From Holding Space to Holding the System: A Shift in How We Understand Coaching Supervision

“Hold the space.”

It’s a phrase that has become almost synonymous with good coaching. It points to presence, safety, non-judgement, and the capacity to sit with another person without rushing to fix or direct. And in many ways, it has been a welcome corrective to performance-driven, outcome-obsessed ways of working.

Holding space matters.

Coaching and supervision are, at their heart, relational practices. They ask us to listen deeply, to slow the pace of thinking, and to create environments where insight can emerge rather than be forced. For many practitioners, especially those coming from hierarchical or highly instrumental systems, the idea of holding space can feel like permission — to be human, to be reflective, to trust the process.

And yet, when we turn specifically to coaching supervision, something more is required.

Not instead of holding space — but in addition to it.

When holding space is no longer enough

Coaching supervision and coaching are closely related, but they are not the same discipline.

Coaching is primarily in service of the client’s experience and development. Supervision, however, carries a wider responsibility. It is in service not only of the coach, but also of the clients they work with, the organisations those clients inhabit, and the integrity of the coaching profession itself.

This distinction matters.

When the idea of holding space is carried too directly into supervision, there is a subtle risk of over-individualising what is happening. The focus remains largely on the supervisee’s inner experience — how they feel, where they are stuck, what they are unsure about — while the broader forces shaping that experience remain unexamined.

A coach may arrive in supervision feeling drained, uncertain, or ineffective. If we focus only on holding their experience, we may explore personal confidence, resilience, or self-belief. All of that can be useful. But sometimes what is being carried is not personal in origin.

It may be organisational pressure leaking into the coaching relationship. It may be ethical tension arising from unclear contracting or conflicting stakeholder expectations. It may be power dynamics, cultural norms, or professional assumptions quietly shaping what feels possible.

When supervision remains solely at the level of individual experience, these systemic dimensions can remain invisible — and unchallenged.

There is another, more delicate risk as well. Holding space, when misunderstood, can slip into passivity. Empathy without inquiry. Validation without challenge. A quiet collusion that soothes but does not necessarily serve.

Supervision asks something different of us.

It asks us to attend not only to experience, but also to impact.

From holding space to holding the system

This is where a shift begins to take place.

Holding the system does not mean abandoning presence, empathy, or relational depth. It means widening our field of attention. It means recognising that every supervision conversation is embedded within a web of relationships and consequences.

No coach arrives in supervision alone.

They arrive carrying their client — and that client carries an organisation. A culture. A set of expectations about performance, authority, success, and failure. The coach also arrives shaped by professional norms: ideas about what coaching should look like, what is rewarded, and what is quietly discouraged.

All of this exists within a broader cultural context, marked by social values, power structures, and prevailing narratives about leadership, responsibility, and change.

So in supervision, we are never just holding a person.

We are holding:

• the coach and their experience
• the coaching relationship
• the client and their context
• organisational and systemic pressures
• professional and cultural norms

In supervision, we are holding a whole ecology of relationships.

Holding the system is a stance — a way of seeing and sensing what else might be present in the room, even when it is not explicitly named.

What holding the system looks like in practice

Practically speaking, holding the system often begins with restraint.

It means resisting the urge to locate difficulty too quickly inside the supervisee. It means allowing for the possibility that what appears personal may be systemic, and that what feels like incompetence may in fact be an ethical or contextual tension.

A coach may describe feeling anxious or depleted — and rather than immediately exploring personal coping strategies, the supervisor may wonder what organisational anxiety the coach is absorbing.

A supervisee may feel “stuck” with a client — and rather than focusing only on technique, the supervisor may widen the lens to explore power dynamics, cultural expectations, or competing stakeholder agendas.

Often, this shows up through gentle questions that widen the frame:

• What expectations is your client under right now?
• Who else is affected by this coaching?
• What does this organisation reward — and what does it make difficult?

At other times, it shows up simply through a refusal to simplify too quickly.

Holding the system means staying with complexity long enough for something more truthful to emerge.

Deepening the core functions of supervision

When we hold the system, the familiar functions of supervision — normative, formative, and restorative — are not replaced. They are deepened.

Ethical issues, for example, rarely arrive clearly labelled. They often show up as unease, hesitation, or a sense that something isn’t quite right. A systemic lens helps supervisors recognise that ethical tensions often live in context — in conflicting expectations, power dynamics, or cultural norms — rather than solely in individual decision-making.

Development, too, becomes more relational. Growth is no longer just about improving skill or expanding a toolkit, but about understanding how one’s coaching practice is being shaped by the systems one works within.

And restoration takes on a new dimension. What a coach brings as emotional fatigue or self-doubt may not belong entirely to them. Supervision becomes a place to discern what is theirs to carry — and what needs to be named, challenged, or returned to the system it comes from.

The supervisor’s stance

Holding the system asks something of the supervisor as well.

It requires a capacity to sit with ambiguity, to tolerate tension, and to hold responsibility without becoming controlling or directive. It asks supervisors to remain relational without becoming enmeshed, and supportive without avoiding challenge.

Supervisors, after all, are part of the system too. Our values, assumptions, and relationship to authority enter the room with us. Holding the system therefore requires reflexivity — a willingness to notice how we are being shaped by the very dynamics we are exploring.

Why this matters

As coaching continues to grow in influence, the contexts coaches work within are becoming more complex, not less. Organisational pressure, cultural fragmentation, and ethical ambiguity are increasingly part of the landscape.

Supervision plays a vital role in how the profession responds.

If supervision only helps coaches cope, it risks absorbing systemic issues rather than bringing them to light. But when supervision holds the system, it becomes a space of stewardship — supporting not just effective coaching, but mature coaching.

By recognising that care and responsibility are not opposites, but partners. And by allowing supervision to be a place where individual experience is honoured within the wider ecology it belongs to.

In supervision, we are not just holding a person We are holding the system they are part of.