Clinical Supervision and Professional Development Groups

• Weekly 90-minute sessions (Zoom)

• Preparatory email before each meeting with:

  • Framing content specific to the theme
  • Sentence completion exercise (adapted from Nathaniel Branden’s Taking Responsibility)
  • Reflection prompt specific to the theme
  • Sources for additional study and reflection

• In-session format:

  • Check-ins followed by open dialogue.

  • Structured sharing of sentence completions followed by an open dialogue

  • Facilitated sharing of the reflection prompt followed by an open dialogue

  • Integration and takeaways

Facilitation uses a mix of structured turn-taking (ensuring every voice is heard) and open dialogue (allowing for resonance, challenge, and spontaneous process).

Character of the Clinician

14-Week Group Arc

Week 1 — Beginning the Work
We begin by establishing the purpose of the group, the structure of our time together, and the kind of participation this work requires. The opening question is simple and serious. What does it mean to enter this kind of work honestly?

Week 2 — Integrity
We begin with alignment. This week invites reflection on where conduct aligns with values and where fear, convenience, image, or fatigue begins to divide them.

Week 3 — Discernment
Character depends in part on what the clinician can accurately notice. We will reflect on what draws attention, what gets missed, and how assumptions, preferences, projections, and urgency shape perception.

Week 4 — Judgment
This week examines how clinicians make choices under uncertainty and what influences direction, timing, restraint, and intervention.

Week 5 — Boundaries
Boundaries reveal how the clinician thinks about care, closeness, responsibility, and authority. We will consider where limits hold, where they blur, and what those patterns may reveal.

Week 6 — Directness
We will reflect on what gets said plainly, what gets softened, what gets postponed, and how comfort, caution, or fear can weaken clarity.

Week 7 — Courage
This week asks participants to examine hesitation, self-protection, and the pressure to pull back when something important needs to be faced.

Week 8 — Confrontation
Some moments require more than reflection. This week focuses on what happens in the clinician when something evasive, distorted, compromised, or false needs to be named directly.

Week 9 — Conflict
We will examine what tension brings up internally and whether disagreement is met with control, withdrawal, appeasement, escalation, or steadier engagement.

Week 10 — Criticism
Criticism exposes vulnerability quickly. This week examines how the clinician receives correction, disapproval, disagreement, or challenge and whether these points lead to defensiveness, reflection, or revision.

Week 11 — Status
No clinician works outside rank and hierarchy. We will reflect on authority, deference, expertise, insecurity, intimidation, recognition, and the ways status shapes what feels sayable, risky, or forbidden.

Week 12 — Internalized Oppression
We will reflect on the ways devaluation can be internalized and lived as self-doubt, silence, over-accommodation, reduced expectations, fear of authority, disowned power, or a narrowed permission to exist fully.

Week 13 — Collusion
We will examine the moments when clarity gives way, and the clinician begins to protect comfort, attachment, image, hierarchy, or belonging at the expense of truth.

Week 14 — Ending the Work
We close by considering what has become clearer, what remains difficult, and what each participant intends to carry into practice going forward. 

At the end of this program, participants will be able to:

1. Identify how clinician character influences clinical effectiveness and ethical presence.

2. Move forward with expanded professional self-awareness.

3. Demonstrate strategies for addressing themes such as integrity and courage in professional identity.

4. Integrate personal and professional values into a coherent framework for sustained clinical practice.

• 21 Professional Development Hours
  14 sessions × 1.5 hours each

• Meets DORA requirements for professional development for LPCs, LMFTs, and Clinical Social Workers in Colorado.

• Certificates of completion provided.

Across eight weeks, we will consider:

The Clinician I Am Now · What Stays With Me · My Clinical Reflexes · What I Avoid · What I Have Come to Trust · My Presence in the Relationship · What I May No Longer Need · What I Am Coming to Know

The group is reflective and experiential rather than didactic. Current clinical experiences provide material for examining the clinician rather than for formal case consultation or clinical supervision.

