Month: May 2021

Our award-winning e-book

Our free, downloadable e-book won a Maroon award for design from the University of Minnesota Communicators Forum!

Cover of e-book

We’re honored that our e-book, Reflective Supervision and Consultation: Preventing Burnout, Boosting Effectiveness, and Renewing Purpose for Frontline Workers, was recognized with a 2020 Maroon award for design by the University of Minnesota Communicators Forum! Each year, the Communicators Forum—a network of communications professionals at UMN—presents Maroon and Gold Awards highlighting work that “exemplifies the University’s core values: excellence, innovation, effectiveness, integrity, diversity, collaboration, sharing of knowledge, accountability, stewardship, and service.”

Written by Reflective Practice Center staff, our e-book was designed by Kirsten Mortensen, graphic design and production manager at the College of Education and Human Development. Download your free copy!

The RIOS in practice: Part two of our Q & A with Michelle Dineen

The Reflective Interaction Observation Scale (RIOS) was developed at CEED as a research tool, but reflective practitioners quickly found creative ways to use it in reflective sessions. Learn more in our Q & A with Michelle Dineen, MSW, LICSW, IMH-E®.

Michelle Dineen

Michelle Dineen, MSW, LICSW, IMH-E®, is a therapist and reflective consultant. In part one of our Q & A, she talked about what happens in a reflective supervision session and why it benefits participants. In this second installment, Dineen talks about how reflective supervisors and consultants use the Reflective Interaction Observation Scale (RIOS™), which was developed at CEED. Dineen teaches our online course, RIOS™ 1: Using the RIOS™ Framework for Reflective Supervision, and she authored the self-study module Wondering with Purpose: Reflection in Any Setting.

The RIOS was initially developed as a research tool, but reflective practitioners quickly started using it as a tool for training and practice. Can you talk about how the RIOS is used in reflective supervision sessions?

Michelle Dineen: I’ll give you my personal answer. Have you ever seen that image of pinning down a cloud? Describing reflective supervision can feel like that. What researchers at CEED did when they developed the RIOS was to answer the question: “What are we actually doing in reflective supervision?” What they found is that we’re actively listening and being curious. The RIOS framework helps the reflective supervisor or consultant to remain grounded while listening to a story. I think of the RIOS as a touchstone, something to think about when you’re getting lost, when you might have veered off. It’s a reminder to ask yourself: What am I curious about next? What am I not curious about?

So the RIOS was developed as a way to describe the content of a reflective supervision session. But practitioners can actively use it during reflective supervision to help guide the conversation.

Here is one way to think of reflective supervision. Picture six people sitting around a table with a 3D object in the middle of it. None of us can see the object from every angle. Each of us is seeing a different part of the thing. But if we all look at it at the same time and from our different perspectives, we are seeing the whole object.

One of the Essential Elements of reflective supervision identified by the RIOS is Holding the Baby or Child in Mind. What the RIOS does is to help us hold all of the pieces: the person who’s receiving services, the baby or child, and the provider who’s telling the story. It helps us build a whole picture of a family or a situation. It helps us know if we are seeing all the different parts of the 3D object. This is especially important since a reflective supervision session consists of two or more people talking about a third party.

This sounds like one of the differences between reflective supervision and therapy. When someone meets with a therapist, their own stories are the focus of the conversation. In contrast to that, in reflective supervision, the provider and the reflective supervisor are talking about someone who is not in the room with them.

Yes, when a client shares a personal story with their therapist, the therapist is curious about the person and their story. But the client has the answers. In a reflective session, the people in the room don’t have all the answers. We are still curious about the provider sitting with us who is sharing the story. As we know, they are part of the story. They’re helping that third party, and part of their work is to be curious about that third party.

It’s interesting that you use the word “curiosity” more than words like “empathy” or “compassion.”

When you’re curious, open, or challenging assumptions, it helps you to connect empathetically. The curious mindset leaves more space for understanding the other person–or just sitting with that person and not understanding. Research has found that a curious, wondering mind is a coping mechanism for stressful events. If a stressful thing happens, instead of holding onto the stress, the curious mind can actually say, “Okay, this is an adventure. I’m interested. What do I need to know?” We move towards action, curiosity, and wonder. That curiosity goes away sometimes when things are stressful or when someone hurts my feelings. Yet my job is still to be in a relationship with the other person, to get them what they need.

Let’s say I’m a home visitor working with a parent. The parent is yelling at me. If I’m able to maintain my curiosity about the person, I may ask, “What is the feeling that produced this behavior?” I may learn that they were verbally abused as a child. That starts to kick my empathy into gear. Now I understand that they’re playing out their attachment relationship with me, and if I act differently from their parent, then there’s potential for repairing that prior relationship. Later, when the parent interacts with their child, they may be able to use our relationship as a model sometimes, instead of only the relationship they had with their parents.

That’s an example of Parallel Process, one of the Essential Elements identified in the RIOS.

It’s one of the reasons why reflective supervision was born in the infant mental health field. Workers were trying to create these corrective relationships with clients who were becoming parents. But what if corrective relationships like that were available to everyone? If there are people who are curious and interested in me and in whatever I’m having trouble with, I can hold my feelings instead of acting them out.

This is why I believe this course, RIOS™ 1: Using the RIOS™ Framework for Reflective Supervision, can work for people in a range of professions. I think the same is true of the module Wondering with Purpose: Reflection in Any Setting. Take “Holding the Baby in Mind” and change “baby” to “person on the phone who needs housing” and “provider” to “person answering the phone.” The reflective provider will be more able to hold the boundary when someone is acting inappropriately. The provider will then be more able to give them another chance when they’re acting appropriately, rather than saying, “You can’t come back to my agency again.”

