How to Supervise the Trainee Who is Too Nice to Give Directives

To produce an audiobook for working practitioners, we must first address the common obstacle of the trainee who is too nice. We recognize this trainee by the way they describe their sessions. They talk about the rapport they have built and the comfort the client feels in the room. They avoid any action that might cause the client to feel pressured or challenged. This trainee often believes that if they provide enough support, the client will naturally find the solution to their problems. Jay Haley observed that this avoidance of directives is a failure to take responsibility for the change process. When you supervise a trainee who refuses to give a directive, you are supervising someone who is letting the client dictate the terms of the encounter.

I once worked with a young man in supervision who spent four sessions listening to a couple scream at each other. When I asked why he had not interrupted them, he told me that he did not want to stifle their expression. He believed his primary role was to facilitate a space where they felt heard. In reality, he was terrified that if he told them to stop, they would turn their anger on him. We know that a practitioner who cannot command a room cannot help a family change their structure. You must teach this trainee that being nice is often a polite form of negligence.

You must watch for the specific moment a trainee shrinks back from a direct confrontation. We see this often when the client begins to complain about the practitioner’s methods. The trainee who is too nice will immediately apologize or explain their rationale. You must teach them that a practitioner does not explain, a practitioner directs. If a client asks why they must perform a task, the trainee should be taught to say, I have a specific reason for this that will become clear once you have completed it. This statement maintains the hierarchy and keeps the focus on action.

I once supervised a woman who could not bring herself to interrupt a grieving client who had been repeating the same three sentences for twenty minutes. The trainee sat there, nodding and looking pained. In our supervision session, I asked her what she hoped to accomplish by letting the client repeat herself. She said she was being supportive. I told her she was being an audience for a performance that was keeping the client stuck. We practiced a specific interruption. I had the trainee say, Stop right there, I have heard enough of that story for today, now I want you to tell me what you ate for breakfast. It took the trainee six attempts in our role play before she could say those words without her voice shaking.

You will encounter trainees who believe that the client should be the one to choose the direction of the work. We understand that this is a misunderstanding of the power dynamics inherent in the room. Milton Erickson often used his authority to force a client into a position where change was the only option. He did not wait for the client to feel ready. He created the conditions where readiness was irrelevant. Your trainee must learn that their primary tool is the directive, which is an instruction to do something different.

When you prepare a trainee to give their first difficult directive, you must start with tasks that carry low emotional risk. We call these compliance tests. For example, tell your trainee to instruct the client to wear a specific color to the next session. Or have the trainee tell the client to park their car at the far end of the parking lot and walk the extra distance to the office. These instructions are simple, but they establish the practitioner as the one who gives the orders. If the client refuses to park further away, the trainee knows that a power struggle is occurring that must be addressed before any deeper work can happen.

I once had a trainee who was afraid to tell a mother to stop speaking for her teenage son. Every time the boy started to answer a question, the mother would cut in. The trainee would look at me through the one way mirror with an expression of helplessness. In the break, I told her to go back in and tell the mother to go sit in the waiting room until the session was over. The trainee was terrified. She thought the mother would be furious. I told her that if she did not remove the mother, she was complicit in the son’s silence. She went back in, gave the directive, and the mother complied without a word. The trainee learned that authority, when used clearly, is rarely challenged as aggressively as we fear.

As supervisors, we must be as directive with our trainees as we expect them to be with their clients. You cannot suggest that a trainee should perhaps try being more assertive. You must tell them exactly what to do. You might say, In your next session, when the husband begins to criticize his wife, I want you to stand up, put your hand out like a traffic cop, and tell him to be quiet. You must then watch the trainee’s body language. If they look at the floor, they are not ready. You must continue the role play until they can maintain eye contact while giving the command.

