TILT – Therapeutic Innovations in Light of Technology
Cyber Supervision Anne Stokes
Recently in a supervision of supervision session, my online supervisee was talking about one of her supervisees (still with me?!) who is from a different cultural background. This led me to think again about the issues in supervising across cultures. I recalled the diagrams that Joyce Thompson and Colin Lago often used when discussing this issue in face-to-face supervision, and how complex it can become. The broad line on the triangle represents the supervisory relationship.
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T I L T MAGAZ I N E s e p t e m b e r 2 0 1 1
What do we mean by ‘culture’? Cultural diversity can arise within one country or state, or across national boundaries. Nationality may be the most obvious one, but even where it exists, it is perhaps only the ‘container’ for other differences. There may be a difference in language, with one or more parties working in a second language. Other elements of diversity could be concerned with faith or religion (not always the same thing!), collective belief systems, gender, sexuality and socioeconomic factors, to name but a few. It is also quite possible to argue against making this a topic for consideration, of course, by suggesting that as