“Let Us Begin Well Together”: A Preparation-Positivity-Purpose Checklist for Helping Beginning Supervisors Optimize the Start of Supervision

Becoming a psychotherapy supervisor is no easy feat, and conceptual/practical material and empirical data suggest that beginning (compared to more advanced) supervisors are at their most vulnerable and most apt to struggle with issues of identity, confidence, self-efficacy, and competency development. Beginning supervisors can benefit from being helped to navigate through these normative developmental struggles and being transitionally eased into the supervisory role. We consider one way to make that transition and navigation process easier, presenting a supervisor preparation-positivity-purpose action checklist that is organized around three key areas: educating supervisees about the supervision experience; fostering positive supervisee expectations; and collaboratively formulating reasonable supervision goals. Distributed across those three areas, we identify and elaborate upon 20 specific supervisor actions that provide direction about optimizing supervision’s start. We view this checklist as a ‘handy tool’, a useful seminar/workshop reference resource and guidance sheet for those new to the practice of supervision and for those beginning their training as supervisors.