Supervisee Experiences of Impression Management, the Supervisory Working Alliance, and Counseling Self-Efficacy

Abstract

Supervision plays a vital role in fostering competent, ethical and effective counseling psychologists. However, studies have shown that supervisees act in ways that counteract the benefits of supervision. Trainees manage supervisor impressions to the detriment of their professional growth; they withhold information that would help supervisors promote learning, clarify misunderstandings, gain insight into supervisee weaknesses and strengths, and provide feedback that would enhance supervisee competence. Supervisee nondisclosure is a particularly prevalent impression management behavior documented in the supervision literature (Hill, Thompson, & Corbett, 1992; Ladany et al., 1996). It and other forms of impression management may be particularly related to counseling self-efficacy and the supervisory working alliance. Recent evidence does suggest that impression management is related to counseling self-efficacy, but its role in the supervisory working alliance has not yet been examined. Given research findings that doctoral level supervisees in counseling and clinical psychology programs withhold information from their supervisors and are concerned with their supervisors' impressions of them impression management at this level of training needs to be understood. This study examined the nature of the relationships among supervisee counseling self-efficacy, supervisory working alliance, and impression management. With more insight into impression management behaviors as it relates to the experiences of supervisees, the findings of this study provided evidence of how further research into impression management is important to preparing effective counseling psychologists.