Autobiographical Inquiry in Reflective Practice and Coach Supervision—An Adult Developmental Perspective

Abstract

Autobiographical inquiry occupies a delicate position within coach supervision. While personal history shapes professional identity and meaning-making, direct engagement with it may risk crossing into therapeutic territory. This conceptual article explores how autobiographical inquiry can function as a developmental practice when held within a threshold-based framework. Drawing on adult developmental theory, we propose that coach supervision can support adult development (vertical growth) by helping practitioners relate differently to their narratives rather than analyze them. Reflective and somatic practices provide ethical containment and support readiness, enabling supervisees to reinterpret experience and expand meaning-making capacity within coach supervision.

Implications for coach supervision practice

Work at the threshold: Approach autobiographical material gradually, ensuring psychological safety and clear contracting before deeper exploration.

Explore the internal space (three houses, internal landscapes) deliberately: Support supervisees in shifting between self, task, and organizational perspectives to expand meaning-making flexibility.

Foster vertical movement and development, not analysis or diagnosis: Focus on how supervisees relate to their narratives rather than interpreting or resolving past events.

Start with the ground you know, the pale ground beneath your feet.

- David Whyte (2012)

Introduction

Our collaboration has been shaped by a question that has accompanied our practice for some time: How might autobiographical inquiry be approached as a developmental activity in adulthood without crossing into therapeutic territory, and without losing contact with the formative influence of personal history? We found this question to sit at the intersection of theory, practice, and ethics, inviting both conceptual clarity and imaginative restraint.

When autobiographical material enters reflective dialogue in coach supervision, practitioners move close to the territory traditionally associated with therapy. The challenge is therefore not simply whether the past can be explored, but how it can be approached in ways that remain developmentally appropriate, psychologically safe, and within the professional scope of practice.

So, what determines whether autobiographical inquiry becomes destabilizing or developmental when used in coach supervision practice?

In this article, we explore this question through a jointly written reflection, sharing of personal experience, and research of the literature. We draw on developmental theory and coach supervision practice to propose a threshold-based approach to autobiographical inquiry that allows the past to be approached with both developmental curiosity and ethical care. We consider that autobiographical inquiry in coach supervision becomes developmentally generative when it is approached through differentiated domains of meaning-making and held within an explicitly ethical threshold.

To demonstrate this more clearly, please consider the following two coach supervision conversations that begin with a similar intention. In both cases, a coach brings a dilemma from their practice to coach supervision, and the supervisor wonders whether earlier experiences may be shaping how the coach is responding.

Vignette 1: When the Inquiry Opens Too Quickly

Maria, an experienced executive coach, brings a case to coach supervision in which she feels blocked in her work with a senior executive client. She describes difficulty challenging the client, who often questions her observations. Maria notices that during their sessions, she becomes hesitant and begins to doubt her own judgment. During the supervision conversation, the coach supervisor wonders whether experiences with authority may be influencing Maria's response.

The supervisor asks: “When have you experienced authority figures like this before?”

Maria pauses and then begins speaking about her father, who was highly critical during her childhood. As she continues, her tone shifts. Her breathing becomes shallow, and she begins to speak more quickly. The supervisor senses the emotional charge but continues to explore the story, asking additional questions about what happened and how Maria felt at the time.

Within a few minutes, Maria becomes visibly distressed. She struggles to articulate what she wants from the supervision session and begins apologizing for “going off track.”

The conversation moves into a space that feels less like reflective supervision practice and more like the emergence of unresolved personal pain. The coach supervisor finds themselves uncertain about how to proceed, sensing that the conversation has moved beyond the intended scope of supervision.

Both practitioners leave the session unsettled. Maria feels exposed and somewhat embarrassed, while the supervisor reflects afterwards that the conversation may have opened something that required a different kind of professional container.

Vignette 2: When the Inquiry Balances the Threshold

In another coach supervision conversation, Daniel, a leadership coach, brings a similar difficulty. He describes hesitating to challenge a senior client during a recent coaching session, even though he sensed that a more direct question might have been helpful.

The coach supervisor wonders whether something deeper might be shaping Daniel's response but approaches the inquiry cautiously. Instead of asking directly about past experiences, the supervisor invites Daniel to notice what happens internally when he imagines speaking up with the client. Hereflects for a moment and says he feels a tightening in his chest and a sense of hesitation. The supervisor stays with this observation, asking what the hesitation might be protecting.

