The Seven-Eyed Model: A Holistic Approach to Supervision

The Seven-Eyed Model of Supervision is a process-oriented approach that integrates both the relational and systemic aspects of supervision. It focusses on the relationships between the client, therapist, and supervisor, while also considering the interplay between these relationships and their context within the wider system.

The model is called “seven eyed” because it addresses seven distinct aspects of the supervision process, as explained below.

My supervision approach integrates the Seven-Eyed Model by Peter Hawkins and Robin Shohet with the Psychosynthesis model, incorporating a transpersonal perspective.

Here is a description of the seven different eyes:

1. Focus on the Client and what and how they present

This mode focuses on what actually happened in the sessions with the client:

• How the client came to be having sessions; their physical appearance; how they move and hold themselves; how they breathe, speak, look, gesture…; their language, metaphors, images and the story of their life as they told it

• What they chose to share, which area of their life they wanted to explore, and how the session’s content might relate to previous sessions

• The choices the client is making

• The connections between the various aspects of the client’s life

2. Focussing on Interventions

The focus here is on: 

• Strategies, skills and techniques used by the therapist; when and why they were used

• Developing alternative strategies and interventions

3. Focussing on the Client-Therapist Relationship

The aim of this mode is to help the therapist gain greater insight and understanding of the dynamics of their relationships with their clients. This includes:

• Addressing contract and boundaries; therapeutic alliance and how it develops

• How the session started and finished, what happened around the edges of the sessions, metaphors and images that emerged

• Paying attention to the client’s transference

4. Focussing on Therapist’s Process

The focus is on how the therapist is consciously and unconsciously affected by the work with their clients and how they deal with this. It includes focusing on the therapist’s emotional reactions and countertransference, their development, and how they resource themselves. 

5. Focussing on Therapist-Supervisor Relationship

The aims of this mode are:  

• To ensure the quality of the working alliance between therapist and supervisor

• To explore how the therapist-supervisor relationship might be unconsciously playing out or paralleling the hidden dynamics of the work with the clients

6. The Supervisor focussing on their own process

Here, the supervisor pays attention to their immediate experiences in the supervision session – what feelings, thoughts, and images are emerging for them while listening to the therapist and in response to the material shared by the therapist. The supervisor uses these responses as another source of information about what might be happening in the client-therapist relationship.

7. Focussing on the Wider Context in which the work happens

This model takes into consideration:

• The context of the client—client’s family, social, cultural and economic context

• The context of the therapist’s profession—employing organisation or training agency

• The wider world of the therapist and supervisor

• Professional codes and ethics (e.g. BACP, UKCP)

All of the above is addressed within the personal Context

The personal perspective includes:

• Looking for creative possibilities and seeing “crises as the opportunities for growth”

• Addressing meaning, values and common humanity 

• Holding the emerging higher purpose (I-Self connection)

Supervision should involve all seven of the above modes, but not necessarily in every session.

Reference
Hawkins and Shohet (2006) Supervision in the helping professions. Open University Press, McGraw-Hill Education