Boundaries for Leaders (Enhanced Edition): Results, Relationships, and Being Ridiculously In Charge

by Henry Cloud

People’s brains, hearts, minds, and souls are constructed to perform under certain conditions and dynamics, and when these are present, they produce and thrive.

When these conditions are violated or not provided, people cannot and do not bring visions and plans to fruition.

A boundary is a structure that determines what will exist and what will not.

As I was working with CEOs and management teams, I began introducing those principles into how they led their people as well. The results were always profound for their business results, as no matter what role they played, whether a CEO, a VP, or a team or department leader, the leader sets the boundaries that will determine whether the vision and the people thrive or fail. The leaders determine what will exist and what will not.

as a leader, you always get what you create and what you allow.

The real problem is getting the people to do what it takes to make the plan work. That is where you win or lose. It’s always about the people.”

as leaders, they also have to be good at something else: getting people to do what it takes to make the plan work.

It is about leading the “right people,” empowering them to find and do the “right things” in the “right ways” at the “right times.” That is what will bring a plan to real results.

the time and energy that you do invest in people issues should produce better results and create teams and a culture where momentum and energy thrive.

The issue was that Chris and his team had failed to establish the boundaries that would positively drive organizational health and the boundaries that would immunize them against sickness.

When leaders lead in ways that people’s brains can follow, good results follow as well. No matter where you see yourself in this story, I want you to remember that when leaders begin to behave differently, most of the issues that hamper results and harm company culture are truly fixable. You can get the results you desire, if you lead in ways that people can actually follow.

What are boundaries? They are made up of two essential things: what you create and what you allow. A “boundary” is a property line. It defines where your property begins and ends.

In the end, as a leader, you are always going to get a combination of two things: what you create and what you allow.

It is a central principle of boundaries: ownership. Ultimately, leaders own it. They are the ones who define and create the boundaries that drive the behavior that forms the identity of teams and culture and sets the standards of performance. Leaders define the direction and are responsible for making it happen. And they are responsible for the accountability systems that ensure that it does happen. It always comes back to leadership and the boundaries they allow to exist on their property.

Leaders define the boundaries, and successful leaders define them well in several key areas: The vision, the focus, the attention, and the activities that create forward movement are defined by leaders. The emotional climate of the organization and its culture is created and sustained by leaders. The unity and connectedness of the organization and the teams are built or fragmented by leaders. The thinking and beliefs of the organization are sown and grown by leaders. The amount and kinds of control and empowerment that people have are given and required by leaders. The performance and development of their teams and direct reports are stewarded by leaders. The leadership of oneself, which entails establishing one’s own boundaries and stewardship of the organization, is required by leaders.

Leaders are a positive force for good and a negative force against bad. You know what they are for and what they are against.

Positively, they establish intentional structures, values, norms, practices, and disciplines that build what they desire.

Negatively, they set limits on confusion and distraction. They prohibit practices and behaviors that sow the seeds of a negative emotional climate in any way, realizing that toxic behavior and emotions impede high performance. They disallow silos, compartmentalization, individual agendas, fragmentation, isolation, or divisions among their people.

And they make sure that nothing exists in their culture that works against the vision and the drive for results, or against people being developed into all that they can be.

we crave focused attention, positivity, unity, control, and other factors in order to excel. And

if you are trying to lead people and do not establish effective boundaries, your people will not be able to do what you need and want them to do because their brains can’t work that way.

brain relies on three essential processes: Attention: the ability to focus on relevant stimuli, and block out what is not relevant: “Pay attention!” Inhibition: the ability to “not do” certain actions that could be distracting, irrelevant, or even destructive: “Don’t do that!” Working Memory: the ability to retain and access relevant information for reasoning, decision making, and taking future actions: “Remember and build on relevant information.” In other words, our brains need to be able to: (a) focus on something specific, (b) not get off track by focusing on or being assaulted by other data inputs or toxicity, and (c) continuously be aware of relevant information at all times.

Brain researchers say that “attention” is like a magic key that unlocks higher-order brain circuitry. When we pay attention to something, repeatedly, the necessary wiring is formed that makes it possible for us to learn new things, take the right actions, and achieve our goals.

Leadership must set the stage and ensure that: a. What is important is always being attended to—attention. b. What is not important or destructive is not allowed in—inhibited. c. There is ongoing awareness of all the relevant pieces required to fulfill the task—working memory.

If you have ever seen a child with ADD, you have seen what happens when energy is exerted in the absence of focus and goal-oriented behavior.

The remedy for organizational ADD is found in the way that great leaders think and lead in everything they do.

lot of research has been done on the oft-admired “talent” called multitasking. Guess what? The research says that when we multitask, our brains run in a hampered state. Basically, multitasking reduces an astronaut’s brain to that of a confused hamster. Try listening to two people at the same time, literally, and you will see what I mean. The brain craves “attention” in order to work.

