Facilitating Supervisee Competence in Developing and Maintaining Working Alliances

The quality of the therapist-client working alliance predicts both a client’s persistence in treatment and the outcomes he or she achieves. More effective therapists are better able to establish strong alliances across a range of clients, and this is true regardless of the model from which they work. It is important, therefore, that training programs ensure that their graduates are able to develop and manage alliances with their clients. Supervisors are key to accomplishing this training goal. This chapter focuses on the supervisor–supervisee relationship and its effect on the supervisee–client working alliance. As detailed by the authors, the working relationship between a supervisor and a supervisee is paramount in the supervisee’s professional development. The supervisor–supervisee relationship provides the contextual framework from which supervisees begin to form working alliances with their own clients. The authors highlight areas of supervisory focus that can improve the supervisee–client working alliance by focusing on specific attitudinal and skill-related issues that affect working alliance-related competence.