I'm reminding myself to share my confidentiality FYI with new folks on my team:
"I err on the side of maintaining confidentiality, and requesting consent to share. Except caveats as a mandated reporter. However: assume that you do NOT have to maintain confidentiality of anything I say."
It's a glaring red flag if anyone in any position of relative power (managers, mentors, elder family members, elder community members, etc) insist that you keep their confidentiality.
Especially people holding structural power should take extreme care and give specific reasons for rare moments to request confidentiality
Insisting on blanket confidentiality regularly is an extreme, flashing red flag that should alert you to a likely abusive situation. If any aspect of situations like that feels at all off, tell them no, and say that you'd rather not discuss a topic that requires you to keep it confidential, out of mutual protection.
I previously left out that aspect of confidentiality, and it often led to me hearing my reports mirror my confidentiality pledge right back at me
It felt wrong, but I didn't know how to describe why until I realized how an abuser abuses confidentiality to maintain their abusiveness.
Sunshine can be so valuable when it comes to abusers. A few years ago, I didn't realize that a colleague was being abusive until I shared with another colleague what he had said privately about wanting to have a private conversation rather than openly discussing a topic in a shared channel.
It doesn't matter whether it's written or said on camera or discussed in person. If someone (especially holding power or seniority) doesn't give a clearly meaningful reason why something should stay private, raise a red flag high.
Maybe it's because *personal* privacy is a reasonable thing for a manager to maintain (it's a boundary!), but I haven't figured out how to integrate the lopsided power dynamic aspects of privacy into my boundaries spiel:
> I always want to learn and respect your boundaries, such as what you're comfortable sharing or not (and that can change over time). E.g., I prefer to ask "What would you like to share about your background or what brings you into this role?" rather than "Tell me your life story" (I will never ask this, and never expect you to share, but I'm open and interested in hearing whatever is important to *you* that you are open to sharing with me.)
But I think boundaries are different. I think boundaries are generally a safe realm that involve setting (and maintaining) limits for ourselves in what we do.
Boundaries are about what happens between two people. We can't set boundaries for what another person does, except in declaring that we will remove ourselves (walk away, end a conversation) under some circumstances. I can't say "my boundary is that you will do X" or "my boundary is that you won't do Y or discuss Z with other people"
So I think my boundaries spiel doesn't need any relative power caveats — except for calling out that setting boundaries (e.g., work-life boundaries) is especially *important* for people holding relative power.
@saraislet 💯
I always told my reports/mentees that I would mostly keep things confidential; however, I couldn't promise because if they told me something that needed attention I would have to attend to it. I did tell them that if I felt I needed to reveal something they said, I'd give them the opportunity to say it themselves.
@tacertain What do you think about situations where a report may have acted with bias, discriminated against someone, or otherwise caused harm?
I like your approach of offering the opportunity to say something themselves, and I think it might apply to potential bias situations also, but I haven't figured out a nice way to express how I navigate that. It's hard to make universal statements for situations like that, unless there's a super rigid process set by the organization (which there usually IS, but the "discovery" step of getting clarity on potential bias is almost always fuzzy)
@saraislet I was mostly thinking of situations where my report told me of something going on somewhere else and they didn't want to speak up about it. But if I felt like something needed to be addressed, I needed to take action. Like once a mentee told me that one of his mentees reported inappropriate language from a 4th party (ick). I told my mentee that either he or his mentee needed to speak up, or I would.
It's certainly super tricky if one of your reports tells you that they behaved inappropriately, but they are clueless. I don't think there's a way to handle that that's going to leave you feeling good about the situation. I mean that's one of the hardest parts of being in management - sometimes you get put in situations where there's no good outcome. As much as you can, realize that you didn't cause the situation - you have to resolve it, but it was caused by the person acting badly.
Does that help? If I missed your question, let me know. B
Insecurity Princess 🌈💖🔥
Andrew Certain 