Who Holds Space for the Coach?

The Quiet Power of Coaching Supervision.

By Liz Stewart

As a coach, you hold space for others. You sit with their uncertainty, their struggles, their breakthroughs. You listen deeply. You guide. You witness. But where do you go when you need the same?

Many coaches think growth comes from experience, another certification, or just pushing through. But the coaches who sustain their impact—the ones who find balance, depth, and longevity in their work—don’t go it alone. They have a place to reflect, be seen, and explore the deeper layers of their work and presence.

That place is coaching supervision.

Supervision isn’t about fixing or evaluating. It’s about having a trusted space to see yourself more clearly—to notice what’s showing up in your work, in your body, in your relationships with clients. It’s about having someone who can gently challenge you, help you stay connected to your integrity, and remind you that you don’t have to carry it all by yourself.

Because coaching isn’t just about skill. It’s about presence. It’s about knowing what’s yours to hold—and what’s not. It’s about leading, even when you’re not the one making the call.

And most importantly, it’s about who you are in the work, not just what you do.

Bringing Embodiment into Supervision

Coaching is relational. It’s not just about the words spoken—it’s about what’s felt in the space, what’s unspoken, what’s moving in the body. Many of the challenges coaches face aren’t intellectual problems to be solved but felt experiences to be explored.

Coaching supervision creates a space to work with these somatic layers. Some ways embodiment practices can support supervision:

• Tracking your body’s signals – What happens in your body when you’re with a challenging client? Do you tighten? Hold your breath? Feel an urge to solve? Noticing your body’s responses can help uncover what’s happening beneath the surface.

• Slowing down – Many coaches move quickly through sessions, but supervision invites a different pace—one where you can notice what lingers, what’s unresolved, and where you might be overriding your own instincts.

• Grounding practices – Bringing awareness to breath, posture, and physical sensations can help shift from overthinking into deeper knowing. Before a session, try taking three full breaths and feeling your feet on the ground—notice how it changes your presence.

• Exploring transference somatically – Sometimes what we struggle with in coaching mirrors something from our own history. Supervision helps unpack these patterns, not just through conversation but through body-based awareness, noticing where the past might be shaping the present.

Three Steps to Deepening Your Coaching Presence Through Supervision

If you’re new to coaching supervision or wondering what it could offer, here are some ways to explore it:

1. Notice What Stays With You After Sessions

Not every coaching session is easy to shake off. Some linger. Some leave a feeling in the body—tightness, heaviness, even exhaustion.

Instead of brushing past these sensations, pause and track them. What’s happening in your body? Is there a recurring theme across multiple clients? These are often signals pointing to something deeper. Supervision is the place to bring these observations—where patterns, resistance, or even unexpected emotions can be explored with curiosity rather than judgment.

2. Get Curious About What’s Yours to Hold—and What’s Not

Coaches often take on too much responsibility for their clients’ struggles. They feel frustrated when change doesn’t happen fast enough. They wonder if they’re doing something wrong.

Supervision invites the essential question: What’s yours to hold, and what’s not?

Through supervision, coaches learn to differentiate between their role and the client’s work. This shift brings more ease, more presence, and more trust in the process.

A simple exercise: After a challenging session, place your hands on your belly and take a deep breath. Ask yourself: What am I carrying that isn’t mine? Then imagine setting it down.

3. Develop the Capacity to Sit With Uncertainty

Many coaches want to fix, solve, or guide clients toward clarity. But some of the most powerful coaching happens in the unknown—in the space where there isn’t a clear answer.

Supervision helps coaches build the muscle of staying present with uncertainty. Rather than rushing to problem-solve, you learn to hold space for what’s unfolding, trusting that insights emerge when given room to breathe.

A supervision practice: Reflect on a time you felt uncomfortable in a session. Instead of thinking about what you could have done differently, sit with the discomfort. Where do you feel it in your body? What does it remind you of? What happens if you stay with it instead of trying to resolve it?

Final Thoughts

If coaching is about guiding others, supervision is about ensuring the coach is supported in their own journey. It’s a place to reflect, recalibrate, and reconnect to the deeper purpose behind the work.

Leadership in coaching isn’t about making the call. It’s about learning how to be in the room when the call is made—to be steady in the unknown, to hold complexity with skill, and to lead not from authority, but from presence.

Supervision helps coaches stay grounded, embodied, and deeply effective.

And if you’ve never experienced it, maybe this is the moment to start.