There is something so important about setting up a contract. Not of creating a legal contract but of creating a social one. These days, I do this in roles from being a Scrum Master to mentoring to professional coaching. I expect to see a few things covered:
· Confidentiality
· Ways of tracking agreed actions
· Expectations parties can have of each other
· Frequency of meeting
· Purpose and outcomes
· Anything that can’t be talked about
The list could continue to cover any number of things, but this is my usual starting point. This supportive relationship that is being created often comes from a place of not knowing each other well. Whether you know each other well or not is immaterial, though. Trust needs to be built by forming boundaries in this new relationship. Without understanding the confidentiality of the conversations we’ll be having together, I may not be as open as I need to be to get the most from the relationship.
Working with neurodivergent people can be particularly difficult. Like all people, though, neurodivergent people do benefit from having support and being helped by others. Helping someone with a disability is not an easy task, and if you haven’t asked about how best to help then you’re likely in for a shock. Those working with people with physical disabilities are taught to ask one question when supporting someone, “How can I help?” It’s good to use the same question with neurodevelopmental disabilities, too.
Giving someone a list of things to do sounds like a great first step in a mentoring programme you’ve worked through with many clients before. If that person has demand avoidance, then giving them a to-do list may mean they can no longer do anything on that list, even if they were planning to do those things already.
An autistic person may look like they’re ignoring you when they’re paying the deepest attention because they are concentrating so much on you that they stop masking. An ADHDer might like lots of small tasks with short deadlines so they get quicker consequence responses on their actions and be more likely to stay the course. A dyslexic may prefer high emoji use because they find it easier to work with imagery than words, and it makes it easier for them to recall information.
Mentoring and coaching are deeply personal relationships to form, even in (and perhaps especially in) a professional context. Clients express a level of vulnerability in telling you the details of a situation so you can support them in moving through and beyond it. Without the trust to tell you anything they think is relevant, you’re not going to be able to do your job well or support them effectively.
It’s likely your clients are going to assume you have similar terms with your other clients, so you’ll need to exhibit those values in your interactions with your client so you don’t undermine your agreement. If you’ve agreed to a level of confidentiality with this client, then extend the same level to your other clients in your interactions with this one. (Unless, of course, you have a higher level of confidentiality with your other clients.)
I like to be explicit about what my client can expect of me and what I expect of my client. I ask them if there’s anything they would like to add or remove until we come to an agreement. In most cases, I have more experience of what coaching looks like, so I start the conversation with the typical items I would expect to see. That doesn’t mean this list is definitive or my possession. It is something to be co-created, and that, too, needs to be explicit.
I like to know what my clients do and don’t want to talk about. There are few topics I’m uncomfortable talking about, so it helps me to understand what topics make my clients uncomfortable. It may also be that my clients want to use the time specifically to address certain aspects of their lives, so talking about anything outside of that would be a waste of their time. I also like to explain that I am not a therapist and will be watching that our conversations don’t accidentally become therapy sessions.
When I teach meeting facilitation, I say that if you can’t come up with a reason why you should have a meeting, then you shouldn’t have a meeting. I also want to know what the intentions are for the outcomes and outputs of the meeting are. That doesn’t mean you’re definitely going to achieve those goals, but you have a line in the sand for where you want to be that you can use as a qualitative judgment point for the success of your meeting. The same is true with my clients. We’ll be working towards something, but it may emerge it was the wrong thing and work towards something else instead. We still had a goal, though, and so our time wasn’t spent floating on the wind, hoping to produce something useful.
By having these things explicit from the start, we have a strong foundation to build our coaching or mentoring relationship. A trusting bond is formed more easily because we understand the boundaries of the relationship. I know what my client expects and how they want to work, and my client is assured that if I fail to meet their expectations, then they can talk to me about it in an objective manner. Everyone is happier and more comfortable in the relationship, and so better support is provided to the client.