IJSP Number 6, 2024

53 For a while it was believed that orientations towards tasks or relationships were mutually exclusive ways of supervision, which could be represented as a "continuum" going from a very authoritarian behaviour of the supervisor (focus on tasks) on one hand, to a very democratic behaviour (emphasis on relationships among people) on the other hand. Observing the behaviour of supervisors in a wide variety of situations revealed that most of their activities can be classified in two distinct behavioural categories or dimensions: "Structure Initiator" (psychotherapy outcome/tasks- oriented behaviour) and "Consideration" (supervisor-therapist relationship/ relationships-oriented behaviour): • The psychotherapy outcome/tasks-oriented behaviour is a dimension in which a supervisor engages in one-way communication (I say, you listen, then you do) explaining to each therapist when, where, and how to perform their tasks. • The supervisor-therapist relationship/relationships-oriented behaviour is a dimension in which a supervisor engages in oriented communication providing feedback, recognition, and socio-emotional support, facilitating the expression of various behaviours. The situational supervision theory is based on the interaction among all the issued instructions (psychotherapy outcome/tasks-oriented behaviour) (1), the socio-emotional support (supervisor-therapist relationship/relationships-oriented behaviour) that a supervisor provides (2) and the "level of experience" that the therapists show in carrying out a counseling session, function or specific objective that the supervisor expects to be fulfilled either by the individual or by the entire counseled group (3). Within the theory of situational supervision, the "level of experience/ maturity" is defined as the ability of the therapist to set difficult but achievable goals (achievement motivation), the desire and ability to assume responsibilities, and individual or group education or experience. These experience level variables should only be considered in the psychotherapy outcomes to be met. Psychotherapists have different levels of experience/maturity depending on the specifics of the psychotherapeutic outcomes, on the objective or the function that the supervisor wants to achieve. Thus, a therapist may have a good level of experience in dealing with general psychotherapeutic issues but may not have the same level of experience/maturity in counseling specific cases of clients. In this case, the supervisor of this therapist will give little guidance and support in the general psychotherapy work and more guidance in specific psychotherapy, closely helping the therapist to improve in order to become the most complete psychotherapist. According to the situational supervision theory, when the experience level of a psychotherapist continuously increases in terms of delivering a particular therapy, the supervisor should begin to decrease the psychotherapy outcome-