TPC Journal-Vol 10- Issue 1

34 The Professional Counselor | Volume 10, Issue 1 Implications for Supervisors, Counselor Educators, and Counselor Credentialing Bodies Addressing supervisee intentional nondisclosure must be a priority for clinical supervisors who are providing postgraduate supervision. If supervisors are to rely on supervisee self-report (Fall & Sutton, 2004), it will benefit supervisors to create a safe and open supervision environment that invites supervisee disclosure (Cook &Welfare, 2018; Gibson et al., 2019; Mehr et al., 2010). Encouragingly, prelicensed counselors appear more apt to discuss client-related incidents than supervision-related incidents; however, it also seems that clinical supervisors are not getting the full picture of their supervisees’ clinical work because there is some degree of nondisclosure. Notably, prelicensed counselors reported hesitancy in fully discussing their personal issues related to their work with clients, clinical mistakes, and reactions to clients. As prelicensed counselors continue their professional development, they can desire to try new interventions in their counseling work or have novel insights into how their personal experiences are impacting their clinical work (Rønnestad & Skovholt, 2003). Understandably, they might be apprehensive about discussing these issues with their evaluative supervisors. Supervisors will find it helpful to facilitate a discussion with their supervisees about the lifelong journey of being a professional counselor (Rønnestad & Skovholt, 2003) and the normality of sometimes feeling stuck in one’s clinical work with clients (Cook & Sackett, 2018) or going through stages of feeling stagnation, confusion, and integration, as discussed in the foundational model of Loganbill et al. (1982). Prelicensed counselors’ unwillingness to discuss their supervision-related concerns, particularly those incidents that are commonly occurring such as negative impressions of one’s supervisor, negative reactions to a supervisor’s competence, and the belief that one’s needs are not being met in clinical supervision, seems to be most problematic. There are infrequently occurring issues that supervisees are completely unwilling to discuss (e.g., romantic attraction to one’s supervisor) that can lead to ruptures in the supervisory relationship (Nelson et al., 2008). Prior research suggests that supervisees who possess a favorable impression of their supervisory relationship are less likely to withhold information from their supervisors (Cook & Welfare, 2018; Gibson et al., 2019; Mehr et al., 2010). As such, supervisors need to take steps during formation of the supervisory relationship and throughout the supervision experience to create a safe and open environment that invites supervisee disclosure. Supervisors will find it helpful to specifically attend to the issues identified in our study such as how to professionally address disagreements between supervisors and supervisees, and to discuss supervisees’ personal expectations of clinical supervision. Counselor educators can play a critical role in helping CITs learn strategies to navigate postgraduate supervision and understand the concept of intentional nondisclosure. For example, counselor educators can better prepare CITs for some of the nuanced differences of postgraduate supervision (Magnuson et al., 2002) versus the supervision they receive in their training programs. Counselor education programs can share resources (Cook & Sackett, 2018; Magnuson et al., 2002; Pearson, 2001, 2004) with CITs before they graduate to teach them about postgraduate supervision and help them learn about the experiences of prelicensed counselors. Further, counselor educators can teach CITs to be their own advocates in postgraduate supervision because they will be expected to self-direct their supervision experience (Magnuson et al., 2000). Advocacy in this context can include teaching soon- to-be graduates the importance of utilizing supervision contracts and training them to prepare their own supervision contracts to use with their postgraduate supervisors. These supervision contracts should outline key information to conducting adequate supervision (Ellis et al., 2014), including but not limited to (a) the frequency of clinical supervision (e.g., weekly individual or triadic supervision sessions), (b) the modalities to be utilized in supervision (e.g., self-report, audio or video recording), (c) the relevant ethical and professional guidelines that will guide the supervision experience, and (d) the roles and responsibilities for both the supervisor and supervisee. Preparing these documents prior