External Coaching Supervision: An Imperative for Internal Coaches
Why do companies invest in coaching for leaders and in supervision for their internal coaches?
Organizations hire internal coaches as part of their workforce to support their leaders in managing change and complexity and building competence and confidence to advance business strategy and motivate people to high performance. The major coaching professional bodies (ICF and EMCC) are aligned around the critical importance of supervision. For internal coaching to deliver on its promise to elevate leaders, organizations are now investing in coaching supervision as a resource to mitigate risks such as:
- Loss of edge and confidence as the internal coach becomes enmeshed in the system
- Loss of perspective as the coach gets entangled in conflicts of interest and confidentiality boundaries
- Rate of change fatigue and burnout in a highly driven workplace
Why is supervision so relevant for internal coaches?
Internal coaches work in dynamic, constantly changing organizations and face multiple, unique challenges not common to external coaches.
These challenges include:
- Navigating being embedded in the same system as the coaching client—often in a similar role as a manager, leader, or HR professional—and subject to similar organization requirements and demands such as reorganization and performance evaluations.
- Establishing coaching objectives in complex situations with multiple stakeholders (i.e., the individual client, the direct manager, Human Resources, people lateral to the client, and the Learning and Development Department).
- Maintaining confidentiality and independence while navigating and avoiding conflict of interests amid organizational demands.
- Developing as a coach practitioner while effectively partnering with other internal coaches and externals within an evolving field where coaching platforms and technology, particularly AI, play an increasingly prominent role.
In our current, challenging global environment, we view supervision as a safe haven for internal coaches where they can enhance their capacity to be in best service to their clients by:
- Catch their breath in an often breathless, hyper-driven workplace
- Gain perspective in complex and shifting organizational environments
- Continuously learn and grow from their coaching experiences
- Maintain the highest levels of coaching quality and integrity
Our Offering
Mindful Leadership Consulting offers internal coaching supervision by qualified external supervisors to support coaches in navigating complex organizational environments. Our mission is to empower internal coaches to be their highest functioning selves, balancing out the boundaries of their individual needs while serving the client’s goals and needs and being aware of the organization’s demands.
Our company’s coaching supervision team has extensive international experience designing and delivering customized executive coaching and coaching supervision programs for internal and external coaches from Indonesia and Asia Pacific to Europe and North America and the Middle East. All team members are coach educators and have taught and participated in leading coaching supervision programs in the Americas and Europe.
Our approach builds upon Mindful Leadership Consulting’s Tri-Lens Coaching Supervision Model™. Developed by Ken Giglio, the model helps coaches generate and increase their emotional, social and systemic intelligence as they support their internal coaching client leaders and their teams. The model is grounded in the three functions of coaching supervision, which support coach well-being and resilience, continuous learning and development, and the highest quality of coaching, which includes enhancing ethical maturity.
Our Team
We have internationally experienced supervisors led by our core team:
Ken Giglio is based in the Middle Atlantic of the United States and works with coaching supervision clients from around the world. He is the Principal of Mindful Leadership Consulting and an accredited coach supervisor with the Coaching Supervision Academy (CSA) and a member of CSA’s International Faculty. Ken contributes to setting Supervision Guidelines as a member of the Center for Excellence for Supervision for the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC) and holds credentials with the ICF (PCC) and EMCC (ESIA).
Sophie Bizeul operates between Europe and Canada. She holds a Master’s in Coaching and Neuro-Linguistic Programming (Kingston University, London, United Kingdom) as well as credentials with the ICF (MCC) and EMCC (ESIA). Sophie is an ICF assessor for ACC, PCC and MCC credential levels as well as faculty on the Coaching Supervision Academy program and a coach trainer for a leading international coaching school. She is fluent in French, Spanish, and English.
Sam Magill is based in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. He holds ICF (MCC) and EMCC (ESIA) credentials and has been a coach since 1985. He was an internal coach at the Boeing Company before becoming a senior faculty member at the Hudson Institute of Santa Barbara, a faculty member at Wellcoaches School of Coaching, and a faculty member at the Coaching Supervision Academy in France as well as North America. He co-founded the CSA’s North American training program and currently has coach supervisees around the world and serves the ICF as a member of the Ethics Advocacy Team.