Lis Merrick explores how a lack of trust can ruin mentoring relationships in formal programmes and how good design can prevent it
Over the past year, several mentoring programmes I have been working on have experienced real difficulties with trust among their participants. What is going on?
Since the 2008 recession, many organisations have been forced to take steps to reduce costs, including redundancies, reduced working hours, cuts or freezes in pay and other benefits and restrictions on recruitment and promotion.
This job insecurity has led to distrust among employees. I believe this is also symptomatic of a wider lack of trust in society, created by the volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) world we live in, dissatisfaction with political and business leadership, growing polarisation and the increase in populism.
The 2017 Trust Barometer* by Edelman, one of the world’s biggest marketing firms, says 53% of its survey’s responders believe the current system has failed them (http://bit.ly/2tTFqUU). So this increased lack of trust in society is affecting how people feel about their relationships, including their mentoring relationships, particularly within intra-organisational programmes.
Consequences of a lack of trust
Trust can be two-way, with mentors also not trusting their mentees. Consequences of an absence of trust in mentoring, include:
- Superficial, almost social, conversations without real learning, in which the mentor or mentee engage because they feel they should be seen to go through the motions of mentoring.
- The mentee can manipulate the mentor by feeding incorrect information about their career plans or feelings about the organisation, in order to deflect them from their real plans or views.
- Or the worst-case scenario, the mentoring pair just does not meet at all!
How can you build trust in mentoring?
- Always ensure the programme is a voluntary one. If mentees feel they have no choice in their participation, it will automatically make them distrustful from the start.
- If trust is an issue in your programme, then acknowledge this and put it on the ‘table’ to discuss with programme participants in their training, briefing or supervision. Some mentors can show surprise that the topic is being raised and they need to be challenged to take it seriously.
- Support mentors and mentees with understanding both how to create trust and how it can be broken easily, for example, by inflated mentee expectations leading to disappointment.
- Establishing rapport and an atmosphere of mutual respect and interest is key to building trust. It can’t be rushed. Spend time supporting mentors and mentees in understanding how to do this by getting to know each other and finding things in common. Hurrying rapport building and moving straight to setting direction is a common fault with some pairs, particularly if the programme is expecting the mentoring to be completed quickly. It’s one reason why I don’t like six-month programmes!
- Ensuring the mentoring pair understand the concept of confidentiality and explore what it means together as part of their agreement setting at the start. Breaking confidence will lead to an immediate loss of trust.
By following these ideas, you can support mentors and mentees to both reflect on the level of trust they are experiencing in their relationship and help them to work at developing it further.
- Next issue: how organisations use mentoring to support employee engagement and retention
- Lis Merrick is a consultant specialising in mentoring programme design and development. She welcomes correspondence on anything to do with mentoring.
Contact: Lismerrick@coach mentoring.co.uk