let us have your visions and experiences.
Let me finish wishing you this: however sober, do enjoy Christmas and have a happy new year. Let peace prevail.■
