24 October 2023

January 2024 sees the launch of a new Special Interest Group on supervision. The group will promote best practice, share new thinking and enable peer networking. We asked Kevin Cowley and Mia O’Gorman, who will co-chair the group, to introduce themselves here, and share some personal reflections on what supervision means to them.

The focus of the Supervision Special Interest Group will include promoting best practice, sharing new thinking and enabling peer networking. It will provide a welcoming space for a broad community of practitioners, including:

• The supervision-curious 
• Coaches or mentors who want to get the most from being supervised
• Supervisors in training
• Established supervisors

If you would like to join the group when it launches in January, please contact Mia and Kevin here: [email protected]. 

Mia O’Gorman

I see supervision as a source of professional and personal support for coaches and mentors that is developmental, renewing and inspiring. During my supervisor training, I felt at odds with the benign authority figures often offered as metaphors for the supervisor’s role, such as the security guard, the teacher and the nurse. Instead, I prefer the metaphors of a personal trainer taking you through a workout, a physio who can ease the aches and pains of practice, and a chef offering a nourishing meal. Supervision can therefore be both challenging and renewing, like a day at a health spa to take care of your wellbeing and power up your performance!

I ‘discovered’ coaching early in my career, sparking a passion of 20 years and counting. I have a postgraduate certificate in business and executive coaching, a diploma in coaching supervision, and I am accredited by EMCC as a senior practitioner coach. My approach to practice integrates relational, behavioural and psychological dimensions, including emotional intelligence, Transactional Analysis and vertical development.

My career background in corporate HR in the automotive, finance and energy sectors led to consultancy roles in leadership assessment, leadership development and organisation development. I am now a freelance executive coach, supervisor and development consultant. I work with leaders, organisation coaching teams and independent coaches. I am a tutor and assessor for an ESQA-awarded accredited diploma in coaching supervision, and volunteer as an accreditation mentor and assessor for EMCC Global.

[email protected]
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Kevin Cowley

I see supervision as a restorative process, a reflective space that has been specifically reserved for the coach to look at anything that is important to them, anything that might get in the way of being present and of service to their client. The coach can use the space to examine how they feel about coaching, about their client, the organisation in which they work, the various relationships and how they are intrinsically linked, but most importantly, they have a space where they can just be.

I have been coaching both internally and externally for 15 years. During a career as a senior leader within the Civil Service, I set up the original cross-government internal coaching provision, and since 2020 I have been the Director of Kevin Cowley Coaching Ltd.

I have an MA in coaching and mentoring from Oxford Brookes University and I am also an NLP accredited coach. In addition, since 2015 I have been supporting coaches as a coach supervisor, having undergone training with both Ashridge and Oxford Brookes University. I am accredited as a senior practitioner coach within EMCC, and I also volunteer as an EMCC mentor, supporting new and developing coaches.

[email protected]
Linkedin Profile