The trainee who is too nice often suffers from the illusion that they are being collaborative. We know that collaboration is only possible between equals, and the practitioner and the client are not in an equal relationship. One has a problem and the other is an expert on how to change it. If you allow your trainee to maintain the illusion of equality, you are setting them up for failure. You must challenge their need to be seen as a good person. I often tell my supervisees that if their clients do not occasionally find them annoying or demanding, they are probably not doing their jobs correctly.

I remember a case where a trainee was working with a man who was obsessed with his health. The man spent every session listing his symptoms. The trainee would listen and offer empathetic murmurs. I told the trainee that for the next session, he was to tell the man that he was only allowed to speak about his health for the first five minutes. After that, the trainee was to stand up and walk to the window every time the man mentioned a symptom. The trainee protested, saying it seemed rude. I told him that the client’s obsession was the rude party in the room, and we were simply setting a new rule. When the trainee actually followed through, the client stopped his symptom list and started talking about his fear of death for the first time. The directive broke the pattern that empathy had been reinforcing.

We emphasize the use of the directive because it provides the client with an experience rather than an insight. Insights are often used by clients to justify staying the same. An experience, such as completing an ordeal or following a strange instruction, changes the person’s way of being in the world. You must push your trainee to become the architect of these experiences. This requires a level of boldness that many people find uncomfortable. Your job as a supervisor is to make the trainee more uncomfortable with their own stagnation than they are with the client’s reaction.

In the training process, we often use the follow up session to analyze how the trainee felt after giving a directive. If the trainee says they felt guilty, you have more work to do. If they say they felt powerful, you must then teach them how to use that power with restraint. The goal is not to create a bully, but to create a person who can move others toward health. I once supervised a woman who finally gave a hard directive to a dominating patriarch in a family session. She told me afterward that she felt as though she had finally stepped into her own skin. She was no longer a student trying to do the right thing, she was a practitioner doing what was necessary.

You must be precise in your feedback. If a trainee gives a directive but does it with a questioning tone at the end of the sentence, you must point it out. A directive is a period, not a question mark. We practice the vocal tone of the directive in the same way a musician practices a scale. It must be flat, neutral, and firm. If the trainee adds a please or a would you mind, they have diluted the power of the command. You must tell them to strip away the polite qualifiers. The instruction is simply, Do this.

I recall a trainee who was struggling with a client who refused to do any homework. The trainee kept coming up with better, more interesting assignments, hoping to entice the client. I told the trainee to stop. At the start of the next session, I had the trainee tell the client, Since you have not done the work we agreed upon, there is no reason for us to talk today, please go home and come back when the task is finished. The client was shocked, but he returned the following week with the work completed. The trainee had learned that the most powerful directive is the refusal to participate in the client’s resistance.

When we teach trainees to handle resistance, we teach them to incorporate it into the directive itself. If a client is stubborn, you tell the trainee to direct the client to be stubborn about something specific. This is the essence of the therapeutic paradox. If a trainee can tell a client to continue their symptom but to do it at a specific time and place, the trainee has gained control over the symptom. I once had a trainee work with a woman who had a nervous tic. I told the trainee to instruct the woman to produce the tic on purpose for ten minutes every morning while looking in a mirror. The trainee was confused, but when she saw the client return with a significant reduction in the tic, she finally understood the power of the strategic approach.

Your trainees will often try to hide their lack of directiveness behind a wall of theoretical jargon. They will talk about the complexity of the client’s history or the delicate nature of the alliance. We must cut through this talk. You should ask the trainee one question: What did you tell the client to do? If the answer is nothing, then the session was a missed opportunity. You must maintain this standard in every supervision hour. If you do not hold the trainee accountable for giving directives, you are modeling the same conflict avoidance that they are showing their clients.

I once watched a video of a supervisee who was clearly being bullied by a client. The client was mocking the supervisee’s age and experience. The supervisee was smiling and trying to be understanding. It was painful to watch. I stopped the tape and told the supervisee that she was being mistreated and that it was her fault for allowing it. I told her that in the next session, she was to tell the client that if he insulted her one more time, she would end the session and charge him double for the time. She did exactly that, and the client’s behavior changed instantly. He had been testing her to see if she was strong enough to help him. When she proved she was, he finally began to work.

