Online Lived Experience Leadership Supervision Australia

LEXs provides dedicated online supervision for people working in senior lived and living experience roles across Australia, including leaders, advisors, consultants, researchers and governance practitioners. Supervision is confidential, reflective and shaped around the particular demands of carrying lived experience into organisational, strategic and system-level work.

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Senior lived experience practice can be unusually exposed.

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You may be the only person at the table whose authority comes partly from lived and living experience. You may be expected to represent a community that cannot possibly be represented by one person. You may need to decide repeatedly what to disclose, when disclosure serves the work, and when it simply asks more of you.

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At senior levels there may also be fewer people who understand the practice well enough to supervise it.

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That is what this service is for.

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Who this supervision is for

Lived Experience Leadership Supervision is designed for people whose current work operates at a senior, strategic, advisory, governance, research or consultancy level.

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This can include:

• lived experience leaders in senior organisational roles

• consumer, carer and family leaders

• senior lived experience advisors

• lived experience consultants and independent practitioners

• researchers using lived experience methodologies or working on lived experience questions

• board members and governance representatives drawing on lived experience in their role

• senior consumer and carer representatives

• lived experience practitioners working in policy, government or peak bodies

• people holding hybrid roles across lived experience, management, academia, research or governance

• practitioners moving formally into senior lived experience leadership.

 

The defining question is not your job title.

 

It is whether your work requires you to use lived and living experience as a knowledge base while carrying strategic responsibility, organisational influence or system-level authority.

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What makes senior lived experience practice different

Senior practice carries dilemmas that ordinary professional supervision does not always recognise.

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You may need to work inside organisations whose structures were not designed around lived experience authority. You may be trying to influence decisions while also being expected to remain recognisably “the lived experience voice”. You may be responsible for a peer workforce while having no equivalent lived experience leadership above you.

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The work can involve difficult questions about:

• authority and influence

• tokenism and co-option

• disclosure

• representational labour

• organisational politics

• values and compromise

• relationships with the peer workforce

• relationships with clinicians, executives, funders and government

• commercial work and consultancy

• personal sustainability.

 

This is why I keep this service distinct from social work supervision.

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What supervision can hold

You bring the work that is live.

A session might involve:

• a strategic decision where organisational pressure and lived experience values are pulling in different directions

• deciding whether, why and how to disclose personal experience

• the cumulative impact of representational labour

• being the only lived experience practitioner in a senior room

• responding to tokenistic involvement without losing the relationship required to influence

• questions about authority, accountability and governance

• working with boards, commissioners, funders or government

• leading or supporting lived experience workforces

• navigating conflict between consumer, carer, peer and organisational perspectives

• research questions involving lived experience knowledge and methodology

• ethical questions in advisory or consultancy work

• deciding which opportunities to accept and which to decline

• independent practice and the commercial realities of lived experience consultancy

• transitions into or out of senior roles

• sustainability across a long career in work that draws on personal experience.

 

Supervision is not about teaching you how to tell your story.

 

It is about supporting the practice of using lived and living experience deliberately, ethically and sustainably where the stakes are organisational or systemic.

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Lived experience leadership and disclosure

Disclosure can become treated as though it is automatically virtuous in lived experience work.

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It is not.

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Disclosure is a practice decision. Sometimes it creates understanding or changes the direction of a conversation. Sometimes it becomes evidence extracted from the practitioner while the organisation remains unchanged. Sometimes the cost to the person disclosing is greater than the value to the work.

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Supervision can help examine that decision without beginning from the assumption that more disclosure is better.

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Representational labour

Senior lived experience practitioners are often asked, implicitly or explicitly, to speak for populations far larger and more diverse than any one person's experience.

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That pressure can create impossible expectations.

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Supervision can help distinguish between bringing your own knowledge responsibly, drawing on broader evidence and consultation, naming the limits of your perspective, and refusing the expectation that one practitioner can embody an entire community.

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Working inside organisational power

The move from participation to influence changes the work.

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At an advisory table, executive meeting, research committee or board, it is not enough to have something important to say. You also need to understand where authority sits, what decision is actually being made, what evidence carries weight, what can be changed now and what requires a longer strategy.

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My own work spans lived experience advisory, governance, research and system roles, alongside previous senior management responsibility across mental health and community services.

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Supervision therefore holds both sides of the table: lived experience practice and the organisational conditions into which that practice is trying to intervene.

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Researchers, advisors and consultants

Lived experience research and consultancy create their own professional questions.

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For researchers, this can involve whose knowledge is treated as evidence, how lived experience changes methodology rather than decorating it, relationships with academic authority, emotional proximity to the research and the ethics of representation.

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For independent advisors and consultants, it can include contracting, boundaries, pricing, conflicts of interest, deciding whether a piece of work genuinely uses lived experience knowledge, and sustaining an independent practice without allowing the market to determine your values.

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LEXs itself operates as an independent practice, so these are questions I encounter from inside the work rather than only conceptually.

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How sessions work

Sessions are 60 minutes and delivered online across Australia.

 

The approach is reflective and non-hierarchical. At the beginning of the relationship we can clarify:

• what you want supervision to support

• current role and responsibilities

• confidentiality

• frequency

• documentation requirements

• any organisational or contract-holder arrangements

• how we will review the usefulness of the supervision over time.

 

Organisations can fund this supervision as part of an employment, advisory, consultancy or executive-support arrangement.

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Fees

Lived Experience Leadership Supervision

60 minutes: $360

 

Six-Session Package

6 × 60-minute sessions: $2,160

The package is prepaid and valid for 12 months from the first session.

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For organisational buyers, invoicing and written service agreements are available.

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Frequently asked questions

How is this different from social work supervision?

Social work supervision develops and supports practice through a social work professional lens.

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Lived Experience Leadership Supervision is designed for senior work in which lived and living experience is a core knowledge base and the practitioner is operating in strategic, advisory, governance, research or consultancy settings.

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Do I need to have “lived experience leader” in my job title?

No. Role function matters more than title.

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You may be an advisor, researcher, consultant, board member, manager, consumer or carer representative, policy practitioner or independent operator.

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Can my employer or contract holder pay?

Yes. Organisations, government bodies and other contract holders can fund supervision. Invoicing and service agreements can be arranged while maintaining clear confidentiality boundaries.

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Is it suitable for lived experience researchers?

Yes. Research is an explicit part of the service, particularly where lived experience knowledge, methodology, representation, organisational power or researcher identity are part of the work.

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Can we arrange group supervision?

For an organisation wanting recurring supervision for an established team or group, see External Reflective Supervision for Frontline Teams.

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Begin supervision

You can book an individual session directly.

If you are considering an organisationally funded or sustained supervision arrangement, you can begin with a free 15-minute fit call.

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Book a 15-Minute Fit Call