This study used a content analysis of audiotapes of clinical supervisory sessions to examine the effect of supervisee gender on the influence strategies used in the counseling clinical supervisory dyad.
Counseling supervision has been conceptualized as an influence process in which supervisors use personal attributes and professional techniques to facilitate change in the supervisee (Robyak. Goodyear, & Range. 1987; Strong & Matross, 1973). The use of these influence strategies by supervisors may have either a facilitative or an inhibitory effect on the supervisee's personal and professional development. Supervisors have an ethical responsibility to provide an environment that will enhance supervisees' skills and allow supervisees to devise effective strategies for working with clients (American Association of Counseling and Development [AACD], 1990;. Developmental models of supervision suggest that the goal of supervision is to allow supervisees to proceed through a progression of developmental stages and tasks and to establish a therapist identity of their own, replacing an external supervisor with an internal one (Blocher. 1983; Loganbill, Hardy, & Delworth. 1982; Stoltenberg. 1981; Watkins. 1992). Conoley (1994) called this "supervision as empowerment" (p. 48). Hawkins and Shohet (1989) claimed that one of the aims of supervision is to