We use role playing as the primary tool for building directive confidence. You should not just talk about the directive, you should perform it. I have my trainees stand up and practice their posture. A practitioner who is slumped in their chair cannot give a convincing order. You should have the trainee practice their directive voice until it carries the necessary weight. We are looking for a voice that expects to be obeyed. This is not about being loud. It is about being certain. When you see that certainty in your trainee, you know they are ready to handle the more difficult cases.

The trainee who is too nice is often a person who has been socialized to put the needs of others above their own. In therapy, this is a liability. The practitioner’s need to be seen as kind must be subordinated to the client’s need for change. We are not in the business of making friends. We are in the business of solving problems. You must remind your trainee of this fact every time they hesitate to give a task. If they can learn to value the result more than the rapport, they will become effective practitioners.

I once supervised a man who was very concerned with being perceived as a good person. He worked with a family where the father was a heavy drinker. The trainee was so worried about shaming the father that he never once told the man to stop drinking. I had to tell the trainee that by being so nice, he was essentially watching the man die. I instructed the trainee to tell the father that if he arrived at the next session with any smell of alcohol on his breath, the trainee would call the man’s boss and report his condition. It was a harsh directive, but it was the only thing that could break the cycle. The father stayed sober for the rest of the treatment.

You must remember that your trainee’s fear of giving directives is often a fear of their own power. Many people are afraid that if they take control, they will somehow harm the other person. We show them that the opposite is true. By taking control, they provide the structure the client is lacking. They provide a space where change can occur because someone is finally in charge. I always tell my trainees that a ship needs a captain, not a committee. In the room, they are the captain.

We conclude this phase of training by focusing on the timing of the directive. A directive given too early may be rejected, but a directive given too late is a wasted effort. You must teach your trainee to wait for the moment when the client’s old patterns have been exhausted. This is when the client is most open to a new instruction. I often tell my trainees to watch for the moment when the client stops talking and looks at them expectantly. That is the moment to deliver the directive with absolute clarity.

A trainee once asked me how she would know if her directive was the right one. I told her that she would know by the client’s response. If the client completes the task and the problem changes, it was the right directive. If the client refuses the task, it tells us something about the nature of the resistance. There are no wrong directives, only information. You must encourage your trainee to be bold and to treat every intervention as an experiment. This takes the pressure off being perfect and puts the focus back on being active.

You will see a remarkable change in your trainees as they start to master this skill. Their posture will change, their voices will become more resonant, and they will start to report more significant breakthroughs in their work. This is the goal of our supervision. We are not just teaching a set of techniques, we are developing a professional persona that is capable of leading others through the difficult process of change. I have seen even the most timid trainees become powerful practitioners once they embrace the necessity of the directive. It is a fundamental shift in how they view their role in the room.

We must be vigilant in our supervision to ensure that the trainee does not slip back into their old habits of being too nice. It is a constant pull, especially when the work gets difficult. You must be the one who keeps them on track. You must be the one who demands that they take charge. If you do your job well, your trainees will eventually thank you for being the one who pushed them to be more than just a sympathetic ear. They will realize that their ability to give a clear, firm directive is their most valuable asset.

I once had a trainee tell me that she felt like she was playing a character when she gave a directive. I told her that she was correct. In the room, we are always playing a character. We are playing the role of the expert who knows how to solve the problem. This role requires us to do things we might not do in our personal lives. We might be more blunt, more demanding, and more controlling. This is part of the professional craft. You must help your trainee embrace this performance. It is through this performance that the real work of change happens.

You are the model for your trainee. If you are not directive in your supervision, they will never learn how to be directive with their clients. You must be willing to tell them when they are failing. You must be willing to push them out of their comfort zone. We are building the next generation of strategic practitioners, and that requires a level of rigor that is often missing in other forms of training. You must hold that line. Every session you supervise is an opportunity to strengthen the trainee’s directive muscle.

