How to Shine at Work

The best way to hold people accountable for their behavior is through setting and enforcing boundaries. Boundaries are how you allow other people to treat you, and standards are how you behave toward others. Before you create your new, politically correct, strong boundaries around the boss’s behavior toward you, there are a few ground rules:

1. You can’t extend a strong boundary (e.g., “you may not yell at me”) if your personal standard on that topic isn’t equally as strong (e.g., you can’t go around yelling at others).

2. Boundaries are not walls or weapons, but rather a filter to protect you.

3. Setting and enforcing boundaries requires even more courage.

The process of setting boundaries is simple: You decide what behaviors are unacceptable to you. Enforcing boundaries is more difficult. You need to decide what you will do if someone violates your boundary. You have several options for dealing with those who have crossed over the line: inform them that they have done so, make a request that they stop, instruct them to stop, or leave. Here are a few examples that Ron chose as boundaries for his boss:

• Inform. “Are you aware that you are raising your voice?”

• Request. “I understand the urgency here, and I can hear that you are upset. We decided in our meeting that I’d ask you to rephrase when I felt you were being disrespectful; can you please reframe your concern so that we can continue the conversation?”

• Instruct. “We have discussed that I do not allow people to yell at me, and I have asked you to stop. Let’s either change the tone of this conversation or continue it later.”

• Leave. “I’ve asked several times, and the tone of this meeting isn’t changing. I can tell that this is not a good time; I will check back with you later today (or tomorrow), and we will finish up.”

The secret to making this work is to enforce your boundaries before you become angry. Strong boundaries and even stronger standards for your own behavior will allow you to teach the boss that arguments, backstabbing, interruptions, blame, and finger-pointing are not OK with you.

Setting boundaries is an individual thing. No one else needs to know that you’ve created them until you enforce them; they are for your protection, your peace of mind. It is wise to create some form of documentation of the boundaries that you have set, when you have enforced them, and with whom. In the event that your boss refuses, directly or indirectly, to respect the boundaries that you have created, you will have a record of your attempts to rectify the situation before moving on to your HR representative.