Sharpen your axe to do your best work

By Tim Williams

In Robin and Joan Shoets book 'In Love with Supervision', they re-tell the  story of a woodcutter, who, on his first day at work managed to fell 18 trees. The boss is delighted and it’s all going well.  On the second day he’s only able to fell 15 trees and the next day, just 10.  This goes on day after day – each time, despite all his best efforts, he’s able to cut down fewer and fewer trees.  He goes to see the boss to apologise and the boss asks, “When was the last time you sharpened your axe?”.  The wood cutter was confused, "What do you mean sharpen my axe.  I’m too busy, trying to cut down trees!”

And so it can be for us and our busy coaching or indeed any other work - despite our best efforts and long hours, we don't seem to be making the progress we'd hoped for. One of the reasons may be that we are not taking the best care of the tools we are using – the main one, of course, being ourselves.  If we don’t pay attention to what we need to be at our sharpest, then we may find that, despite all our best efforts, we are not being our most effective.

You won’t be surprised, to hear me say that Health Coaching Supervision is a great place to ‘sharpen’ your skills as well as learn some new ones.  The restorative part of supervision, also pays attention to you as the most precious instrument of the work you do. Supervision is an opportunity to share succeses as well as challenges, to be encouraged and appreciated. Don't worry - the normative aspect of supervision, pays attention to standards and supervisees will be encouraged to reflect on how their work meets these.

It is also worth us being aware of what we need to be doing for ourselves to stay sharp,– sleep, good food, movement, time in nature, space, connection, time alone…  We owe it to ourselves and our clients, to be as sharp and resourceful as we can be.

My own supervision has provided space for me to reflect on my coaching work, challenge my own limiting assumptions, think deeply about what I need to do to develop my skills and, at times, re-ignite my passion for what I consider to be privileged work.

We know that access to a health coaching supervisor is patchy across the NHS and beyond it and so I have a spring my step today, as we start training our 3^rd cohort of Supervisors.  Learning to provide space where people can sharpen their tools, takes time, but they are on their way and we’re here to support in the meantime.