I recall a final session with a supervisee who had started as the quintessential nice trainee. By the end of our time together, she was working with a highly resistant court ordered client. I watched her look that man in the eye and tell him exactly what he had to do if he wanted to see his children again. She did not blink. She did not apologize. She did not use a soft voice. She was firm, clear, and absolutely in charge. The man listened, nodded, and for the first time in months, he followed through on his commitments.

The practitioner observes the client’s foot tapping as the directive is given and knows the resistance is surfacing.

You must teach your trainee that this physical manifestation of resistance is a clinical signal to maintain the directive, not an invitation to soften it. When a trainee sees a client’s foot tapping or a jaw clenching, their social instinct is to provide comfort. We must train them to suppress that instinct. You explain to the trainee that the client is not in distress because of the directive: the client is in distress because their symptomatic pattern is being interrupted. I once supervised a woman who could not bring herself to stop a mother from interrupting her teenage son during a session. Every time the mother cut the boy off, the trainee would nod sympathetically at the mother. I had to intervene and tell the trainee to physically point her finger at the mother and say the word stop. The trainee’s hand shook the first time she did it. We observe that a trainee’s physical shaking often mirrors the client’s resistance, but as the supervisor, you must remain focused on the power hierarchy. You are training the trainee to occupy the space of the expert so the client can occupy the space of a person who is changing.

If the trainee continues to prioritize the client’s comfort over the client’s progress, you must introduce the concept of the ordeal. We use the ordeal to make the maintenance of a symptom more difficult than the abandonment of that symptom. You can instruct your trainee to assign a task that is healthy but extremely tedious. I recall a case involving a man who suffered from chronic procrastination. The trainee wanted to talk about the man’s fear of failure. I instructed the trainee to stop the talk and instead give a directive: every time the man failed to complete a work task by five o’clock, he had to set his alarm for four o’clock the next morning and spend two hours polishing every shoe in his house. The trainee was worried that the man would be too tired to work the next day. You must point out to the trainee that the man is already failing to work. The fatigue from shoe polishing is a controlled cost, whereas the fatigue from chronic anxiety is a secondary gain. When the man returned the following week, he had completed all his work tasks because he hated polishing shoes more than he feared his boss.

We tell the trainee to watch for the exact moment the client attempts to renegotiate the terms of the directive. If you allow the trainee to compromise here, you are teaching them that the client’s discomfort is a valid reason to halt the intervention. I supervised a trainee who was told to have a hoarding client throw away three items every morning at six o’clock. The client complained that six o’clock was too early and requested eight o’clock instead. The trainee agreed to the change. I had to correct the trainee immediately. That two hour shift was not about sleep: it was a test of the hierarchy. When the trainee moved the time, the trainee signaled that the rules were negotiable. You must explain that the specific time of six o’clock is a tool for compliance. It is not a suggestion. We define this as a loss of therapeutic leverage. The trainee must learn that the symptom exists because the client is the one setting the rules in their own life. By setting a rigid time, you are reclaiming the authority to set new rules.

You will find that the too nice trainee often uses the language of suggestion rather than the language of command. They say things like maybe you could try or I wonder what would happen if you. We must strip this tentative language from their vocabulary. You can use role playing to force the trainee to use the imperative mood. I make my trainees stand up and deliver a directive while looking me in the eye. They must say: Go home and tell your wife you will be taking over the finances starting tonight. If the trainee adds a please or a don’t you think, I make them start over. We are not teaching them to be rude: we are teaching them to be clear. Clarity is the highest form of professional kindness. A client who is drowning does not need a therapist who wonders if they might like to try treading water. They need a therapist who tells them exactly where to put their hands.

