The Briar Patch: Thorny Challenges for Directors

Vic Pantesco, Ph.D
 

“No one ever told me this before!”

The Thorn

In the training clinic the student’s personal style and learning demeanor are challenged and visible in ways not typically evident in the classroom.  The supervisor, office manager, director or others on the faculty of the clinic may encounter elements of style that, in the new visibility of on-the-job (versus classroom) training, blossom into thorns or varying degrees of sharpness and depth.      

For example, a student with (in their view) comprehensive experience that warrants bypassing protocols or timely callbacks to clients (since that’s the way things were done in the agency they worked at before).  Or, a student conceptualizes poorly and writes consonant with that deficit, thus inviting supervisor correction.  Since apparently previous professors had not seen this problem or neglected it, the supervisor is set up to be seen as uniquely persecutory and unfair.  Or, a student obviously is rigid in therapy sessions, thereby inviting a number of predictable client responses.      

In all of these, a frequent seasoning in the emotional territory of confronting difficulties previously ignored or not even seen, a frequent energetic complaint is: No one ever told me this before!  This statement is not offered as an ah-ha within our understanding of reflexive learning.  Rather, it typically is proffered as sufficient rebuttal in establishing that the problem is located in the supervisor and/or clinic.

To Dull the Pain

Pursuing two venues may be helpful here.  First would be the frame setting in the clinic’s orientation materials.  In our clinic for example we have the student sign at the start that they have read the clinic manual and “agree to abide by its spirit and prescriptions.”  The manual is typical of most of our clinics with the forms, check off procedures, and pragmatics.  Our manual also, however, includes language that allows access to the “spirit” of the manual.  By-the-book folks may have much trouble in the spirit dimension.  I wrote once in student materials:  living according to letter-of-the-law may produce such adamant attention to the spellings as to lose appreciation for the richness of the words….   

The second intervention focuses on the dynamics in addition to the frame.  It goes like this.  If I hear “But No One Ever…” I listen through it, and then offer a question and reflection:  “OK.  So, would you have me keep silent?  If yes, what do you think the cost might be to both of us, and what benefits?”  At most, this produces a deeper level of discourse and access to the style dynamics with potential for movement.  At worst, a documented interaction with these questions with responses highlighted may be very useful in the evaluation dimension.