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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

Confidentiality, Discretion and Disclosure in Business

‘Wherever you go, whatever you do…’ as the song goes, these days you cannot avoid the issue of confidentiality and public disclosure in any working situation. It may be a small company or a big corporation, once people work together some issues need to be treated openly and some issues better remain hidden in the attic. We all are familiar with situations such as these in the private sector or in a public arena: A company wants to protect inside information. The head of one department does not want to disclose certain matters to the head of another department. The public official does not want the rest of the world to know about his private life. And a private citizen feels that his or her medical record should not be easily available to the public. Yet we also realize that we cannot protect every piece of information and we also know deep down that if we want to conceal too much, we cannot engage in a meaningful conversation. Not to mention, that it is very difficult to establish almost any trust between individuals or groups if too much remains behind closed doors and too many things are veiled in secrecy. So businesses nowadays are facing a dilemma. What should they conceal and what should they expose? How do they need to protect themselves and what do they want to share? Striking a delicate balance is a major goal for the management of any company. Typically, there are two different avenues to go down when protection of any information is at stake. First, there is a formal or a procedural way of how to go about it by using confidentiality. Imagine, that you are a business consultant. Company X wants you to do some work in the area of team building. You sign a confidentiality agreement and become legally bound not to disclose sensitive information about the inner workings of the organization. You are a mediator and you deal with a variety of disputes. Not only are you obligated to a confidentiality agreement you are obligated to each other by mutually protecting the information. It goes without saying that mental health professionals or legal professionals are required by law to protect their clients by maintaining confidentiality. The non-disclosure clause in many contracts is used as an ultimate protective measure. Using discretion Second, preventing disclosure of sensitive information can be done by applying discretion. Discretion in comparison to confidentiality is almost an art form. People with social awareness have a capacity to detect what might be unpleasant for certain people in certain situations to disclose publicly. What we are talking about here is sometimes called tact. Discretion or tact prevents public humiliation and embarrassment. Discretion or tact also helps to save face. It is then a good practice to apply discretion and not to talk about your, mine or other people’s salaries, unless there is an agreement to do so. Quite often, once employees learn about disparities when it comes to pay, it breeds a lot of resentment and jealousy among them. Also, it is not beneficial to castigate your employees in public even if you as a manager believe that you are offering a fair and constructive critique of your subordinates. And vice versa managers do not appreciate if their shortcomings are disclosed publicly either in front of their subordinates or their superiors. So what can companies do to establish and maintain a trusting environment and at the same time make sure that discretion and confidentiality are in place? Here are a few suggestions. – If you are in a leadership position, do not promise what you cannot deliver. – Trust is built over time. Being consistent when it comes to delivering on your promises time after time shows your employees that your word and your commitment has weight. It is therefore very important to determine what expectations your employees have. Once you learn what needs and wants their expectations are built on then you have to figure out if the expectations are realistic. Most importantly you need to communicate to your employees your willingness and commitment to meet their expectations and to deliver on your promises. Yet, you also need to explain the circumstances and the conditions under which these expectations cannot be met. We learned a long time ago that empty promises are the shortest path to distrust. – Ask your employees what issues are important to them and ask them which of these issues they are comfortable to discuss in an open forum. – The sensitivity of issues must be assessed from a management standpoint as well as from an employee standpoint. The criteria must satisfy the question, do these issues support cohesiveness of the company or do they become disruptive to the functioning of the organization? The issues can vary from place to place, but we can estimate that some issues would show up on the hot list quite frequently. Such would be issues related to conditions at work, standards and procedures, performance evaluation, reward systems, the decision-making process and so forth. – Find an acceptable way to offer criticism to your people. Be critical of yourself. – We all know that to throw praise around is not that difficult. A department gathers for an occasion and the awards are handed to those who performed splendidly. As long as contribution of all employees in a department is considered equally and fairly, that should be a happy event. But imagine that you need to offer criticism. That usually is much worse news to swallow. Therefore acceptance of how to deliver criticism must come from those who are criticized as well as from those who criticize. Also, if you accept the responsibility for a success as well as the responsibility for a failure, your employees and subordinates will be much more comfortable to take a criticism by themselves. – Ask people in your team what they are willing to share and what things they consider too sensitive to exchange among themselves. – What do people at work like or do not like to share? When it comes to work related issues it is quite beneficial to share solutions related to specific problems. Sharing knowledge and an approach to work related issues makes complete sense. Sharing goals and objectives, individual or collective helps members of the team to understand how they view their future. There are things people find too sensitive to touch. Issues such as gender, race, ethnicity, health condition, financial status, religious inclinations, etc. all these represent enhanced sensibilities for individual workers. Optimally, we want to create a civil and respectful environment. The question, which remains unanswered, is what is better. Do we acknowledge the special sensitivities by tacitly or explicitly agreeing that we would not bring them up? Or do we realize that regardless if we keep silent about these matters they will not go away and at a certain point we need to acknowledge them publicly? Let me finish with a few cautious remarks. All suggestions mentioned above are good on many occasions but obviously, they are not good for all occasions. Sometimes a situation is so complex that the leadership of any organization must rely on a gut feeling when it comes to speaking the uncomfortable truth. It is a mark of true leadership to take a risk here and there and to show courage. It comes down to being prudent and at the same time relying on the decision-maker’s intuition. Milan Slama is president of FocusOn Solutions LLC, a Valley Village-based consulting firm specializing in conflict resolution and team building. He can be reached at (818) 505.1262 or at [email protected]

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