Daniel then slowly begins to describe an old pattern of wanting to avoid disappointing others. Only later in the conversation does he make a connection to earlier experiences in his family, where maintaining harmony was highly valued. The supervisor does not pursue the details of these experiences but remains curious about how this pattern may still be influencing Daniel's coaching practice.

Daniel leaves the coach supervision session with a clearer understanding of how an earlier way of staying safe may still be shaping his responses in professional situations. The conversation remains reflective, contained, and relevant to his present developmental challenge.

Same Developmental Intentions and Different Outcomes

Both conversations began with a similar intention: to explore how earlier experiences might influence present behavior. Yet the outcomes were very different.

What accounts for this difference? Is it the topic itself that creates risk, or the way in which the inquiry unfolds within the supervisory relationship?

The contrasting vignettes raise an important question for coach supervision practice. In both sessions, the coach supervisor invited the coach to explore autobiographical material to deepen self-understanding and connect personal experience with professional practice. What led to the different outcomes?

One way of approaching this question is through the lens of adult developmental theory. Rather than focusing primarily on the content of autobiographical material itself, developmental perspectives invite us to consider how individuals are making meaning of their past experiences as well as the relational dynamics in the present moment.

Methodological Approach

This article is a conceptual and reflective paper grounded in the authors’ coach supervision practice, collaborative inquiry, and engagement with relevant literature in adult development, reflective practice, and autobiographical meaning-making. The paper does not report an empirical study; rather, it develops a practice-informed conceptual framework, illustrated through vignettes and reflective exercises, to explore how autobiographical inquiry may be approached developmentally and ethically within coach supervision.

Adult Development and Autobiographical Meaning

Adult development refers to the ways in which adults continue to evolve in how they interpret experience, relate to themselves and others, and engage with increasing complexity over time. Rather than focusing primarily on the accumulation of skills or knowledge, developmental theories describe qualitative shifts in perspective that shape how individuals organize meaning, hold multiple viewpoints, and reflect on their own assumptions.

In coach supervision, these shifts often become visible in moments when practitioners begin to question how they are making sense of their experience. Conversations may move beyond goals or behavioral change toward deeper questions about interpretation: how authority is located, how uncertainty is approached, or how feedback is understood. From an adult developmental perspective, practice becomes developmental when it engages these underlying processes of meaning making (Cook-Greuter, 2013; Kegan, 1994; Laske, 2023). This orientation aligns with developmental approaches that focus on shifts in meaning-making structures and self-concept rather than solely on behavioral or performance change (Bachkirova, 2013).

Development, in this sense, involves qualitative changes in how experience itself is organized. It includes shifts in what a person is embedded in, or subject to, and what they can step back from and reflect upon as object (Kegan, 1994; Laske, 2023). Developmental practice, therefore, brings attention to assumptions, values, and habitual interpretive frames that shape how situations are understood. For example, a client may experience critical feedback as personal inadequacy or interpret strategic ambiguity as failure rather than as an expression of systemic complexity. Exploring such interpretations can introduce a form of productive dissonance that supports subject–object movement and, over time, structural change in meaning-making (Kegan, 1994; Laske, 2023). Laske's Constructive Developmental Framework further distinguishes several dimensions, or strands, of adult development, including social–emotional meaning-making (such as authority, responsibility, and identity), cognitive capacity (particularly dialectical thinking in conditions of complexity), and underlying intrapsychic needs. Development becomes visible over time in how these dimensions evolve and are coordinated in a person's way of engaging with the world (Laske, 2008). As Campion (2025) describes, this involves increasing “mental complexity” (p. 57) by moving from the conformity of a socialized mind through a self-authoring stage to a self-transforming perspective. This parallels vertical development in coach supervision.

Within this entire field, however, personal history has often been approached indirectly. While early experience is widely recognized as influential, explicit engagement with autobiographical material, particularly from childhood, has traditionally been treated with caution. This restraint reflects an ethical awareness of therapeutic boundaries and a concern not to conflate developmental inquiry with psychological treatment. As a result, adult developmental practice has often emphasized present meaning-making rather than direct exploration of early life experience.

