Confidentiality with Colleagues
We've recently released a Career Tools/Manager Tools cast pair regarding confidentiality. Our guidance is simple and remains that you cannot expect confidentiality from a manager and you should never ask. In fact, knowing that a manager can't grant confidentiality, it is clumsy, awkward and unprofessional to ask. (Heaven forbid, you ask it of a person who does think they have the ability to grant it and they are overruled by a senior executive).
If you are a manager, hopefully it's clear that you cannot offer confidentiality to directs, skips or anyone else. Your primary responsibility is to the company and any agreement about confidentiality for which we have given our word is a contradictory commitment. Managers cannot engage in professional behavior which contradicts their primary responsibility, that to the company.
But how about to our colleagues? What about when a peer or superior asks for confidentiality? We have two suggestions; one of which is inviolate. The first suggestion applies if you are a manager. This is where our advice is inviolate. You cannot guarantee confidentiality. We want to be clear here that our guidance to managers applies not just to directs, but to anyone in the organization. Here at Manager Tools / Career Tools we so often talk about managers and the responsibilities and burdens they have towards their directs that it is sometimes lost that the managers has a role separate from his directs. ANYONE who asks for confidentiality must be politely declined. (See the Manager Tools cast here for how to politely decline).
Again, remember the principle that governs our inability to confer confidentiality is our primary responsibility to the organization. And any agreement to confer confidentiality creates the potential for conflict. What if you granted anyone (a fellow manager or a higher ranking executive) confidentiality and they informed you of malfeasance within the organization? You would be obligated to report it, and your agreement would be violated.
What if you're not a manager, and a peer or some other colleague asks for confidentiality? Our guidance here is to a) politely decline or b) provide a limited offer in response. To politely decline say "I'm sorry. I can't be sure what we'd be talking about, and my professional obligation may prohibit me from keeping what you tell me confidential". We recognize this may be awkward, with a peer who wants to share something personal. However, we can't know if it's personal until after they have told us. This is a protection for our colleague. We wouldn't want to agree and then feel obligated to share because of what they told us.
How can we offer limited confidentiality? We recommend: "I can keep it confidential as long as there's no professional conflict of interest. If you tell me something I feel I have to report, I will. If you tell me something private and *I* agree it has no work impact, I'll keep it private". This may seem formal, but we take your professional obligations seriously and do not want a peer or colleague of yours to be in hot water after confiding something in you.
Two small footnotes: Oftentimes people use different words such as 'in private' or 'keep secret' or speak in a whisper as if to imply something confidential. We urge you to consider that without a formal word, nothing is confidential. If someone shares something 'in private' or 'in secret', this does not oblige you to override your professional responsibilities.
As we alluded to in both casts, there are plenty of news stories in other professions. Please don't use guidance meant for other professions to determine your course of action. Other professions' confidentiality/ethics are built on a different basis than that of a professional manager.
2010 Conference Schedule
We're already planning the 2010 conference dates. Here's our tentative schedule. It's dependent on hotel confirmations and nothing is completely firm.
January - Washington DC & London
February - Orlando
March - Chicago
April - Orange County
May - San Antonio
June - Denver
July - Boston
August - Seattle
September - Washington DC
October - Silicon Valley & Dallas
November- Chicago
December- New York
If you'd like us to come to your area, please let us know and we will consider it in our planning.
Distribution
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