New York Lawyer
November 16, 2006

Q:
I am a mentor in my firm to a couple of younger lawyers. My problem is that one of my mentees talks to me too much about personal issues. I guess I encouraged it, at first, by being open to talking about her problems (in her personal life, with her family, etc.), as I'm a pretty open and personable type, but it has gotten to the point where it takes up too much time and I feel like she's gotten too dependent on me.

I also don't think it's appropriate to send this much time talking about such matters.

I feel a certain degree of responsibility, however, since I willingly talked with her about these things at the outset. How can I redraw the boundaries, so to speak?

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A:

The way you have posed the question is perfect. What you need to do is to exactly that: redraw boundaries so that your relationship is more appropriate for the workplace.

There aren't necessarily bright lines here. There obviously can't be a rule (and shouldn't be) that you never talk about personal issues with colleagues, any more than you wouldn't ever discuss work issues with social friends. However, the balance has to be calibrated carefully, especially when there are differences in power levels between the individuals.

The mentor-mentee relationship is one that needs to be reasonably calibrated so that there are appropriate expectations on both sides of the equation. The mentee should expect support, professional guidance, someone to tell her the ropes and political realities of the workplace -- the "inside scoop." The emphasis should be on the informal side of succeeding in the workplace as an important aspect of strictly professional concerns. The mentor should expect to spend a reasonable amount of time providing guidance and responding to concerns; many mentors find they get a lot out of such relationships, and actually learn themselves from the newbies, hearing fresh ideas and gaining new perspectives.

You can employ a variety of techniques to deal with this situation, depending on your personality and style. You may want to consider an open approach, in which you simply state the problem and tell her about the effect on you: "Being a mentor means discussing professional concerns, but our conversations have become more about your personal life than your professional life. I think it's more appropriate that we scale back a bit, as these conversations are getting lengthy and are not appropriate for the workplace." That's pretty blunt, but would get the message across. Less direct approaches would be to steer the subject back to professional areas as soon as you gracefully can, and to cut her off by pleading too much work, doing so repeatedly until she gets the message.

Another approach would be to directly address what appears to be a problem for her, which is a lack of boundaries on her part. The fact that she is spending significant time talking about personal issues shows a lack of sensitivity on her part about how to best spend her (and your) time at work.

It's always harder to redraw boundaries after they have been established. I can't tell you how many people I've talked to who regret having established a cozy relationship with an underling, only to have to pull back or get frosty due to performance issues or too much infringement on their time, as you are experiencing. The best thing to do is to be more careful with such relationships in the future, setting expectations carefully from the get-go and being less willing to let the connection become more personal than makes sense.

Sincerely,
Holly English
Principal Consultant, Values at Work