At the same time, a growing body of work suggests that the stories people tell about their lives play a central role in how identity continues to evolve. Kets de Vries (2001) describes identity as something continually authored and re-authored through narrative, while research on narrative identity shows how adults organize experiences into evolving life stories that create coherence and purpose across the lifespan (Singer, 2004). Revisiting autobiographical narratives in coach supervision—and, by extension, coaching practice—may therefore become more than recollection; it can offer an opportunity to notice how earlier interpretations of experience continue to shape present professional identity.

For practitioners, this raises an important question of discernment. Working with autobiographical material requires sensitivity to both developmental learning and professional scope. Practitioners are invited to remain attentive to when reflective inquiry supports learning about meaning-making and when it risks moving into psychological territory that requires a different kind of professional container. In this sense, autobiographical inquiry calls for ethical maturity as well as conceptual clarity.

When autobiographical reflections do emerge in developmental conversations, they are not approached to analyze the past, but to understand how earlier interpretations of experience may still influence how individuals understand themselves and their work today. As Hill (2023) similarly observes in childhood story coaching, while the facts of early experience cannot be altered, the internal narratives constructed around those experiences can be revisited and reinterpreted in adulthood. From this perspective, reflective inquiry focuses less on revisiting the past and more on examining how these narratives continue to shape present patterns of interpretation and behavior. Early experiences often involve attempts to make sense of situations while learning how to belong within families, schools, and wider social contexts. Revisiting these formative narratives can sometimes reveal how initial assumptions about authority, safety, competence, or belonging were shaped. As adults, we may begin to ask whether these earlier interpretations still hold or whether new perspectives have become possible.

Seen in this way, autobiographical inquiry can become a developmental activity: not a search for explanation in the past, yet an invitation to reconsider how the stories we carry about our lives continue to shape our ways of making meaning in the present.

Developing Reflexivity

A foundational aim in coach supervision is for a practitioner to become a reflexive practitioner, to engage in developmental learning that will enable exploration of what guides them to approach their work. In this article, we suggest an approach that Burnham (2005) calls relational reflexivity, a process that grows out of a partnership in which the optimum conditions for learning are co-created; a place where it is safe to be uncertain, to be respected, to have the choice to explore current dilemmas with curiosity, and to risk change. Campion (2025) echoes this, emphasizing that coaching practitioners should not prescribe solutions and resist telling the client how to change and update their generative model—thereby empowering supervisees to find their own answers. Contracting for such a developmental approach to coach supervision is essential and entails that early learning will be explored once agreed to.

Somatic Inquiry

When beginning with autobiographical inquiry, for some, a somatic or feeling response may appear first; for others, thoughts may come. Both offer valuable points of entry into reflection. Somatic inquiry acknowledges that knowledge is held not only in the conscious mind but also within the non-conscious layers of experience. A non-cognitive route to exploring biography through somatic inquiry rests on the understanding that we exist through the body (Merleau-Ponty, 1945/2000;). We come to make meaning through our emotions and bodily experiences in continuous exchange with our environment (Damasio, 2000). In this sense, the body offers a doorway into our implicit knowing and our developmental movements across time.

The work of “Focusing” (Gendlin, 2003) and the process of finding a “felt sense” provide one such doorway. By attending carefully to bodily awareness, individuals can allow previously unarticulated experience to gradually come into consciousness. A somatic approach to coaching practice has explored how embodied awareness can support transformation of the self, the team, and the organization (Aquilina & Strozzi-Heckler, 2018), as well as support individuals navigating life transitions in coaching contexts (Strozzi-Heckler, 2014).

Origins^© (Hasanie, 2025), a coaching approach based on biographical dimensions of meaning-making (BDMM), is a research-based model situated within what has been described as the third generation of coaching (Grant, 2015; Stelter, 2014). It is a relational learning process in which data emerging from the non-conscious, accessed through somatic inquiry, sits at the intersection of past, present, and future. Within this approach, Hasanie (2025) designed a somatic process called “walking the mat,” in which different sections of a physical mat represent domains of life to be explored experientially: Rules, Belonging, Emotion, Self, Trust, and World. This process gives the supervisee the opportunity to sense these different domains somatically. Campion (2025) similarly notes that mindfulness shifts us from the thinking self toward the felt, embodied self, heightening interoceptive awareness. Attending to somatic signals also has an ethical dimension. Bodily responses often provide early indications of emotional intensity, vulnerability, or strain. Practitioners who are attuned to these signals are better able to pace the inquiry appropriately, slow the process when necessary, and remain attentive to the supervisee's capacity for integration. In this sense, somatic awareness supports ethical discernment in developmental work.

