Managing boundary issues

While there is a good deal of overlap between being a mentor and being a coach, a counsellor and other helping roles, there are relatively clear boundaries it is important not to cross. Being aware of these boundaries is critical in ensuring that you as a mentor are working within the limits of your own competencies (for example, not trying to be an amateur psychologist), to keep the focus of the relationship on your mentee, and to avoid situations that might inadvertently cause distress to them.

The most significant boundaries lie between:

Mentoring and professional counselling or psychotherapy.

If your mentee appears to be suffering from depression, or a repeated cycle of self-destructive behaviour for example, it is important for you to follow the following five-step process:

1. Note the emotions you observe and allow your mentee to talk about them to the extent they wish to. Confine your comments to acknowledging their feelings and situation, demonstrate empathy as appropriate, but don’t attempt to dig below the surface. Simply having someone to listen to them can be remarkably effective in helping them cope.
2. Make it clear that you may have reached a boundary of where you are competent to help. Ask if they would like to address this issue with someone who is better trained to help them. If they say “yes”, agree how you will refer them on. If they say “no”, give them a space to be silent and reflect, then ask if they would like to continue the conversation, focusing on some of the more practical elements of the issue, or would prefer to end the mentoring session at this point.
3. Make sure they are safe when they leave you. For example, do they have someone else to call upon for support, if they need it?
4. Having made the introduction to a professional therapist or counsellor (or gone through the mentoring coordinator), seek guidance for yourself. This guidance will help you:
   • Reflect on and learn from how you managed the issue.
   • Manage the boundary in future conversations with your mentee.
   • Provide a wider range of practical help without getting sucked into your mentee’s problems.
   • Separate your own feelings and motives from your mentee’s.
5. If appropriate and with your mentee’s permission, discuss with your mentee’s professional therapist orcounsellor how you will work in tandem to support them, or whether it is best to back off from the mentoring relationship until your mentee has sorted out their emotional problems.

The role of the mentor and the role of the mentee’s line manager

It’s easy for you to get over- involved in your mentee’s current work and technical skills and to tread on their line manager’s toes. When discussing current work issues, both of you should consider:

• Has your mentee had the conversation they need to have about this with their line manager?
• If not, is the purpose of this conversation to help them prepare for that conversation (a legitimate mentoring activity) or to do the line manager’s job for them (not a legitimate mentoring activity)?
• Is this the best use of our valuable time together?
• Is there a more appropriate learning resource available (for example, a skilled colleague, or a training programme)?
• How can we avoid undermining the line manager?

The mentee’s issues and those of the mentor

When we listen to other people empathetically, it’s inevitable that we make comparisons with our own experience and our own concerns. It’s easy then to cross the line into viewing the other person’s issue through the lens of your own. Any time you find yourself thinking or saying, “Yes, I know exactly what it’s like”, there is a danger that you may project in this way. To prevent this happening, ask the following questions from time to time during the mentoring conversation – and particularly when you feel a strong emotional resonance with their situation:

• Am I seeing this issue from their perspective or mine? Or a mixture of both?
• How can I put aside my own experience and feelings to concentrate more fully on what’s happening for them?

Developmental and sponsorship mentoring

It’s very easy for a relationship that was all about learning to slip into one where the mentor is expected to use their influence directly on the mentee’s behalf. Rather than drift into this situation, it’s important to:

• Recognise and discuss that a change in expectations is happening.
• Review the situation against the programme guidelines. Your mentee should accept that the programme is for developmental mentoring and that you cannot take on the role of a sponsor.
• In your regular relationship reviews, check from time to time that the learning emphasis of your conversations is not being lost.

Warning signs of reaching a boundary

You are likely to have reached a boundary if you:

• Feel overly drawn into an issue.
• Feel that you lack the professional expertise to help.
• Are being dragged down into the minutiae of your mentee’s job role.
• Are having difficulty stepping back from an issue.

Simply have an intuitive feeling that this isn’t a conversation you should be having.

Re-contracting

There are other boundaries that you may come up against, i.e. areas you don’t wish to bring into the mentoring relationship. These may be personal including religious beliefs and personal relationships, or conflicts of interest between yours and your mentee’s areas of work, where confidentiality may be important.

It is important that at any stage in the mentoring relationship, where either of you feel uncomfortable about a subject, that you bring it out in the open, and re-contract to include these new boundaries if necessary.

Reflection Time

How frequently do you review the boundaries in your mentoring relationship? Do any of these boundaries have significance for you in your current mentoring relationship? How are you managing them?