Leadership is boundaries, babe 🐷
This weeks tasty song: Borderline by Madonna (3:58) - an amazing song all about boundaries (and heartbreak)
Here’s the bit you should read if you don’t want to read the rest of the email:
Boundaries are great! And the only thing that a wise, witty, charming leader can directly take action on when they want to impact their teams and organisation
We have a free workbook all about boundaries and how to do them good. Its called: The Wise Witty Charming Leaders supercool, superfun holiday workbook about boundaries! [Here is a link]
The point of the tasty brain thought is to give you 🫵 (a wise, witty, charming leader 😊 ) some thinking space to chew a leadership concept AND ALSO give you a wee tool to use in your practice.
This week it's all about ORGANISATIONAL BOUNDARIES 🎉
But what the eeeeeffffffff is an organisational boundary?
Simply put, it is all the things in your organisation that tell people what your organisation is and how it works. Think: strategy, processes, who has authority and how they get it, values, culture, what it feels like to work there…all that good stuff
Ok, but why talk to leaders about it?
Great question, glad you asked.
Short answer, organisational boundaries are the ways that leaders build safety, create the conditions to play, create and innovate, respond to changing markets and at its core achieve the company mission.
Legit. No lie. 💯
Here is a handy illustration (in the form of a peach) to show you what we mean:
Your organisation is a peach.
All your organisational boundaries are the skin of that peach.
At the boundary you can control what goes in and out of that peach to make it a healthy peach. The work you do on the organisational boundaries are the thing that promotes safety, play and being on mission.
You can’t just tell people to ‘BE SAFE!’ ‘PLAY NOW!’ and ‘DO MISSION’; you have to create the conditions that allow safety, play and task focus to exist.
How do you do that? You take actions on things that exist like:
🥽 Task clarity
What is the company working on, what are teams working on and how does it all relate?
Think - Vision, mission, strategy, goals, metrics.
Articulate, regularly communicate and seek feedback on what it is you’re working toward
👐 Containment & holding
What is the emotional experience of work and what does that tell us about our organisation’s effectiveness?
Think - Tolerating projections, processing feelings for effective action
Use reflective practice to understand the emotional experience of working and use that as data to improve the organisation
🧠 Organisation in the mind
How people experience the organisation?
Think - culture, rituals, and what people think of when they think of working in your organisation
Identify repeatable rituals that allow the organisation as a whole or your team to come together to focus on task in a way that’s authentic to you and your teams
🚦Management
How does work happen?
Think - Working systems, processes and execution
Identify processes and opportunities to develop, document and iterate on the processes that give people the tools to work. The key here is the Goldilocks balance between not too much and not enough.
👑 Authority
How do decisions get made and actions get taken?
Think - Hierarchy, role clarity, responsibility, empowerment & tacit authority
Ask yourself the following question: do people in my team take appropriate action without seeking permission? Reward and recognise appropriate actions without seeking permission.
So, that was our tasty treat for your brain, hope you found it appealing, BUT it would not be a TBT if we did not give you a useful ‘thing’ to take into your day to day.
SO WE MADE TO A WORKBOOK! IT’S USEFUL, AND WEIRD, AND FREE!
It is called:
The Wise Witty Charming Leaders supercool, superfun holiday workbook about boundaries! [Here is a link]
Great name, yeah?
It's got short, fun, weird, awesome exercises to help you think about boundaries in your organisation and how you lead (and your fellow wise, witty, charming leader friends lead).
Happy boundaries, you wise witty charming leader!
If you like this TBT…
This book says awesome cool stuff about boundaries in organisations and is written by a giant of the systems psychodynamic field (who is also a great human)
Pass it on to someone you think is cool and stylish point them here 👉 playgrounded.co
Check out our podcast - we rant in talky words! And if you use the youtube option you get to see our dogs 👂 Spotify or + 👂👀 Youtube
Have a look at our events page for webinars and other ‘things’ that are happening 🎉 Events
Reach out and engage us to work with your organisation! We do interesting, engaging, useful things that help people do work good-er together 👋 Contact us