Awareness that emerges from a threshold experience will guide the choice of next steps. We are sensing something of the supervisee's inner life: how they experience this threshold and what it might mean for them to step through the door they are seeing. By remaining in this field of enquiry, discoveries begin to emerge that can inform how the work proceeds. The choice of questions, therefore, needs to be developmentally appropriate to be effective. The threshold exercise is particularly suited to supervisees who are beginning to explore the role of early learning in shaping how they see themselves and what guides their behavior.

Some supervisees are already aware of the ways they have been shaped by their early experiences, while others are much less so. As the learning partnership becomes established and reflexivity begins to develop, supervisors will notice how supervisees engage with exploring their current dilemmas. It soon becomes apparent that a fear of being found “not good enough” is often present, particularly in situations where a new work assignment contains many unknowns.

Reflective Exercise—Somatic Noticing and Listening to the Body

As stated earlier, autobiographical learning often appears first through bodily awareness rather than through explicit memory. For this reason, coach supervision may sometimes invite a brief pause in which attention is directed toward what is happening in the body.

In this exercise, the supervisee is invited to recall a particular moment from their coaching practice and to notice what happens internally as they bring this moment to mind. The supervisor might gently invite reflection through questions such as:

“What do you notice in your body as you recall this moment?”

“Is there a sense of tension, expansion, hesitation, or ease?”

“Where in the body do you experience this sensation?”

“If that sensation had a voice, what might it be saying?”

The intention is not to analyze the sensation or to search for an immediate explanation. Rather, the focus is on allowing the bodily experience to be noticed and described. In the language of Gendlin (2003), this moment of attentive listening may allow a felt sense to emerge—an embodied awareness that carries meaning before it is fully articulated. The supervisor's role is simply to accompany this noticing with curiosity and patience, allowing the supervisee's experience to unfold at its own pace.

Ethical Maturity at the Threshold

Inviting autobiographical reflection within coaching or coach supervision inevitably raises ethical considerations. When individuals begin to approach their personal history, the practitioner is required to navigate a delicate boundary between developmental inquiry and therapeutic territory. This boundary cannot be managed through rules alone. Rather, it calls for a reflective and relational capacity within the practitioner that might be described as ethical maturity.

Ethical maturity refers to the practitioner's ability to remain attentive to context, relationship, and scope while engaging in reflective dialogue. It involves noticing signals that arise in the interaction—emotional tone, bodily responses, shifts in narrative coherence, or moments of hesitation—and using these cues to guide pacing and inquiry. In practice, this often means slowing the process, remaining with curiosity rather than interpretation, and maintaining a stance of accompaniment rather than intervention.

In developmental work, ethical practice rarely begins with clarity. Practitioners frequently encounter uncertainty, ambiguity, and competing responsibilities. One reason for this complexity is that professional conversations rarely unfold within a single shared reality. Kantor (2012) describes how, alongside the visible interaction occurring in the room, each participant also carries an “invisible reality” consisting of personal interpretations, memories, and meanings that shape how events are experienced (Kantor & Hill, 2014; Kantor, 2012). Awareness that such invisible realities are always present, including those of the practitioner, supports a more reflective and ethically attentive stance in developmental dialogue. The desire to support reflection then needs to be balanced with an awareness of professional scope and the client's capacity for integration. Ethical maturity, therefore, involves tolerating not knowing while remaining present and responsive within the relational space. As Campion (2025) cautions, the coaching practitioner must provide an appropriately “safe space” (p. 57) for this exploration; without it, clients may be unable to integrate difficult material. In practice, this means pausing before deeper inquiry to ensure emotional safety.

Seen in this light, the threshold metaphor introduced in this article has ethical significance. Standing before the door of the past is not merely a preparatory stage in autobiographical inquiry; it is also a protective structure. It allows practitioners and supervisees to explore the relationship to personal history before deciding whether and how to move further. Remaining at the threshold for a time creates the conditions for reflection without pressure to disclose, analyze, or resolve.

