It was said by John Madden that “A team should never practice on a field that is not lined. Your players have to become aware of the field’s boundaries.”
The establishing of boundaries and healthy, effective and helpful boundaries too, are not only essential in business but also in life. Poor boundaries or even a total lack of boundaries can lead to inadequate and poor performance at work and in our personal lives. And the more people that we work with, the greater the likelihood of coming across people who will stretch, push and test our boundaries or limits.
Laws, regulations and rules are established as frameworks for people to operate effectively within, yet people constantly transgress those, for their own benefit and often to the detriment of the business. Businesses even go the the extent of defining their pedigree or drawing a line in the sand by establishing company values that aim to create their own paradigm of business and customer excellence within certain limits and boundaries.
Boundaries are there to protect ourselves and others. We need to be able to protect ourselves and at the same time establish exactly how we want people to treat us.
So what types of boundaries do people have, if any?
Rigid Boundaries
Well there are people who have very rigid boundaries, but these can lead to inflexibility, and a rigid and dogmatic approach to others. Imagine the manager who is so rigid in his viewpoint, who refuses to see things in a different way or refuses to take advice and will only do it their way. Perhaps they are just risk-averse or simply controlling personalities, but the end result is an unwillingness to even acknowledge other potential viewpoints. This person is often leading a team of one – themselves, and the business in consequence suffers because of their intransigence.
Porous Boundaries
Then there are people with what can only be called ‘highly-porous’ boundaries, who may claim to have limits but these move from minute to minute and hour to hour, their boundaries appear and then just as suddenly disappear. This can often be seen as showing ‘game playing’ and ‘highly manipulative’ behaviours and other people around just end up not knowing where they stand. But then there are those people who really do try to set boundaries but who simply struggle to maintain them and give in easily to others who push and cajole them. Theirs is a life-long struggle – they see the benefits of boundaries but just can’t manage to develop and maintain them effectively.
This may be demonstrated in the ‘soft-touch’ manager who, depending on the personality of the other person, either cave in to their demands or supress less- demanding people.
People with Porous Boundaries are often those with an internal conflict who struggle to hold it all together and usually create emotions such as anxiety and anger in themselves and others. Once again. you just don’t know where either of you stand.
No Boundaries
Then there are people who have no boundaries at all. Some may see a lack of boundaries as a positive attribute – they claim to be their ‘own person’, someone who is willing to ‘try anything’ once, who perhaps feel that their abilities are limitless and that they can only truly shine if they do what they want, when they want and at any cost.
And often there are those people who have no boundaries at all because they have never experienced them throughout their lives and probably they have never been taught the importance of boundaries. At one extreme, these people can manifest themselves as addictive personalities, who use substance-abuse, sex, alcohol or excessive eating to deal with the emotions of the lack of boundaries, or they are just controlling personalities, desperately trying to hold something together, but they know not what. And at the other end there are people who just struggle within the usual constructs of personal and work relationships throughout their lives.
Strong & Flexible Boundaries
But then there are the people who have learned, from their parents, from friends, colleagues, business heroes and from life’s experiences, to create and have strong but flexible boundaries These people not only daily demonstrate effective and resourceful behaviours and performance but they also readily admit to having to work on their boundaries on a daily basis.
The extremes of anything anywhere are always the worst of situations and a complete lack of or rigidity of boundaries, creates tension and negative interactions with themsleves and others.
When it all goes Wrong.
The behaviours of toxic personalities at work often manifest themselves as trangressors of, or poor maintainers of personal boundaries and research has shown how much this can affect businesses – not only from a morale and communication perspective, but also from a employee attrition and revenue performance perspective.
The narcissistic-type, sociopathic type, borderline-personality type of employee that we have all encountered and continue to see in businesses will probably not be reading this sort of article, as the amount of insight they have into their behaviour is limited. And not until something goes very wrong within the organisation, where their behaviour creates a problem such as a massive loss of investment due to uncontrolled risk-taking, or simply because all their colleagues have grouped together and filed an official complaint, is something done about it. Then these people need to be confronted with their behaviours and confronted with the choice of either changing or not and with the obvious consequences. And we all know, at the end of the day, that prevention would be a far better option.
So, is there any hope for these people who continually push the limits or have no limits at all? And the answer of course is yes. No matter what age we are, what seniority we have or what life experiences we’ve had – our behaviours can be changed and people can learn the benefits of boundaries and how to develop and grow them.
Learning how to set boundaries is a necessary step and learning first how to respect ourselves is critical, before we begin to respect and work effectively with the boundaries of others. Developing and growing your own effective boundaries helps others to know and understand your limits and how to work on their own.
The 7 Keys to Establishing Boundary Limits
- Develop a Metaphor for your boundaries, such as a castle or a field, something that you identify with and works for you.
- Visualise the Boundary Metaphor on a regular basis; see it, hear it, feel it, smell it. Engage all your senses to make it real
- Work on a daily basis to maintain, grow, and repair your boundaries – let people know, politely, your limits.
- When boundaries are tested, acknowledge this to others and yourself
- It’s a Life-long job maintaining your boundaries but the benefits are LIMITLESS
- Other people’s Boundaries are not your responsibility
- Setting an Example gives others the opportunity to model new behaviours and develop their own effective boundaries.
Working with a coach who has experience of the issues of boundaries and the negative behaviours that this can lead to in business, can help to define and develop new deep and lasting change. An independent person who can challenge the ‘status-quo’ and get people to see the effects that their behaviours are having on themselves, their relationships and the business can lead to a much more productive and resourceful business environment and increased performance.