When a trainee resists your supervision, you must use the same strategic maneuvers on the trainee that we use on clients. I once worked with a trainee who was so committed to being liked that he refused to set any firm directives at all. He argued that his rapport with the client was his greatest asset. I used a paradoxical intervention. I told him that he was such a gifted communicator that I wanted him to spend the next three sessions being completely silent. I told him he was only allowed to nod and take notes. He had to tell the client that his voice was too powerful and might overwhelm the client’s process. By the second session, the client became frustrated with the silence and demanded to be told what to do. The trainee was forced to see that his silence was a burden, not a gift. You use this to show the trainee that their niceness is actually an avoidance of the hard work of leadership.

We observe that the most difficult trainees are those who believe their empathy is a substitute for their expertise. You must challenge this belief by highlighting the failure of empathy to resolve the presenting problem. If empathy could solve a phobia, the client’s friends would have solved it years ago. I remember a trainee who spent six months empathizing with a woman who had a hand washing compulsion. The woman felt very understood, but her hands were still bleeding. I forced the trainee to give a directive that the woman could only wash her hands if she first spent ten minutes reading a boring technical manual out loud to her husband. The woman stopped the excessive washing within ten days. The trainee was shocked that such a simple, non-empathetic task worked. You must explain that the task worked because it interrupted the sequence of the symptom. We are experts in sequences, not in feelings.

You should direct your trainee to monitor the client’s reaction to their new, firmer persona. Often, the client will respond with a sudden increase in respect. I have seen clients who were previously chaotic and talkative suddenly become focused and attentive when the trainee stopped smiling so much. You tell the trainee to notice how the room changes when they sit back and speak less. We want the trainee to see that authority creates a container for the client’s change. When the trainee is too nice, the container is leaky. The client’s energy dissipates into social pleasantries rather than being directed toward the problem. I once had a trainee who was terrified of a particular male client who was very aggressive. I told the trainee to tell the man that he was not allowed to speak for the first fifteen minutes of each session. The man complied immediately. The trainee realized that the man’s aggression was a response to the trainee’s perceived weakness.

We must also address the trainee’s fear of being wrong. The too nice trainee often avoids directives because they are afraid that if the directive fails, they will lose the client’s trust. You must teach them that even a failed directive is a successful diagnostic tool. If you tell a client to do something and they do not do it, you have learned exactly how they resist. I tell my trainees that I love it when a client fails a task because it tells me where the power lies in their family system. If a mother fails to discipline her child as directed, I know that she is getting a payoff from the child’s misbehavior. I do not apologize for the failed directive. I use it as the basis for the next one. You must instill this confidence in your trainee. We are not looking for a perfect success rate: we are looking for a high rate of engagement with the problem.

Your supervision must focus on the structural shifts in the client’s life. We are not interested in the client’s insights into their childhood. We are interested in who is doing the dishes and who is deciding when the lights go out. I supervised a trainee who was working with a depressed man. The trainee was looking for the source of the man’s sadness. I told the trainee to tell the man to go to a local park and give a five dollar bill to five different people wearing blue hats. The trainee thought this was ridiculous. I explained that the man was so focused on his internal state that he had stopped noticing the outside world. The task forced him to look for blue hats. He had to engage with strangers. He had to take action. When he returned, he was less depressed because he had been busy. You show the trainee that the man’s mood followed his behavior. The practitioner watches the client’s breathing slow down as the task is accepted.

The quietude in the room after a task is accepted marks the beginning of the real work. You must now ensure the trainee does not break this quietude with a nervous joke or a clarifying statement. The practitioner who is too nice fears the vacuum of a quiet room and will often rush to fill it with reassurances. We know that this chatter dilutes the power of the directive. We understand that this quietude is where the client must confront the reality of the task. You must teach the trainee to remain quiet until the client speaks first. I once supervised a young man who could not tolerate more than five seconds of quiet. Every time he gave a directive, he would immediately explain why he gave it. This allowed the client to debate the logic instead of performing the task. I instructed him to bring a specific stopwatch into the session. I told him he was forbidden from speaking for sixty seconds after the client agreed to a task. He sat there and checked the dial while the client sat in the reality of the coming labor.