Coach supervision and reflective dialogue play an important role in cultivating this capacity. Through ongoing reflection, practitioners gradually develop the ability to hold complexity without premature closure, to recognize when autobiographical exploration supports developmental learning, and to sense when other forms of support may be required. Ethical maturity in this sense is not a fixed trait but a developmental capacity that deepens over time.

Developmental Perspectives and the Three Houses

Among several adult developmental theories, Otto Laske's (2023) Constructive Developmental Framework offers a useful orientation. It uses the metaphor of three houses which is nicely connecting to metaphors we will introduce later. With what he described as the “Three Houses,” Laske (1999) offered a practical way of observing how meaning-making appears in professional life. These are rich metaphors to explore here.

The Self House concerns how individuals experience themselves: identity, personal narratives, vulnerabilities, and inner dialogue.

The Task House refers to how individuals approach work, responsibilities, and professional challenges.

The Organizational House reflects how individuals interpret the broader systems and relationships within which they operate.

Autobiographical inquiry rarely unfolds within a single domain of experience. Personal narratives may arise within the Self House, yet they are often intertwined with professional tasks and shaped by organizational contexts.

Rather than establishing or labeling a client's adult developmental stage, the metaphor of the Three Houses invites practitioners to remain curious about where meaning-making is currently occurring and how movement between these domains might support reflective insight. In supervision conversations, autobiographical material may appear first within the Task House, as coaches reflect on challenges in their work, before gradually touching the Organizational House, or, as personal narratives or earlier experiences come into view, the Self House. Campion's (2025) Predictive Processing Framework (PPF) similarly identifies multiple layers of influence on our beliefs—interpersonal, social, educational, economic, and even philosophical. Together, these factors shape the coaching practitioner's implicit generative model, much like the Three Houses framing.

The threshold metaphor introduced later in this article can be understood in a similar way. Standing before the door of the past represents a moment when the supervisee begins to sense connections between these houses without yet fully entering autobiographical territory.

Reflective Exercise—Exploring the Three Houses

The metaphor of the Three Houses offers a way of noticing where meaning-making is currently taking place. In supervision conversations, reflection often moves between these houses as practitioners consider their work, their relationships, and their experience of themselves. The coach supervisor may invite the supervisee to pause and reflect on a current coaching situation and to consider how it might appear when viewed from each of the three houses.

The supervisee might begin by describing the situation from the perspective of the Task House: the practical work of coaching and the challenges that arise within it.

Possible reflections include:

“What is the situation you are currently facing in your coaching work?”

“What feels challenging or uncertain about it?”

“What choices or responses seem available to you?”

The reflective inquiry may then expand toward the Organizational House, exploring the wider context in which the coaching work takes place. The supervisor might invite reflection, such as:

“What is happening in the wider system around this situation?”

“How do organizational expectations, relationships, or cultures influence what is taking place?”

“What dynamics may be shaping the interaction between coach and client?”

Finally, the dialogue may then turn toward the Self House, inviting the supervisee to notice how they experience themselves in relation to the situation.

The supervisor might ask:

“How do you experience yourself in this moment?”

“What feelings, assumptions, or inner conversations are present?”

“What personal patterns or responses do you notice in yourself?”

The intention is not to analyze the situation from a single perspective but to notice how meaning-making moves between these different houses. As the supervisee reflects, connections may begin to emerge between professional challenges, personal experience, and the broader systems within which the work unfolds. In this way, the Three Houses offer a simple structure for noticing how different layers of experience interact within coaching practice and how awareness can move between them.

A Developmental Threshold—A Metaphorical Door

This article takes a complementary approach. It proposes that autobiographical inquiry can be understood as a process with distinct phases, each requiring different forms of attention and care. The first phase concerns how adults approach the idea of their past. The second phase involves stepping into that past in a more deliberate and supported way.

From an ethical perspective, this distinction into two phases is significant. Remaining at the threshold allows practitioners to explore the relationship a person has with their past without immediately engaging autobiographical content itself. This creates a reflective space in which curiosity, distance, caution, or readiness can be observed without prematurely activating emotionally charged material. The threshold, therefore, functions not only as a developmental step but also as a form of ethical containment within reflective practice. This approach mirrors a common learning principle: Campion (2025) explains that growth often requires deliberately moving out of the comfort zone into a “stretch” zone (p. 53). Pausing at the threshold is like standing at the door to that stretch zone—it allows safe boundary-crossing when ready.

