Boundaries for Leaders: Results, Relationships, and Being Ridiculously in Charge

by Henry Cloud

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.”

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. And the work of building a great team should feel personally rewarding instead of draining. Put

“We can’t do this project ‘all of a sudden’ . . . and also do what we were already working on at the same time. And you have to go through us to get to our people. It’s killing us.”

Whatever culture he got, he was either building it or allowing it. He was “ridiculously in charge,” that is, “totally in charge,” and at that moment, he owned it. It was his. It was truly up to him. As a leader, he was going to get what he built, or what he allowed.

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.

You are “ridiculously in charge” of the vision, the people you invite in, what the goals and purposes are going to be, what behavior is going to be allowed and what isn’t. You build and allow the culture. It is all yours. You set the agenda, and you make the rules.

DRI, the directly responsible individual?’”

The Decision Maker

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

defined

The emotional climate of the organization and its culture

created and sustained

The unity and connectedness of the organization

built or fragmented

The thinking and beliefs of the organization

sown and grown

The amount and kinds of control and empowerment

given and required

The performance and development of their teams and direct reports

stewarded

The leadership of oneself, which entails establishing one’s own boundaries and stewardship of the organization,

required

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.

You don’t want a “crappy mix” of your vision plus bits and scraps from others that don’t quite fit. In fact, you don’t have to settle for a random mix at all.

he was as proud of what Apple “didn’t make” as he was of what they did make.

go from stuck and frustrated to focused and determined.

executive functions are needed to achieve any kind of purposeful activity—such as reaching a goal, driving a vision forward, conquering an objective.

“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.

executive functions serve as the leader’s GPS.

there are tangible benefits when people are clear about where they are headed, energized to go there, and given the freedom to execute their gifts in that direction.

“no excuses, no blame, and no explanations.”

a GPS that is always taking readings, always asking, “Are we paying attention to what is important, inhibiting the things that will not help or will hurt us, and keeping current?”

many organizations seem to be suffering from the equivalent of attention deficit disorder (ADD).

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?

Clarity leads to attention and attention leads to results.

The leader’s job is to lead in ways such that people can do what they are best at doing: using their gifts and their brains to get great results.

Because a leader who tells everyone what is ‘right’ to focus on can really be wrong about what that is. He might not know what he doesn’t know. So I have a real problem with any kind of ‘big-brain-top-down’ focus. In fact, I hear a lot of talk about ‘focus,’ and I think that can keep people from innovating and seeing things they might not have seen before,” he said.

Leadership is not dog training. It is the creation of the kinds of conditions in which people can bring their brains, gifts, hearts, talents, and energy to the realization of a vision.

Toxic, confusing distractions are different from the necessary “getting away from it all” distractions that are often required to reach “aha” moments—the

Those are good kinds of distraction, removing oneself from the task and letting attention have a rest.

You must create the environment, experiences, and opportunities where your best people can attend in order to innovate and think for themselves. As a result, their brains will do what they are designed to do: create new ways of doing things, and totally new things to do.

it is the power of people being engaged.

Second, the power is a force for driving results.

Third, the power is felt in constant adaptation and learning

Fourth, the power is felt in the growth of the people.

Fifth, the power is felt in the forward motion that is created.

Finally, the customers and the market feel the power.

[the boss] creates so much work and he gets so negative when it is not done on his impossible timelines. I get anxious and afraid. I am losing sleep. . . . I obsess about it in the middle of the night, and work weekends and just don’t know how long I can keep this up.