Why blurring boundaries at work might be a good thing…
Musings on Heart Powered Human Leadership
We can get very obsessed with having clear boundaries — especially when we are at work. Clear boundaries regarding what is and isn’t acceptable to say and do given our job title. Having a clear distinction between the customer and supplier relationship or if they are a friend or a colleague. Ensuring we don’t look vulnerable or share TMI.
I agree that boundaries can be super-helpful on occasion. And I concede that what is confidential between a lawyer or doctor/therapist and their client/patient definitely benefits from a clear agreement.
However, I have found that in real life, it works better when the boundaries are a little more blurred. It works better when we can just be a human with another human, no matter the context. Because that is what we all are. Human.
You probably know that deeply vulnerable feeling you get when the person manning the front desk/call centre of an organisation from which you need real help, says a version of ‘computer says no’.
I believe what makes everyone tick in essence is the same. Fundamentally we all need real connection. The data agrees — the quality of our relationships it seems is the single most important criteria for happiness and a good life. And success.
According to the Grant Study by Harvard Medical School (which surveyed the same sample of men over the course of 75 years), financial success in life depends on the warmth of relationships more than on any other factor. Furthermore, the warmth of relationships is the key to health and happiness. To quote the Grant Study report:
‘The warmth of relationships throughout life have the greatest positive impact on life satisfaction. Happiness is love. Full stop. — Harvard Grant Study
Not only that, it is my personal and professional experience that…
the quality of your relationships will dictate the quality of your results.
In other words, the amount of trust, goodwill, honesty and connection in your relationships will massively impact your capacity to collaborate and create well, confidence to embrace the unknown and navigate any challenge with clarity — all of which are needed for any team’s successful performance. If you know someone has your back, you are also much more likely to have theirs. And vice versa.
So what does that kind of connection really take?
It takes keeping it real.
Let me take yesterday’s example with my dear… friend/client/mentee/colleague/wise woman/co-creator/fellow mother/daughter/wife — I’ll call her Emma.
We had an important business meeting this week to design a workshop, in our official ‘client/supplier relationship’ and we met at my Woman’s club. The conversation ranged between her father’s serious health diagnosis, world issues, current economic environment, the company’s latest challenges, my holiday lifestyle, our mutual friends and colleagues, her husband, my husband, our futures, the meaning of life — (and how far she has come in her understanding of it) and then eventually we got to the delegates, the program, the deliverables and the task at hand. We also addressed the sticky questions of fees, what would cost what and who would do what.
We cried, we laughed, we complained, we appreciated, we ate, we drank tea, we created. But mostly we just kept it real and connected and in that space we knocked it out of the park, taking about 25% of the time allocated.
This relationship is cherished by both of us because it is built on trust, goodwill, honesty — but mostly because we both have a deep respect for what is wanting to happen in each moment, guided by our own wisdom.
Or in other words, we flow. And in our flow we achieve peak performance.
This requires a willingness to have no conversation off the table between us and to be ok with a blurred boundary here or there (as if boundaries ever really were the real keeper of safety — my vote always goes to using common sense). You might think that this relationship of goodwill has taken many years, well it’s actually been just under two and we’ve been like this from the very beginning.
I think it is because we know something that the world of work also really needs to know and value much more.
That heart-led, human leadership at work is desperately needed now more than ever. We need to be real with each other and go beyond our ideas of hierarchy, status or rules that don’t make sense, we need to remember what is true about being human.
We need to have real connections and real relationships if we are to make together, a more beautiful world our hearts know is possible.
And that is the real result.
For leaders who want to lead with humanity, heart and wisdom.
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