Multicultural orientation in clinical supervision: examining impact through dyadic data

Abstract

Clinical supervision can support supervisee cultural development through the relationship and preparation for counseling practice. Supervisor modeling of cultural conversations can aid in this development. Using dyadic data to examine how multicultural orientation (MCO) functions in supervision, we found supervisor cultural humility and missed opportunities to discuss culture both predicted the supervisory working alliance. Diverging from research on MCO in counseling, supervisee growth in ethnocultural empathy and cultural behaviors was not traceable to supervisor cultural humility. Finally, a test of correspondence between supervisor and supervisee assessments of cultural behaviors supported critiques that self-ratings contain biases, particularly for novice counselors.