IJSP Number 7, 2025

International Journal of Supervision in Psychotherapy, Number 7, 2025 Page | 14 goals, and tasks) and, admittedly, those three components may well intersect and affect each other for best effect throughout the entirety of supervision, the prioritizing of the bond alone may not accurately reflect what best builds relationship for each and every supervisee from the outset. It may well be that, for some supervisees, discussing goals and tasks may speak to them more so in terms of relationship development, easing them into the process via structure and, consequently, bond building in the process. For instance, for beginning supervisees who may not yet be sure about their own specific supervisory goals and tasks, supervisors can constructively fill that void by: (a) sharing that supervision’s fundamental goals are to contribute to their therapist competence development and therapist identity development; (b) providing education about what that practically means and ideally provoking supervision discussion as a result; and (c) further explaining that as their supervisee development proceeds, more specific supervisee goals and tasks will come into focus for them. A supervision agreement, in conjunction with that sharing, explaining, and discussion, can also be a helpful tool in reinforcing those most important educational emphases [38, 39]. And as supervisee development does indeed advance, some other useful ways to foreground goals/tasks could involve the following: regular check ins about goals/tasks adherence, checking in about new supervisory goals/tasks to be added, and collaborating with supervisees to evolve goals/tasks in accordance with the supervisee’s own evolution. Although each of those examples would still be standard fare in any good supervision, that a more focused goals/tasks attentive approach may be most beneficial for some supervisees at the outset (and beyond) merits acknowledgement, and supervisors are encouraged to remain most mindful of that possibility. This need may be a product of the supervisee’s developmental level, with some beginning supervisees initially being most responsive to that structure and goals/tasks focus. Furthermore, some limited research [40] suggests that culture may differentially affect the supervisory alliance: the bond component may carry more weight in some Western countries, whereas the goals and tasks components may carry more weight in some Eastern countries. Thus, with those points recognized, we believe that the bond, goals, and tasks components of the alliance need to be brought into alignment with each other. Just as any alliance component can give way to relational disruption and rupture [41, 42], we conversely consider any alliance component as having potential for relational construction and rapture. Second, although the real relationship pathway has heretofore pinpointed exclusively the general well-being or person/personhood of the supervisee (e.g., not being skills focused or task oriented in any way), we see need for modification of that facet of the model as well. If the real relationship is about fostering professional belonging, social relatedness, and attachment, it may be that tasks/goals discussion (as part of the alliance) contributes to that ‘fostering’ process via hold and containment [31] at the beginning of (and, as needed, over the course of ) supervision. And it may also be that, once set in motion, the sense of real relationship --- again, professional belonging, social relatedness, and attachment --- has impact on therapist skills/competency development. That a feeling of belonging, relatedness, and attachment would have some impact on supervisee skills/competency development (e.g., through freeing up supervisees to experiment) would make intuitive sense and seem quite defensible from a growth standpoint. In conjunction with those two modification reasons, and because of the repositioning of the Tasks/Goals block in the model, this also brings into focus yet another