In an article in the Journal for Specialists in Group Work, (June 2006) Deborah Rubel of Oregon State University and Jane Atiena Okech of the University of Vermont have adapted for group work the “Discrimination Model.” This is a model described by J. Bernard in 1979 and widely used since in supervision for individual counselling.
The authors observe that group workers tend to have well developed individual counselling skills, such as using minimal encouragers, open questions, paraphrasing content, reflecting feelings, confronting and supporting. Because they are familiar these skills may be overused, while the specialized skills and methods unique to group work are underused, such as structuring feedback, bridging, clarifying communication between members, boundary setting and making process observations (and doing all of this in a culturally appropriate way) and conceptualizing the group dynamics, norms and roles and recognizing the stages of group development over time.
To help group work supervisors make sound decisions about their supervisory roles and technical focus the “SGW” model adds to the flat 3 x 3 structure of the discrimination model, creating a 3 x 3 x 3 matrix that more accurately reflects the complexity of the issues at play in group work. The first two levels show the Discrimination Model and the third shows what has been added in the SGW model:
Roles for supervisor: consultant / counsellor / teacher
Foci for supervision: interventions / conceptualization / personalization
To illustrate how this model is applied, in the ‘counsellor’ role the supervisor may need to explore how the supervisee’s emotional needs may impede their work not just in dealing with an individual in the group but in terms of interpersonal interactions (including those of co-facilitation) and at the group-as-system level. Likewise in the ‘teaching’ role the supervisor may need to give information about individual, interpersonal and group-as-system levels of interaction. In the ‘consultant’ role the supervisor can encourage and support more experienced supervisees to assume increasing responsibility for providing their own solutions to problems at all three levels of interaction in group work.
The individual level in group work remains important, for example the supervisor may need to discuss how the facilitators are drawing out individual group members and blocking the action of destructive group members, creating emotional safety for individuals in the group, assessing risk of suicidality, and being aware of the sexual and sociocultural identity of members and of their family of origin issues.
The SGW model guides supervisors to go beyond these individual counselling issues to include the interpersonal and group-as-system levels, e.g. to discuss each facilitator’s ability to use self interactively with other facilitators to influence a group’s cohesion level, develop group norms, deal with group issues that block progress and assess and respond to the anxiety level of the group. Addressing these issues in supervision is particularly important at times when the group reaches an impasse or has to deal with feelings about its termination.
In summary, supervisors should use all three levels of interaction in choosing their foci during supervision sessions and encourage their supervisees to conceptualise their work at all three levels of interaction.
Our group supervision model