So that’s what opens up this course to anybody who’s interested in this reflective way of interacting with people. A big piece is practicing identifying a feeling in someone else and in yourself. Have you heard what Brené Brown has to say about empathy versus sympathy? Empathy acknowledges that maybe there are no solutions. Empathy means that when someone feels like they’re down in a hole, you just get down in the hole with them. It helps us get used to saying to a supervisor, “I am tapped out, frustrated, and angry.” And it helps the supervisor get used to saying: “Wow, I hear you.” Or: “I trust you to do what you need to do so you can get back to work.” That’s instead of saying: “Just get back to the phones.” Or: “Let me fix it.” There doesn’t need to be a genius fix, there just needs to be a space.

How does reflective supervision work? Therapist and reflective consultant Michelle Dineen explains in this Q & A

Learn about what happens in a reflective supervision session and how it can benefit practitioners in fields such as early childhood education, social work, and health care.

Michelle Dineen, MSW, LICSW, IMH-E®, is a therapist and reflective consultant. As a therapist, she has a special interest in working with parents who have young children. As a reflective consultant, she leads group reflective supervision sessions for people in a variety of professions. This includes teams working in such fields as public health and emergency services, as well as teams working for social service agencies and crisis nurseries. 

Dineen is also an instructor for our online course RIOS 1: Using the RIOS Framework for Reflective Supervision. She also authored our self-study module Wondering with Purpose: Reflection in Any Setting. In the first part of our Q & A with Dineen, she discusses the benefits of reflective supervision. She also talks about the challenges that the COVID-19 pandemic has posed to people in helping professions.

What happens in a reflective supervision session? How does reflective supervision help participants?

Michelle Dineen: Reflective supervision sessions can be led by a reflective supervisor who works within an organization, or they can be led by an external consultant, like me. Reflective supervision is particularly helpful for people whose work is emotionally charged. These providers often work with people who are in high-stress situations. 

In reflective sessions, providers can take a step back and think about themselves as players in the interactions with people they assist. Reflective sessions are a place where providers can work on understanding their part of the equation. My job is to help providers name and manage the emotions that they experience while helping others.

In reflective sessions, we do mindfulness to become more aware of our bodies’ responses to emotions. When we get emotionally charged or someone we meet is emotionally charged, that is somewhat contagious. If we don’t understand our own reactions, we can end up taking on someone else’s emotions. 

The providers I work with are empathetic. They are in relationships with the people whom they are helping. But they’re practicing how to manage the boundaries between their own emotions and those of others. They’re asking questions like: “What can I understand about the emotions that we experienced? What isn’t mine to hold onto anymore? What can I let go of and still be good at my work?” They’re practicing not being a sponge that soaks in all of the emotions in the room. Being a sponge leads to burnout.

So reflective supervision can help prevent burnout. It can also help participants increase their effectiveness at work. Can you talk a little bit about why that is the case?  

MD: Reflective supervision sessions are not based on fixing anything. Instead, they are based on giving space to the experiences people are having with an initial goal of wondering what might be going on with the other person. From there, we get into challenging assumptions. All of us are judgmental. That’s how we keep safe. The key is to recognize our assumptions and to be curious about the person we are interacting with. 

For example, let’s say you are a home visitor who works with parents and kids. You might have assumptions like, “I could do better than this mom.” Everyone has weird thoughts like these. We may feel that we can’t say them out loud. If I leave feelings and thoughts like these unconscious and buried, they may come out sideways. I may accidentally act on them. But if I have a safe space to notice those thoughts, such as a reflective supervision session, I don’t have to hang on to them. I can move through them and use them to lead me in my intervention and support of that parent. 

You mentioned you work with public health professionals. How has their work changed since the start of the pandemic?

MD: I’ve noticed that some of the separation of “provider” and “client,” or of “us” and “them,” if you will, is gone. It’s because we’re now all experiencing a universal stressor. This isn’t necessarily just applicable to public health; it’s applicable to everyone who works with people. The pandemic has changed the way work feels and the way it feels to help someone else. Providers are finding that the stress experienced by their clients feels familiar.

I mentioned that one piece of reflective supervision is the separation of “my feelings” and “your feelings.” Thinking about what’s happened over the past year, so many professionals are now in the position of saying to their clients, “I’m confused about what’s happening also. I don’t know when I can see you again. I don’t understand the technology to connect with you virtually. I don’t know what barriers there will be to connect with you.” It’s really a struggle for people who have been doing this for a long time, because their skill sets may not translate well when they are not in the room with someone. These providers are now being subjected to stress at a similar level to the people with whom they work.

It sounds like any professional who normally works with people face-to-face could be experiencing these high stress levels.

MD: Yes, many workers use themselves, their presence, as a tool to connect with someone. They can’t do that virtually, or at least, they can’t do it in the same way. For example, sometimes a home visitor’s work is to sit in silence as a person cries about the tragedy they’re having, or to sit in silence while holding a baby. 

The educator and reflective consultant Carol Siegel has said that stress and creativity are opposites. When stress goes up, creativity goes down. People in helping professions practice creativity all the time. Think of a kindergarten teacher when a child is really dysregulated. The teacher thinks, “I’ll try this to help them. Now I’ll try that. That didn’t work. What else can I do?” What do professionals like these do when their creativity is constrained by the virtual format? They feel tired, incompetent. They can’t do what they want to do and serve the people they want to serve. And they know people are suffering for it.

Read part two of our conversation with Michelle Dineen.

To learn more about reflective supervision, explore Dineen’s online course RIOS™ 1: Using the RIOS™ Framework for Reflective Supervision. For a self-paced introduction to reflective skills, Dineen’s self-study module Wondering With Purpose: Reflection in Any Setting is another option. Register for any of CEED’s self-study modules for $10 off throughout May in honor of Mental Health Awareness Month.