By distinguishing between approach and entry, we can remain developmentally grounded while also creating conditions for later engagement with autobiographical material that are ethical, contained, and appropriate for non-therapeutic contexts. The inquiry begins not with recollection, but with relationship.

Standing Before the “Door”

When adults are invited to consider their past, many describe an immediate sense of standing before a door. At this point, nothing is opened. No memories are entered, and no stories are recalled. And yet, the image itself already carries meaning.

Doors mark transitions. They separate inside from outside, present from past, and known from unknown. A door may appear solid or fragile, inviting or resistant, familiar or distant. It may seem easy to open, firmly closed, or deliberately left untouched.

For some, the door resembles a trap door, evoking concern about what might give way beneath one's feet. The past may be sensed as risky or destabilizing, something best approached with vigilance. For others, the door appears heavy and wooden, solid and enduring, suggesting that the past is real and substantial, but not easily accessed without effort. Any response may arise as a combination of feeling and thinking as the door is seen in the mind's eye.

There are doors that take the form of gates, ornate or symbolic, which may carry a sense of reverence or idealization, as though what lies beyond is precious or defining. Some doors resemble portals or thresholds of light, hinting at curiosity and transformation, while others are locked, partially hidden, or kept deliberately closed, signaling protection, distance, or a boundary that has served an important function.

For the practitioner, the task at this stage is not to interpret the image or move toward explanation. Rather, it is to remain alongside the supervisee in a stance of reflective curiosity. This requires a capacity to tolerate uncertainty and to resist the impulse to move too quickly toward insight, technique, or resolution. In this way, the threshold also becomes a place where the practitioner's own reflective and ethical maturity is quietly at work.

So, what matters here is not which door appears, nor what it might signify in any definitive sense. Rather, the image offers an early cue to how the past is currently being held. Patterns connected to earlier experiences often repeat themselves in professional and relational contexts without immediately being recognized. Hill (2023) observes that individuals may find themselves revisiting similar situations or reactions across time until the underlying narrative shaping these responses becomes visible. From a developmental perspective, the door-threshold moment offers an opportunity to notice such patterns before they are simply enacted again. It reflects a stance toward personal history that may include curiosity, caution, distance, readiness, or ambivalence. None of these orientations is right or wrong. Each represents a meaningful relationship to the past as it is being approached in the present.

By pausing at the door rather than moving straight through it, autobiographical inquiry begins in a way that is reflective, contained, and developmentally appropriate. The focus remains on relationships rather than recollection, on safety rather than recall.

Reflective Exercise: Envisioning the Door

This exercise invites the supervisee to explore their relationship to the past before engaging directly with autobiographical material. Rather than beginning with specific memories, the inquiry starts by noticing how the past is approached in the present moment. The coach supervisor may invite the supervisee to pause briefly and allow an image to form.

Imagine that you are standing before a door that represents your past. Without effort or analysis, simply notice what appears.

Possible reflections may include:

“What kind of door do you see?”

“Is it open, closed, or perhaps partly open, left slightly ajar?”

“How close or far away are you standing from it?”

“What is it like to stand there?”

“What materials might the door be made of?”

“Are there particular colors, textures, or ornaments that catch your attention?”

“What feelings or bodily sensations arise as you notice the door?”

“What else do you notice?”

There is no need to interpret the image or to move beyond it at this stage. The purpose of the exercise is not to explain the door or what it might represent, but simply to notice how the past is currently being held and approached.

In this sense, the reflection remains at the threshold. By pausing before the door rather than moving straight through it, the supervisee has an opportunity to sense their own readiness, curiosity, caution, or distance in relation to their personal history. The threshold becomes a place of observation and awareness, allowing insight to emerge gradually and in a way that remains developmentally and emotionally contained.

Later stages of the inquiry may invite the supervisee to step further inside. For now, however, the work is simply to notice what it is like to stand before the door.

