Debrief activity and questions

1. Please begin by sharing with each other or writing down (if you are on your own), a few of the messages from the video that stayed with you. What ideas stuck? Which ideas made more sense for you, or somehow struck a chord?

2. If you are a manager, then you quite obviously have personal information about people on your team that others do not have. Consider what special information that you have access to that others don’t have. If you are not a manager, you are still likely to have access to sensitive information about some colleagues, outside stakeholders or clients.

Take a moment now to list down the kinds of information you have access to that could be considered sensitive. (Don’t write down the actual information)

3. Draw a horizontal line across the page and write indiscrete at one end and diplomatic at the other. Reflect carefully just how mindful you are about sharing information with others that might be sensitive.

Put a mark on that line where you sense you might be on this scale.

4. Consider a time when you may have been a little loose with information that you possessed which was somehow sensitive. The information you shared may not have been “state secrets” but on reflection it was somehow inappropriate to share. The situation could have been when you were feeling especially relaxed and free, or perhaps you were feeling under pressure and stressed. Or perhaps it was a situation quite different to those two scenarios. It may have been at work, or alternatively a personal/social context.

Bring your bravest self to the question of what you gained by sharing that information. In what way might you have traded sensitive information for a gain of some kind? What were you hoping to get by sharing that information? Might you have had a secret intention to impress, have impact or gain esteem with others in some way?

Even if you can’t share the answer to this question with others, please share it with yourself by writing a brief answer.

5. What advice would you give a newcomer to managing the trap of sharing sensitive information? What practical hints would you give them, or what mindset might best protect them from misusing their power in this way.

Plan your own action now based on that advice.