Mentoring:
by
Kerrie Dorman and D.A. Oluwole
The lips of mentors should be kept firmly sealed shut, but keeping secrets is known for being a hugely difficult task. This begs the questions, how do mentors, religious leaders, lawyers, judges, psychologists, law enforcers, etc manage such an art form when listening to confidential information day in and day out?
Being entrusted with a secret can be both a delight and a burden. You should be honored that someone trusts you enough to tell you a secret, but be aware that if you betray that trust, you could damage your relationship with the person who told you. You may also be keeping your own secret, which can be just as difficult as keeping someone else’s secret. Cultivating the willpower to remain quiet will ensure that the secret is kept and will maintain your reputation as a trustworthy person.
One of the golden rules of mentoring is that conversations are 100% confidential. This is essential for creating a safe environment in which both mentor and mentee are able to truly open up; however, as a result, mentors are privy to some highly sensitive information.
The art of mentoring involves the ability to develop this inviting space – to enable the conversations needed for effective mentoring, and to encourage a mentee to open up, share their thoughts, and feel completely at ease with being inquisitive on a work-related, and sometimes personal, front.
Peeling away the layers of an onion
In mentoring and coaching we commonly refer to the ‘layers of the onion’ and anyone who has attended one of our webinars or training sessions will be familiar with the onion exercises we perform.
These are simple breakout activity sessions (thank goodness for Zoom rooms in lockdown) where we equip participants with topical questions in order to really get to know the person they have been matched with, to peel away the layers and ask those bold and curious questions that count.
Naturally, this entices all sorts of slants on frustrations and jubilations in a mentee’s life. A mentor has to process and carry all of it. But what they do with that information is simple – they keep it wholly to themselves.
Over the years, mentoring, training mentors and being mentored, mentors have heard and discussed all sorts! The likes of:
- Acute toxic company politics
- Character clashes
- Imposter syndromes
- Narcissism
- Racism
- Affairs
- Marital breakdowns
- Early signs of mental ill-health
- Successful cunning plans to reach promotion
- A search for a new employer
As well as, of course, the common issue of dealing with ego.
All these situations are found in the SME world just as much as the corporate. Human behaviour is an extraordinary thing and wonderful to study.
Why keeping your lips sealed is no easy feat
Keeping secrets is one of the hardest tasks for humans to do. Art Markman wrote in Psychology Today about the negative effects of keeping secrets which are, mainly:
- Mind space consumed with continual thoughts on the information
- A sense of poor authenticity driven from the need to share or enlighten a concerned party
- A decrease in wellbeing derived from both the above factors
This is regardless of whether you know the other people involved or not. So how do mentors manage the load of carrying such secretive information?
Method1
Keeping Someone Else’s Secret
Method2
Keeping Your Own Secret
- Decide how long you want to keep the secret. Depending on the type of secret, it may have a built-in end point.
- Something like a pregnancy or a surprise gift will have a natural end date.
- Other secrets might not have a natural ending point, and you will just have to decide when you are ready to tell people.
- Try waiting a few days if you feel very emotional about the secret. You may regret telling someone immediately, and giving yourself a few days to calm down may help you make more rational decisions about when to tell people and who to tell.
- 2Make a plan for telling someone. If you know that you will be able to tell someone in the future, making a detailed plan about how and when to tell may help you keep the secret in the meantime.
- If it is a “fun” secret that you’re going to surprise someone with, planning a fun way to tell will help occupy the time before you tell her.
- If it is a serious secret, make a plan to give yourself and the person you’re going to tell uninterrupted time alone to talk and discuss the secret.
- 3Push the secret out of your mind. Stay busy with other things, and try not to think about the secret too much. If you think about it constantly, it will be much more difficult to keep yourself from telling someone.
- 4Think about the benefits of telling your secret. If you are keeping a secret that is upsetting you, you may be standing in your own way. Telling someone may give them the opportunity to help you in a way that you may not expect.
- 5Entrust your secret to one person. If you absolutely must tell someone, be sure you choose the right person.
- Think about your past experiences with that person. Have they been trustworthy and discreet in the past?
- Be explicit about your expectations when you tell the person your secret: are they allowed to tell anyone? Who and when can they tell?
- Know that telling anyone opens up the possibility that the secret will get out.
Method3
Avoiding the Topic
- Do not bring up the topic to anyone. If you bring up the topic of the secret in a conversation with someone, you will likely be tempted to tell the secret. You may (consciously or subconsciously) bring up a related topic hoping that you will have the opportunity to tell the secret. Being aware of this can help keep you from doing it subconsciously.
- Change the conversation topic if necessary. If you are talking to someone who mentions something related to the secret, you may need to change the topic of conversation.
- Continuing to talk about something that reminds you of the secret will put it in the front of your mind and may tempt you to tell.
- Try to change the subject casually so that the person does not notice that you are avoiding telling her something.
- If necessary, find a reason to leave. Sometimes removing yourself from the conversation is the only way to keep quiet.
- Pretend you do not know anything. If someone suspects that you know a secret, try to be vague if she asks you about it directly.
- You may be able to pretend you don’t know by asking questions about the secret.