Stepping Across the Threshold

Later in this article, we will turn to the next phase of autobiographical inquiry. This phase then involves stepping into the house beyond the door and engaging more directly with autobiographical material. At this point, questions of structure, pacing, and support become central. We offer guiding principles and practical pointers for how this entry can be undertaken in ways that remain psychologically safe, developmentally informed, and ethically sound.

It is in this next phase that additional conceptual frameworks and practices are introduced to support the inquiry. These frameworks are intended to help individuals navigate what they encounter once they have crossed the threshold, without collapsing the work into therapy or uncontained self-exploration. In this way, autobiographical inquiry can be held as a developmental practice that honors both past experience and present capacity.

Reflective Exercise: Stepping Across the Threshold

A “Lifeline Reflection” (based on A. Jopling, 2025) is based on mapping developmental experiences and invites the supervisee to sketch a simple timeline of their life and mark experiences that have been significant in shaping who they have become. The aim is not to reconstruct a detailed biography, but to notice moments of influence and learning across time.

The supervisor may invite the supervisee to draw a horizontal line representing their life, beginning in childhood and extending to the present moment. Along this line, the supervisee is encouraged to mark experiences, transitions, or moments that feel significant in some way.

These might include periods of challenge, turning points, important relationships, or moments of growth and learning. The intention is not to capture every event, but to allow certain experiences to stand out as meaningful.

As the lifeline begins to take shape, the conversation may turn toward noticing patterns that appear across time. The supervisor might invite the supervisee to reflect on questions such as:

Which experiences seem to have influenced how you think about leadership, authority, trust, or belonging?

Are there moments that shaped how you learned to respond to challenge or uncertainty?

What themes or patterns do you notice as you look across the timeline?

The purpose of the lifeline is not to analyze events in a therapeutic sense, but to notice how meaning-making may have developed across different stages of life. Narrative identity research suggests that individuals gradually learn to link life events into broader themes and personal lessons, allowing experiences across time to be integrated into a coherent sense of self (Singer, 2004). Autobiography has been described as a developmental task in adult learning, inviting individuals to critically examine long-held assumptions and reconfigure their “frames of reference” (Karpiak, 2000). In this sense, mapping one's life story within supervision can support perspective transformation rather than simple recollection. Within supervision, the conversation then returns to the present, exploring how these earlier experiences may continue to shape the supervisee's professional assumptions, relationships, and choices in their coaching practice.

In this way, the lifeline becomes less a record of the past and more a developmental map, helping the supervisee recognize how earlier learning may still inform who they are as a practitioner today. Work on leadership development highlights how the revisiting of formative stories can catalyze shifts in self-understanding and relational capacity (Kets de Vries, 2001). The act of narrating experience within a reflective partnership can itself become transformative.

Autobiographical Sharing by the Authors

In one author's own lifeline reflection, recurring themes of anxious attachment, intellectual refuge, and contemplative practice appeared across different decades of life. Early patterns of staying safe through obedience later re-emerged as fear of not being good enough in professional contexts. Recognizing these threads across time allowed a more compassionate and differentiated relationship to them in coach supervision practice.

Roaming the Houses

At this point, we can begin to look more closely, and perhaps more freely, at the kinds of meaning-making the supervisee is engaging in as the inquiry unfolds. Each form of meaning-making invites different kinds of enquiry and developmental support.

Once the door to the past is approached, the practitioner notices how meaning moves between the houses in practice. A coaching dilemma that initially appears technical may reveal personal assumptions or reflect wider organizational dynamics.

Rather than leading directly to isolated memories, autobiographical reflection opens into a landscape of meaning. Individuals encounter how they experience themselves, how they inhabit their professional responsibilities, and how they interpret the organizational contexts around them. As described earlier through Otto Laske's metaphor of the Three Houses, autobiographical narratives move fluidly between these domains of experience. In this sense, developmental reflection often begins close to lived experience itself, attending first to what David Whyte calls “the ground you know” (Whyte, 2012). A similar ecological metaphor appears in Patti Stevens’ Coaching Signature Profile (2004), where coaches are invited to view their habitual coaching postures as elements within a shifting landscape rather than as fixed styles. In this view, posture reflects how a practitioner “holds space” in relationship with others, moving between different relational stances depending on context. Such landscape metaphors highlight that professional identity is not a static attribute, but an evolving configuration shaped by relationships, environments, and developmental capacity (Stevens, 2004)

When we “roam the houses” in coach supervision, we begin to notice differences in how meaning is constructed. Here, Campion (2025) observes that solution-focused coaching practitioners tend to emphasize quick fixes, whereas psychodynamic (or developmental) coaches first explore underlying narratives. This shows how different angles—task versus self—can coexist in coach supervision, as illustrated by our example.

