Supervisee Survey

Best Practice Supervision Survey

How aligned is your engagement as a supervisee to best practice?

Answer 12 questions and we’ll email you a personalised report.

As supervisory experiences are so variable, this insights survey aims to highlight ways supervisees can optimise their own supervisory experience aligned with best practice. The survey is more educative than evaluative and helps identify the common approaches taken at each of the four levels identified above.

After the survey, you can find a summary of each of the four levels, and what drives each of these in a workplace.

It takes just 6 minutes
Its more educative than evaluative
It’s completely free
Receive customised results instantly

This survey is tailored to be answered from the perspective of a supervisee, although we do have a separate survey for you to complete if you are a supervisor, as well as another one to specifically reflect on the level of supervision functioning at the workplace level.

I’ve been providing supervision training for the health and community sector for 20 years, to thousands of participants and hundreds of workplaces throughout Australia and New Zealand.

How it works

Through completing the twelve questions and evaluating your results, the survey will help you understand how your supervision is currently tracking against best practice.

The expectation is not to be perfect, but it is to acknowledge that working towards best practice supervision is an ongoing process for every supervisor, supervisee and organisation. It is not just you as the supervisee who is learning, but the supervisors and workplace are in the process of learning of how to align supervision with the emerging evidence and practice wisdom.

This insights survey acknowledges that as a supervises you are only one of three critical components in creating a successful supervisory experience.

The workplace and supervisor also have critical roles in supervision. Supervisees cannot do successful supervision alone. If you are willing, but the other critical components are not, you will find it frustrating and challenging.

The twelve questions highlight the key elements of your role in driving your own learning in supervision and encourage you to think critically about your role in the supervisory relationship. They are designed to assist reflection on:

your approach to supervision
openness to self-directed learning
skills in driving your own supervision experience – such as preparation
proactivity in engagement in the supervisory relationships
skills in optimising effectiveness of your supervisory experience.

These questions encourage you as a supervisee to consider your own agency in making the most of your supervision, highlighting areas for potential growth and greater engagement.

Your responses will generate an overall score to help you identify where you sit on the best practice scale:

Transformative

The highest form of supervision is transformative, being highly empowering for the supervisee and beneficial to the workplace.

Positive

Positive supervision is focussed on learning and skill development.

Benign

An ineffective learning experience, benign supervision is not energising or engaging.

Toxic

Supervision that is negative, traumatising or toxic is damaging not only to the supervisee, but to the workplace.

Michelle Bihary

Michelle is an expert in professional and clinical supervision, leadership, self-leadership and workplace resilience.

She is the author of Leading Above the Line: Applying neuroscience to build psychologically safe and thriving teams.

Building on strong clinical expertise in mental health, as an occupational therapist, individual psychotherapist and family therapist, Michelle has over three decades of experience and clinical training.

Having worked across a range of health and community sector organisations, she has developed high-level expert knowledge, training and resources to support workplaces to build supervisory knowledge, skills and a supervisory-friendly culture.

Her expertise in this area is un-matched within Australia.

Don’t just take our word for it, see what others have to say

The supervisee survey is a great way to encourage reflective thought on how best to be using supervision. Its great that you get ideas to further enhance the supervision experience.

Megan Fitzpatrick
Senior Speech Pathologist, Royal Far West

This survey was very important to me because it addressed attitudes of people like me rather than the organisation.

Barbara Bard
Financial and GambleAware Counsellor, Lifeline Central West

I think it really highlights the role of the supervisee in directing and enhancing their learning experience.

Naomi Kalman
Therapist, Professional and Clinical Supervisor, The Delta Centre

The surveys are thought provoking, encouraging individuals to review own practices and department practices and identify areas for improvement. It's starts reflection and introspection into supervision.