- Lie if you have to. You may need to lie about knowing the secret. If you do lie, be sure you remember what you told the person so you don’t get “caught” in the lie. It’s better to just lie and say you don’t know (even though you do) than to make up an elaborate detailed lie.
- Be honest. If someone keeps pressing you for information, tell them “I cannot talk to you about this at this time.” Even though you’re admitting that you know something, you are not telling the secret.
- If the person is persistent, politely tell them to stop asking you.
Method4
Satisfying Your Urge to Tell
- 1Write it down and destroy it. Writing about the secret in detail on paper, then destroying the evidence, can be a good way to “get it out.”[2]
- Be sure you thoroughly destroy the evidence. Consider burning it (safely) or shredding it in a paper shredder.
- If you put it in a trash can, tear it into pieces and bury it underneath the trash. Consider putting the pieces in separate trash cans and/or taking the trash out to the curb or dumpster immediately after throwing the paper away.
- Find an anonymous place online to tell. There are some forums for posting secrets so you can get it out but remain completely anonymous.
- Be sure you are truly in an anonymous environment.
- Tell an inanimate object. Telling the secret to a stuffed animal, a pet, or a collectible item may help you feel like you have told someone. If you feel like you’re going to burst because you haven’t told anyone, this may help get the immediacy of your urge to let it out.
- Be sure that no one is nearby to overhear what you are saying.
- Be sure your phone and computer are not connected to calls or audio chat before you speak aloud to an object.
- You may also consider telling a baby who cannot speak yet. You might feel like you are telling a person, but the danger of the secret getting out would be very low.
- Tell yourself in the mirror. If you need to feel like you are telling another human, try telling yourself the secret in the mirror. Pretend you have a twin brother or sister and talk to yourself. This may seem silly, but it might help.
- Again, be sure that there is no one nearby to overhear what you are saying.
- Get the secret energy out of your body. Sometimes, hearing a secret makes you feel like you’re going to explode. There is a physical connection between your body and keeping secrets.[3] Get the jitters out by yelling or dancing around—anything that will get that excited energy out of you so that you don’t run and tell someone the secret instead.
- 6Tell one person who is very trustworthy. If you absolutely must tell another human, be sure that it is someone who can keep a secret.
- If you are keeping a secret about another person, try telling a third party who doesn’t know the original person.
- If you do tell someone, be sure they understand that the matter is a secret and they should not tell anyone.
- Know that telling anyone opens up the possibility that the secret will get out, and that people may find out it was you who told.
Method5
Knowing When to Tell
- 1Evaluate whether the secret is dangerous. If the secret involves one or more people being hurt, you may need to tell someone who can help, particularly if there are children involved.
- If someone is harming themselves or another person, you may need to report it.
- If someone is involved in criminal activity and tells you about it, you might be held legally responsible for not reporting the action.
- 2Know if there is an end point or deadline. If you asked about telling the secret when you found out, double-check to see if it is still an appropriate time before you start telling people. Some events, like surprise parties, will have an obvious “secret” deadline.
- Ask if your “reward” for keeping the secret can be getting to tell someone yourself when the time is right.Whatever you do, do NOT text the secret to anyone because then they have proof that YOU told them. Tell the person in person.
- Depending on the secret, you may not want to tell other people that you knew before they did. This may hurt the feelings of the person’s close friends or family.
- Weigh the risks and benefits of telling. Any time you decide to tell a secret to someone else, you must weigh the risk of many people finding out and you being thought of as untrustworthy against the satisfaction you will feel when you tell someone the secret.
- If you are considering telling a secret, write down a list of pros and cons to telling.[4] This can help you make a well-reasoned decision.
How mentors keep so many secrets?
It is strongly encouraged by industry associations and the codes of conduct that we sign up to that we adopt the professional custom of what is referred to in coaching as supervision and reflection in mentoring.
This practice assuages the urge to offload to a mentor’s partner or friend that which is professionally inappropriate while being able to access an equally confidential arena when there is a need to seek an alternative slant on a particular issue, as well as generally lightening the load. Furthermore, reflection allows a mentor to sense check their conduct and that they have covered all bases.
An exercise we share in mentor training called ‘The Helicopter’, which is featured in The Mentoring Manual by Julie Starr is a healthy way of reflecting post a session or indeed a meeting during everyday work. Here it is step by step.
- Take a breath post meeting and take some time to re-run the session or meeting in your head from an aerial view
- You should be able to see yourself participating.
- Run through the discussion content, remembering individual approaches, questions, reactions and body language.
- Make a mental note of anything that went well, you may have missed or could have introduced. Pay particular attention to tone as well as the outcome and next steps.
- Refine and readdress with a follow up.
This may need a little practising to begin with, although over a short period of time it should become second nature.
Carrying the information that we do as mentors is a privilege. As is sharing our experiences to guide and support.
Part of mentoring in a professional manner includes how we process the discussions that we have and use the knowledge we share to help our mentees be the best versions of themselves, rise to challenges, and fulfill their true potential.
There is only one circumstance in which such a breach of confidence is acceptable, and that is if there is a genuine mental ill-health concern that is not being addressed by the mentee, or perhaps a second if there is proof of any illegal activity. In these cases, it is a mentor’s responsibility to signpost and alert the right form of help, starting with HR, or a colleague or family member in the absence of HR.
Additional resources
wikihow