Supervision & mentor coaching
For practitioners working with senior leaders.
Bricolas is composed practice — moves drawn from a wide repertoire of frameworks, designed for this team, this leader, this room as it actually is. In supervision, the work is what the room is showing you, beneath what's been named — and what shows up between you and the work itself.
Supervision and mentor coaching for coaches, organizational consultants, internal L&D leads, and supervisors of supervisors — practitioners holding complex work with senior leaders and the systems they sit inside. The work is for practitioners who want a thinking partner with the room to do real reflective practice: not a session for venting about a difficult client, not case review as judgment, not a credential-hours transaction.
The frame is developmentally-minded and pluralist, in the Bachkirova and Jackson lineage from Oxford Brookes. Systems-psychodynamic at its foundation — group-relations trained, attentive to authority, role, and task. The work draws on the seven-eyed model where it's useful, on the internal supervisor and parallel process where the case calls for it, on systemic and somatic noticing as a matter of routine. And on the discipline of not over-attaching to any single model when the practitioner's own model is what's becoming clearer in the room.
Listening for what's said and what's underneath it. Use of self as instrument. We are both part of the system being examined.
What to expect
Supervision at Bricolas is structured around the practitioner, not the case file. Each session is a real reflective space — held, time-bounded, methodologically literate. Cases are the raw material; the practitioner's developing use of self is the work.
Sessions run 60 to 90 minutes. Cadence is set with the practitioner at intake, typically monthly for ongoing 1:1 supervision, with intensives available where the work calls for it. Later this year, a group cohort launches with 90-minute sessions across six months — small group, prerequisite ACC and 100 client hours, published rate, applications taken on a rolling basis.
The work in detail
- Case-shaped reflection that doesn't collapse into case review. What the practitioner brings is the case; what the supervision attends to is what the case is doing inside the practitioner — the countertransference, the somatic signals, the moments of getting hooked, the parts that don't yet have language.
- Parallel process surfaced and used. What's happening between the practitioner and their client tends to show up between us. That's not a problem to manage; it's diagnostic material. We work with it explicitly.
- Frameworks held lightly. Hawkins's seven-eyed model, Bachkirova's developmental pluralism, Petrie's vertical development, Tavistock systems-psychodynamic thinking — each gets used where it earns its place. None gets imposed where the practitioner's own emerging model is what should be driving the room.
- The system around the practitioner is part of the work. Internal practitioners hold organizational dynamics; external practitioners hold sponsor systems. Either way, the larger system is part of what's being examined, not held outside the supervision frame.
Who comes through this door
Coaches working with senior leaders — ACC, PCC, and ACTC track. Organizational consultants holding multi-stakeholder engagements. Internal L&D leads doing complex development work inside their own systems. Supervisors building their own supervisory practice. Practitioners moving into coaching from adjacent fields who want a thinking partner outside the credentialing body. Practitioners between certifications who want a thinking partner that isn't the credentialing body either.
What the practitioners share: holding work where the stakes are real, the systems are layered, and the reflective space inside their own organization is either absent or too political to use.
Mentor coaching
Mentor coaching is the credential-operational task that sits inside this larger reflective practice — distinct from supervision in scope, but offered in the same room. For ICF credential candidates working toward ACC and PCC, the work is recording-based and structured against the ICF Core Competencies as a working language, not a checklist. Used as a checklist, the framework produces coaches who can pass the exam and aren't yet free in the work. Used as a working language, it gives shared vocabulary for the moves you're already making and language for the edges you haven't named yet.
Sessions pair a recording-review block with reflective work on what surfaced. I'll listen to your recording, not for compliance with markers, but for the moves you're already making, the moves you're reaching for, and the moves the competency framework names that your practice is quietly inventing on its own. Each review produces three threads: what's working with name and evidence, what's reaching with name and evidence, and one or two competency-anchored experiments to bring to your next coaching engagement. Feedback that doesn't move the practice forward is feedback we didn't earn.
Hours count toward the credential. The work is what the hours are for.
The work is reflective practice on you as a practitioner — patterns, ethics, use of self, the systems you work within. What gets surfaced is what's already there, waiting for a room that can hold it.
Common questions
What is coaching supervision at Bricolas?
A reflective space for practitioners to examine their own use of self in the work — the cases they're holding, the parallel processes that show up, the moments of getting hooked, the language not yet found. Sessions run 60-90 minutes, typically monthly. The frame is developmentally-minded and pluralist, in the Bachkirova-Jackson lineage.
Who is supervision for?
Coaches working with senior leaders (ACC, PCC, ACTC track), organizational consultants holding multi-stakeholder engagements, internal L&D leads doing complex development work, supervisors building their own supervisory practice, and practitioners moving into coaching from adjacent fields. The shared characteristic: holding work where the stakes are real and the systems are layered.
What is mentor coaching for ICF credentialing?
Recording-based work for ICF credential candidates working toward ACC or PCC. Sessions pair recording review with reflective work on what surfaced, structured against the ICF Core Competencies as a working language. Each review produces three threads: what's working, what's reaching, and competency-anchored experiments to bring to the next coaching engagement.