• Eight weekly 90-minute virtual meetings
• Open to previous Character of the Clinician participants
• Guided reflection and group dialogue
• Current clinical experience as a point of entry for inquiry
• Professional development documentation provided

• Weekly 90-minute supervision group via Zoom
• Six consecutive weeks 
• Case discussion, structured reflection, and direct supervisory feedback
• Sequential application of the Clinical Direction Structure
• Maximum 6 participants

• Develop clearer clinical direction from complex or diffuse client material
• Distinguish information gathering from clinically useful assessment
• Identify process and pattern within relational and systemic context
• Develop functional insight that informs the direction of treatment
• Formulate focused client goals grounded in values, ethics, integrity, and purpose
• Select and use interventions in relation to the client’s identified goal
• Strengthen clinical judgment and the ability to account for clinical choices
• Develop greater specificity in conceptualization, language, and therapeutic direction

At the end of the group, participants will be able to:

1. Organize clinical work using a sequential process of assessment, goal formation, and intervention.
2. Use assessment to identify process, pattern, context, and functional information relevant to clinical direction.
3. Develop focused goals that clarify what the client is working toward and why that direction matters.
4. Select and evaluate interventions according to how they facilitate movement toward the client’s identified goal.
5. Articulate the clinical reasoning connecting assessment, goal formation, and intervention.

• 9 hours of group supervision
• Hours may be applied toward Colorado MFT or LPC licensure requirements
• Certificate of completion provided

• Format: 90-minute group sessions, meeting weekly for six consecutive weeks.

• Participants: Approved supervisors, supervisors-in-training, and senior clinicians preparing for supervisory roles

• Group Size: 6–8 participants for sustained dialogue and presence. 

Week 1: Integrity as Bedrock

We will work toward making integrity central to our supervision practice.

Week 2: Courage in Supervision

Exploration of courage in addressing power dynamics, ethical dilemmas, and difficult supervisee moments.

Week 3: Character and Esteem

The supervisor’s character as foundational to relational-esteem. 

How esteem dynamics (self-esteem, relational-esteem, professional-esteem) show up in supervisory relationships.

Week 4: Reimagining the Profession

Supervisors as architects of the profession’s future.

Facing careerism, gatekeeping, and the narrowing of imagination in training.

Week 5: Holding Power Lightly

Supervisory presence that does not grip power too tightly.

Building supervisory scaffolding without creating dependency.

Week 6: Integration and Vision

Supervisors articulate their evolving philosophy of supervision.

Culminates in each member presenting their “Statement of Supervisory Character."

1. Develop a Supervisory Philosophy – Draft and articulate a written statement of supervisory philosophy that integrates values, integrity, and vision for the profession.

2. Apply Integrity-Based Practices – Identify and implement at least two supervisory practices that promote integrity in documentation, evaluation, and supervisory dialogue.

3. Demonstrate Courage in Case Application – Apply strategies for addressing complex supervisory dilemmas - such as power imbalances or ethical challenges - using courage and professional-esteem as guiding frameworks.

4. Build a Professional Peer Network – Engage in structured peer consultation that fosters ongoing collaboration and stewardship of the supervisory role beyond the training period.

• Meets Colorado DORA requirements for Professional Development Hours (6 sessions = 9 hours).

• Out-of-state clinicians: confirm with your licensing board for professional development hours acceptance.

• Weekly preparatory prompts based on Branden’s work and reflection questions.

• Small group size (max 8 participants).

• Structured turn-taking, followed by open discussion.

• Concluding reflections that tie professional esteem practices to clinical application.

• Week 1 – The Practice of Living Consciously
  How professional esteem grows when we stay mindful of our clinical choices, avoid autopilot, and acknowledge both strengths and blind spots.

• Week 2 – The Practice of Self-Acceptance
  Learning to acknowledge limitations, mistakes, and growth edges without shame. How self-acceptance stabilizes our presence with clients and colleagues.

• Week 3 – The Practice of Self-Responsibility
  Taking ownership of our professional decisions, boundaries, and ethical stance. Avoiding blame-shifting and cultivating accountability.

• Week 4 – The Practice of Self-Assertiveness
  Speaking from conviction in supervision, peer consultation, and advocacy for clients. Distinguishing assertiveness from defensiveness or passivity.

• Week 5 – The Practice of Living Purposefully
  Anchoring daily professional efforts in larger vocational aims. Exploring how purpose sustains resilience and guards against burnout.

• Week 6 – The Practice of Personal Integrity
  Aligning clinical choices with core values, and recognizing when compromise erodes professional esteem.

By the end of this group, participants will be able to:

1. Apply Branden’s six practices to strengthen their professional esteem as clinicians.

2. Identify personal and professional blind spots that undermine clinical presence.

3. Demonstrate self-acceptance strategies that support resilience and reduce imposter syndrome.

4. Differentiate between responsibility, blame, and accountability in clinical practice.

5. Implement assertiveness skills in professional settings without collapsing into defensiveness or passivity.

6. Articulate a sense of professional purpose and apply it to sustain long-term growth.

7. Evaluate their alignment with core values and ethics to enhance integrity in practice.

• Meets Colorado DORA requirements for Professional Development Hours (6 sessions = 9 hours).