We observe that the too nice trainee often uses a rising inflection at the end of their sentences. This makes a directive sound like a question. You must train the student to use a falling inflection. I had a supervisee who told a father to stop paying his adult daughter’s rent, but she said it with the tone of someone asking for a favor. The father naturally ignored her. I made that trainee spend twenty minutes in our supervision session repeating the phrase, Do not pay the rent, while I sat with my back to her. She had to continue until her voice sounded like a gavel hitting a wooden block. We understand that the client responds to the musicality of the command as much as the words themselves. When she returned to her session with the father, she spoke with that same downward inflection. The father stopped arguing and began to discuss how he would tell his daughter the news.

You must watch the trainee’s hands during the delivery of a directive. If the trainee is holding their hands in a prayer position or clasping them tightly, they are signaling submission to the client. I once worked with a student who did this during every session with a dominant, aggressive man. The trainee would say, I would like you to try an exercise, while her knuckles turned white. We know that the client reads this as a signal that the directive is optional. You tell the trainee to sit on their hands. By placing their hands under their thighs, the trainee’s shoulders square and their chest opens. This physical posture prevents the hunching that accompanies a polite plea. When my trainee sat on her hands, her voice dropped an octave and the man stopped interrupting her.

The supervisor must apply the principle of the ordeal to the supervision itself if the trainee continues to avoid being directive. We make the avoidance of the task more difficult than the act of being assertive. I had a trainee who consistently forgot to assign the agreed upon task at the end of her sessions. I directed her to call the client every evening at eight o’clock to apologize for her forgetfulness and deliver the directive over the phone. After three nights of interrupting her own dinner to make these calls, she never forgot to give a directive in the room again. The inconvenience of the phone calls became the lever that moved her toward professional competence. You use the trainee’s own desire for comfort to force them into a position of authority.

We do not care if the trainee feels authentic while being directive. You must tell them that their internal state is irrelevant to the client’s recovery. I once told a supervisee that he was a paid actor in a drama designed by me. His job was to hit his marks and say the lines I provided. By framing the work as a performance, I bypassed his moral dilemma about being manipulative. When he stopped worrying about being a good person, he became an effective practitioner. He began telling a mother to stop speaking to her son for three days, and he did it with the cold precision of a surgeon. The mother obeyed because she felt the presence of a professional rather than a friend.

You must teach the trainee the technique of the broken record. When a client challenges a directive, the too nice trainee often tries to justify the task. This justification gives the client the power to veto the plan. You instruct the trainee to repeat the directive without variation. If the client asks why they must scrub the floor with a toothbrush, the trainee does not explain. They simply say, Because that is the task for this week. If the client asks again, the trainee repeats the sentence exactly. We use this to demonstrate that the hierarchy is not a democracy. I watched a trainee use this five times in a row with a teenager who was trying to bait him into an argument. By the sixth repetition, the teenager stopped shouting and asked when he should start the task.

I supervised a trainee working with a man who used tears to stop his wife from discussing their finances. Every time she mentioned a bill, he would sob about his childhood. The trainee would provide tissues and speak in a soft, cooing voice. We recognize this as the trainee joining the client’s pathology. I told the trainee that the next time the man cried, she was to stand up, walk to the window, and describe the traffic until he stopped. When she did this, the man realized his tears no longer controlled the room. He wiped his eyes and began discussing the mortgage within five minutes. You must be willing to appear heartless to the trainee so that they can be effective for the client.

We recognize that the most difficult part for the too nice trainee is the finality of a directive. They want to leave a door open for the client to decline. You must teach them to close that door firmly. I once had a trainee who would say, Try this if you have time. I told her that if she used those words again, I would remove her from the case. The next week, she told the client, You will do this every morning at six o’clock. She did not smile and she did not look away. The client’s eyes widened and they nodded. We know that true authority is kind. The client immediately accepts the new hierarchy.