For one supervisee, a hesitation to challenge a client may be experienced primarily as a technical problem within the Task House: “I need better questions.” The focus remains on improving technique. For another, the same hesitation may quickly touch the Self House: “I worry that I am not competent enough.” The issue is no longer only technical, but relational and identity-based. For yet another, the reflection may expand into the Organizational House: “In this culture, challenging authority is subtly discouraged.”

These are not simply different topics. They represent different centers of gravity in meaning-making. Similarly, the recurring fear of being “not good enough,” a theme that appears across levels of experience, may inhabit the houses differently. In one instance, it may be tied to external evaluation, the need to meet expectations or avoid criticism. In another, it may be recognized as an internalized narrative that no longer serves the practitioner. In yet another, it may be held more reflectively as a familiar pattern that arises under pressure but can be observed without being fully inhabited. What changes developmentally is not only the content of the fear, but the relationship to it.

From a developmental perspective, this shift in relationship represents vertical movement in meaning-making. Vertical development is less about adding new content and more about widening the perspective from which experience is held. As practitioners roam between the houses of self, task, and system, they may begin to experience a greater capacity to hold multiple frames at once. Patterns that once felt definitive can be seen as one possible interpretation among others. Practitioners sometimes notice that familiar behavioral reactions appear suddenly in moments of professional tension, as though an earlier narrative has quietly re-entered the interaction. Hill (2023) suggests that such moments can be understood as the “childhood story” briefly shaping behavior in the present until it is brought into reflective awareness. In this way, autobiographical inquiry becomes a vertical journey, deepening and expanding the practitioner's capacity for reflective presence. Exploring the houses, therefore, allows the coach supervisor and supervisee to observe not only where meaning is being made, but how it is being made. The movement between houses becomes a subtle indicator of developmental flexibility, the capacity to shift perspective, to hold multiple interpretations, and to remain curious about one's own assumptions.

In this way, autobiographical inquiry supports not merely insight into the past, but an expansion of present meaning-making capacity. The houses contain rooms that unfold like landscapes to be explored (Clidière & Adamson, 2025). From a developmental perspective, this shift in relationship reflects more than increased self-awareness. It signals an expansion in how experience itself is structured.

Autobiographical Sharing by the Authors

In one author's early professional role, the capacity to remain competent while masking emotional strain was initially experienced as a strength. Only later, through coach supervision and further training, was this pattern recognized as a protective adaptation rooted in earlier relational experience. The developmental shift lay not in eliminating vulnerability, but in relating to it differently.

Closing Thoughts

Autobiographical inquiry with a developmental focus becomes less a technique and more a relational practice requiring developmental sensitivity, ethical discernment, and reflective restraint. When approached with care, it offers a way for adults to reconnect past experience with present meaning-making and behavioral display without collapsing developmental dialogue into therapeutic intervention.

The threshold, house, and inner landscape metaphors remind practitioners that the work does not begin with entering the past, but with learning how to stand thoughtfully before it, enter it, and then explore it. From this stance, practitioners may gradually expand their capacity to observe, reinterpret, and reposition themselves in relation to their own narratives. In this way, coach supervision becomes not only a space for reflection but a context for vertical growth in meaning-making. This, in turn, gives rise to autobiographical inquiry becoming part of reflective practice and a catalyst for developmental movement. Developmental movement often entails a reconfiguration of personal narrative, bringing previously unquestioned scripts into view. As supervisees begin to relate to their stories differently, new possibilities for action and self-authorship can emerge (Kets de Vries, 2001). Here, we also draw on Campion's (2025, pp. 58–59) notion of reflective competence to suggest that coach supervision also includes reflection on what has gone well, enabling practitioners to render tacit effective practices more conscious, intentional, and developmentally available for the ongoing journey. This resonates with our idea that cautiously engaging with the past can open new possibilities for the future.