Enhancing Self-Efficacy to Achieve Competence

A primary goal of cognitive therapy supervision is to help the supervisee achieve greater competence in cognitive therapy. However, helping supervisees achieve competence rests in part on their judgments that they can use the skills they learned to help their clients feel and get better. Bandura referred to these judgments as self-efficacy, which he defined as an individual's perception that he is capable of accomplishing a certain level of performance (Bandura, 1977). Although it is understandable that most supervisees enter supervision with low self-efficacy, it can become an impediment to achieving competence if it persists. In this article, I define self-efficacy and describe four sources of information that influence self-efficacy: performance accomplishments, vicarious experiences, persuasion, and physiological states. I then describe how supervisors can use these sources to enhance the self-efficacy of supervisees to assist them in achieving actual competence.