Learning how to be a licensed Texas LPC supervisor isn’t easy, but there are some guidelines you can follow to make it easier for yourself and your supervisees. Having a mentor or asking questions of more experienced LPC supervisors will also help you learn what you need to know. Here are five ways to be an effective LPC supervisor.
Dealing With Course Attendance
There will always be times when, despite your best efforts, you cannot provide coverage for all of your student’s coursework. When you do not have supervision hours available for some of your students, you must communicate early and often with them so they can plan accordingly. If you know there will not be a supervision general on a particular day, notify them and give them an estimated time frame as soon as possible. They can request that we block out those hours in their My Training Schedule and can take other steps to ensure that they receive adequate training time before their license renewal date. It’s also important to note that supervisors can schedule or cancel supervision sessions by contacting students directly via email or telephone.
Dealing With Coursework
If you’re an experienced counsellor considering becoming a Texas LPC supervisor, you will likely want to continue providing counselling services. One of your most essential tasks as a supervisor will be keeping up with coursework. This may not sound like it would require much effort—you’ll still have plenty of time left over for your counselling sessions, right? Wrong. As a counsellor-supervisor, you need to keep up with coursework and create assignments and provide counselling support for other counsellors-in-training. Try planning out your week in advance and setting aside specific times when you can review coursework, create tasks for new counsellors-in-training, and meet with them individually.
Dealing With Crisis
Crisis management is one of those things that are easy to forget until it happens. It doesn’t matter if your supervisor has had three years of experience or twenty. Eventually, they will find themselves in some crisis. Many people remember their first crisis as extremely scary and stressful, but there are ways to deal with these situations so they don’t happen again. Unfortunately, these ways don’t always come naturally; sometimes, it takes practice.
Keeping On Track
Your supervisees must know what they’re working on, but it is helpful for you as their supervisor. It keeps everyone on track and allows you to ensure that there aren’t any roadblocks or inconsistencies in Texas LPC supervisor training between supervisors. And, if something comes up (like an emergency), it allows your supervisees to know who should take care of it. As a bonus, working together is an excellent way for new counsellors and experienced counsellors to bond.
Takeaway!
Supervising other professionals is not an easy task. You will find that you need to make constant judgments about their performance, deciding when they are ready for increased responsibility and need more support. The LPC manual states in section 5.4 that at supervision sessions, practitioners should give an account of their work, discuss clients’ issues or difficulties and receive feedback on how well or how badly things have gone. Supervisees will likely take it personally if you criticize them in any way, so it is helpful to approach every supervision session with an open mind and no preconceptions about what will happen.