Goal Selection: They can choose goals based on priority, relevance, experience, and knowledge of current realities while also anticipating consequences and outcomes. Key Words: Choose Goals and Anticipate Outcomes.

Planning and Organization: They can generate steps and a sequence of linear behaviors that will get them there, knowing what will be needed along the way, including resources, and create a strategy to pull it off. Key Words: Generate Behaviors and Strategy.

Initiation and Persistence: they can begin and maintain goal-directed behavior despite intrusions, distractions, or changes in the demands of the task at...

Flexibility: They can exercise the ability to be adaptable, think strategically, and solve problems by creating solutions as things change around them, shifting attention and p...

Execution and Goal Attainment: They exhibit the ability to execute the plan within the limits of time and other constra...

Self-regulation: They use self-observation to monitor performance, self-judgment to evaluate performance, and self-regulation to change in order to reach the...

As we look further into the foundational role that leaders play in establishing boundaries, ask yourself these questions: For Yourself: What do I do now to make sure that I am attending to what is most important? Have I defined it? What do I do to inhibit myself from getting pulled into what is not important? How do I keep what is important in front of me all the time? How do I create a “current river” of information, initiatives, and steps that keep what is important moving? For Your Team: What structures and processes do I have in place to make sure my team is attending to what is crucial? Do they know what that is and are they aligned on it? In what areas is the team not inhibiting what should be inhibited, and what am I doing to eliminate toxins or distraction? How do I make sure the team is creating a flow of working memory with what they are trying to drive forward? For Your Direct Reports: If I interviewed my direct reports, would they be able to say that I help them to attend to the things that drive the results that we have agreed on? Do I help keep distractions, conflicting goals, or destructive elements from interfering with their attention? Do I enhance or inhibit their ability to stay current on the important working memory? For the Vision and Strategy: Is my vision and strategy clear and communicated in a way that allows everyone in my organization to attend, inhibit, and move toward it? Do they know what it is? Do they know what it isn’t? Can they take steps...

removing oneself from the task and letting attention have a rest. And even here, leaders can use boundaries to make creativity and innovation more likely and more routine through creating those spaces in a culture. Consider, for example, a company like Google, whose offices are filled with Ping-Pong tables and other intentional elements that encourage such moments. Diversions like these, which are planned and purposeful, can actually increase executive functions and creativity. As I told my friend, innovation and creation are an expression of executive functioning itself.

People change their behavior and thinking not because they are “told to be different” but when the conditions are present that require and empower them to figure out what to do and to act on a plan. Try giving teenagers a lot of advice and see if it changes behavior. They probably don’t look at you and say, “Gee, Dad, or Mom, thanks for explaining reality to me. Now I will run out and do it.” But if you provide context—by listening, sharing information and positive examples, setting expectations and consequences, creating a healthy emotional climate, and challenging them to do their best—they will figure it out and implement it.

in organizations where no one is driving attention, inhibition, and remembering, noncontributors can safely hide, drift along, and sometimes stay for years and add virtually nothing to the mission. They become a drag on the organization.

In the same way that the brain cannot work without the executive functions in place, it also cannot work if it is drowning in stress hormones. The cold, hard scientific facts are that your people think better when they are not stressed, afraid, or depressed. Yet many leaders do not put a lot of thought into creating a positive emotional climate for their people, and sometimes they create the exact opposite. As a result of their leadership, they create stress, fear, and sometimes even depression.

In the lower brain, there is not a lot of what we call “thinking” going on. It is only about “fight or flight.” Mainly, two thoughts come out of that brain: “kill him” (fight) or “run for your life” (flight). More “action-oriented” than “thinking-oriented,” the lower brain region is where instinctive behavior rules—the so-called fight-or-flight response. And when the options for “fight or flight” aren’t available, it’s as if a giant “freeze” button gets hit. We just shut down entirely. We get paralyzed. Fight, flight, or freeze are the only options when there is a high degree of stress, because the higher brain shuts down.

In the fight-or-flight syndrome, a collection of stress hormones are released into the brain, which essentially shuts down all of the functions that make us smart and, instead, activates another part of the brain designed just to respond to danger. Its mission is to stop thinking, and act.

people don’t leave jobs—they leave bosses.

tendency to pursue the goals that they are pursuing. So, as a leader, it really pays to make sure you establish a positive emotional connection to your people so that they are viewing you in a positive light.

good or bad feelings and “infect” others’ well-being. One very successful CEO I know has put this research into a simple, powerful policy at his company: If any leader wakes up in a bad mood, he instructs them to “stay home. I don’t want you bringing that into the office.” As with the flu, it’s best not to infect the whole office with your bad mood.

When you let your people and teams flounder without clear expectations, you are not helping their emotional brains. That is why personal relationships where one person is “codependent” and does not set limits on bad behavior are so stressful, so full of chaos, or so destructive.

Research shows that one of the key ingredients of successful group behavior is having “clear expectations” for the group.