• Out-of-state clinicians: confirm with your licensing board for acceptance of professional development hours.

• Length: 8 weeks (weekly 90-minute sessions)
• Group size: 6-8 clinicians
• Modality: Virtual
• Structure: Most sessions combine (a) framing content, (b) experiential exercise, (c) reflective dialogue, and (d) application to clinical work

Week 1. Orientation: Courage, Esteem, and the Group Method

Aim: Define courage as a clinical capacity under uncertainty; set norms that protect rigor and respect.

• Establish group method (case format, feedback protocol, confidentiality, participation floor).
• Explore how esteem and courage shape professional sustainability.
• Reflective activity: Naming individual fears that show up in the therapy room.

Take-home: One small, measurable risk you will take in session before next meeting.

Week 2 – Mapping Fear in Clinical Practice

Aim: Translate “fear” into observable behaviors that narrow clinical awareness.

• Types of "fear behaviors" (over-explaining, rescuing, avoidance of rupture, premature certainty, excessive caution, cultural over-correction).
• Discussion: How fear narrows awareness and limits acuity.

Take-home: Track one fear behavior in real time during sessions this week (brief notes, no self-punishment).

Week 3 – Building Muscle for Presence Under Tension

Aim: Build tolerance for ambiguity without collapsing into control, avoidance, or performance.

• Concept: Stretching perception of control
• Discuss options for experiential exercises. 
• Reflection: How anticipatory anxiety mirrors clinical experiences.

Take-home: Identify and schedule an experiential exercise within the next few weeks.

Week 4 – Courage in Peer/Client Dialogue

Aim: Practice honesty with care: direct feedback that strengthens judgment rather than compliance.

• Cultivating courage, not just compliance.
• Giving and receiving feedback rooted in honesty and courage.
• Group reflection: What does a courageous practice look like?

Take-home: Offer one piece of direct, respectful feedback this week.

Week 5 – Clinical Acuity and the Reality Box

Aim: Define acuity as disciplined attention: pattern recognition, signal vs noise, and clean hypotheses.

• Explore the idea of “reality boxes” and biases (Swann, 2003).
• Bias check: how personal assumptions shape what you treat as credible or relevant (reality-box framing).

Take-home: Expose self to unfamiliar or fringe material; observe and reflect on emotional/physical reactions.

Week 6 – Sitting with Disparate Information

Aim: Train “accurate empathy without agreement” and reduce reflexive dismissal or over-identification. 

• Experiential activity: Practice listening to a story outside one’s frame of reference without premature interpretation.
• Reflection: When have you dismissed a client’s experience as “unlikely”?

Take-home: Practice sitting with disparate information. 

Week 7 – Sustaining Courage Across a Career

Aim: Identify personal “attrition patterns” and build a maintenance plan for ongoing clinical risk-taking and renewal.

• Discussion: Goldberg et al.’s finding that therapist effectiveness may diminish over time
• Explore practices to counter attrition: ongoing risk-taking, reflection, and renewal.

Take-home: Draft a personal courage plan (including rituals, practices, commitments). Choose one maintenance action to start immediately.

Week 8 – Integration and Next Steps

Aim: Synthesize insights from courage and acuity practices.

• Closing ritual: Naming one act of courage you will carry forward.
• Name one fear behavior you’re reducing and one acuity practice you’ll continue.

Take-home: Optional follow-up on a specific 30-day commitment (observable action, not a feeling-state).

• Experiential learning
• Reflection and dialogue
• Peer feedback

By the end of the program, participants will be able to:

• Identify personal fears that shape their clinical presence and develop strategies for courageous engagement.
• Practice experiential exercises that expand tolerance for uncertainty, tension, and ambiguity.
• Strengthen clinical acuity by examining their relationship to information - including fringe or marginalized sources.
• Develop a sustainable professional identity grounded in courage, esteem, and presence.

This program meets CE standards by integrating:

• Evidence-informed theoretical frameworks (citing Vargas, 2019, Enhancing Therapist Courage and Clinical Acuity for Advancing Practice).
• Clearly measurable outcomes (evidenced in observation, reflections, and advancement of practice).
• Structured progression of skills across sessions.