Attachment and Loyalty
Glassed with cold sleep and dazzled by the moon Out of the confused hammering dark of the train I looked and saw under the moon’s cold sheet
your delicate dry breasts, country that built my heart:… Judith Wright Train Journey (1953)
Abstract The focus in this chapter is on the importance of relationships for people, individually and collectively and how relationships are the DNA for an inspiring and indeed, creative life and community. Delving into the key concepts of attachment and loyalty reveals the risks and value of both.
considers and reflects on their current and past relationships where these experi- ences may have troubled them.
The nature of their relationships outside of mentoring may be initially reflected in their relationship with the mentor. Exploration of past relationship experiences and recurring patterns within them helps mentees focus on how they perceive, select and interpret these; their expectations of others and strategies for managing them (Mikulincer and Shaver 2007). Such exploration potentially leads to beneficial change. Of course, this depends on the mentor’s capacity to assist the mentee address their issues of concern and develop strategies for change, where desired.
It is important for the mentor to appreciate the relationship needs with others as well as the purposes others serve, differ throughout the life span (Consedine and Magai2006; Magai2008). What older adults require in their relationships changes (Carstensen et al.2011) as life’s priorities change: work connections may be less important than community engagement for example. Further, they may be expecting less from others and willing to give back more. What they are exploring are more meaningful interpersonal relations. This is contrast to adults, at earlier stages of their careers who may be seeking promotion, salary and tangible benefits.
People connect with others in different ways and a mentor needs to appreciate this: some people feel very confident in building professional relationships and less so with non-professional ones while the reverse may be true for others. Some people feel insecure and lack confidence in their ability to forge strong relationships with others believing others are always right and the“problem is with me”. In other cases, people feel a heightened sense of self-possession and see others as not being able to live up to their personal or relationship expectation. In both cases, indi- viduals may be perceived as aloof although, in the former, it is for entirely different reasons. There are others who are simply anxious and fearful of connecting espe- cially professionally as they do not feel they can measure up to expectations or because they have witnessed others being intimidated and wish to avoid the same experience for themselves (Bartholomew and Horowitz1991).
In presenting to a mentor, some mentees will prefer to maintain distance with the mentor, while others will want reassurance. The mentor’s challenge is to facilitate those at the extreme ends of‘distance’and‘closeness’to a more balanced approach in their relationships while maintaining or developing a sense of personal and professional autonomy. The risk is that those seeking closeness will become overly dependent on their mentors and present as needy whereas as those wanting to remain‘detached’will not develop an easy professional rapport with their mentors (see Merz and Consedine2012; Merz et al.2009). The mentor is working with the mentee to strive for a secure attachment which is positively correlated with mea- sures of well-being in both cases (Merz and Consedine2012).
People who feel they cannot live up to other’s expectations or lack confidence in relationships may present as less optimistic about their future career and opportu- nities. Often these are people who are high maintenance, depend on others for providing them with feelings of their own self-worth rather than seeing their own intrinsic worth (Foster et al.2007). They try to please others as they fear rejection.
Mentors will require heightened sensitivity to these issues and also how they work in building relationships with these type of mentees (Mikulincer and Shaver2007).
Mentees who fear relationships often have low self-worth which goes unrecognised due to their emotional stoicism (Collins and Feeney 2000) and are less likely to trust others (Consedine and Magai2006). They draw on themselves for providing their emotional needs as they are suspicious of others; while reacting defensively to external displays of emotions (Laan et al.2012). Mentees like this find that“life is especially difficult”(Mikulincer and Shaver 2007, p. 43).
Attachment requires being open to revealing issues that weigh on them. In seeking out a mentor, the mentee may be confronted with loyalty to the other being traded for fairness for themselves. Implicitly mentees are weighing the value of loyalty to the group i.e. the employer or the profession relative to what they per- ceive as fairness and equity to themselves. In any situation, fairness suggests that all persons and groups be treated equally. And yet most people would concede that the world is unfair.
Mentoring often constitutes a sense of disloyalty for the mentee due to a conflict between competing concerns that the mentee might have in regard to the reason for seeking a mentor. It might also present a deeper conundrum of putting the interests of self ahead of those of others e.g. the employer, the profession, the supervisor, the team. Not only in this sense but also in others, the mentoring relationship mirrors the social and psychological nature of relationships that the mentee and mentor have independently of each other.
By contrast, loyalty suggests partiality which may be lead to preferential support for some although not all. If this is the case, people will start to trade loyalty off against fairness. The next transaction they consider is what is in their best interests, whether they are the recipients of special favours or not; and is considered a moral decision.
This consideration may take place for a specific situation or a generalised one. While most people value fairness, loyalty complicates this equation in the case of perceived obligations (Baron et al.2013), and affiliations (Rai and Fiske2011) where each lessons people’s preference for loyalty versus fairness (Shaw et al.2012).
Often confiding in a mentor leads to a relationship where power is delayed due to the mentor’s perceived expertise and experience. The mentor needs to be mindful of this, always working towards empowering and not discouraging the strength-building process.
At all times, a relationship with the mentor needs to be established by a warm rapport, trust and confidence. When mentees confide in mentors about sensitive issues concerning actions and relationships at work, often they feel they are betraying their supervisor’s loyalty and those of the organisation (Ingram and Bering2010). The notion of betrayal and divided loyalties needs to be addressed.
More generally, relationships forged by the mentee with the mentor and other colleagues are influenced by both generalised and relationship-specific perceptions of self and those reflected by others (Pierce and Lydon2001). Both the mentee and mentor will experience the highs and lows of their relationship that reflect the nature of their relationships with others. Each set of relationships that the mentee has, for example, influences their interpreting and responding towards their other
relationships in the wider social world (Bowlby1973). The mentoring relationship is a co-operative construction and reconstruction of meaning applied by the mentee, based on perceived reciprocation and exchange. Both the mentee and mentor need to be loyal to the relationship and to each other within the parameters of mentoring.
The focus in this chapter is the nature of the loyalty connection between the mentee and mentor and how this influences the learning, especially the learning to trust, and other outcomes for the mentee especially in terms of their ongoing relationships with others. Much of what is discussed in mentoring is associated with the quality of independent relationships with a focus on the key attribute of loyalty.
This assumption of loyalty is derived from an expectation that mentees, outside of mentoring, are committed to their supervisor, professional body, and others in exchange for benefits. If those benefits are not forthcoming, in the mind of the mentee, this throws the affected relationships into disarray and has ramifications for all their other relationships too. The mentee starts to question their loyalty ties, their trust in others and even their selfhood. This was a fundamental question for Hirschman (1970): what motivates people to become and sustain commitment in their relationships with their employer, management and others. This commitment or loyalty is both positive and negative and can lead to tension and contradictions which people need to unwind and explore.