Johanna Rothman’s Create an Adaptable Life Newsletter for June 2024.
We use boundaries to choose who’s in or out of our families, our work, and our lives. Those choices help us decide our responsibilities to the people inside and outside our boundaries. However, those boundaries are not particularly static. The boundaries evolve as we move through life, changing how and where we work, and where we live. Our responsibilities to the various people change. I’m not sure we are that good at assessing how our responsibilities change, especially as our boundaries change.
Family Boundaries
While we might think we have firm family boundaries, we don’t. For example, while we don’t choose our parents or other relatives, we do choose our partners. Those partners help us create a new family while redrawing the boundaries of our original family.
Partners aren’t the only family by choice. Many people adopt children, formally or informally. That means the family boundaries change as the family evolves over time.
When are people in or out of these boundaries and what are our responsibilities to them? As parents, we owe our children a minimum of safety, plus food, clothing, and shelter. In addition, the more we create familial respect, the easier it is (often, not always) to all get along. We don’t have the same responsibilities to people outside our family.
However, family boundaries and responsibilities differ from work and societal boundaries.
Work Boundaries
While we “owe” our employers our best efforts, our various responsibilities might depend on our team or workgroup. Most of us work with our named primary team or workgroup. But we also cooperate across the organization, formally and informally. And managers need to be part of a collaborative cohort that spans the organization.
At work, we tend to collaborate based on shared objectives. But the boundaries might not show those objectives. Org charts might hint at boundaries, but rarely do they explain shared objectives. In my experience, org charts represent the title-based power, but not the teams themselves. The teams often create their own boundaries.
Since physical location rarely defines a boundary, I prefer to think about collaboration as a way to draw boundaries. Do I want to collaborate more with some people? They’re inside my boundaries. Collaborate less with others? Definitely outside.
That’s why I think it’s useful to consider respect at work. How respectful can I be to people who might not share my objectives?
Sometimes, societal boundaries do not create respect because we don’t share the same objectives.
Societal Boundaries Take Many Forms
Societal boundaries matter for our community governance agreements. They can be as local as your town’s zoning board and local taxes. The middle boundaries are districts and states. The biggest boundary is country boundaries, and I’m not touching that topic.
Town boundaries are public and specific boundaries. That allows people to choose where to live. With any luck, the people in town have shared objectives about how to treat each other. Not just with respect, but with what to fund and not fund.
If I go up a level, that’s the district, which in the US, corresponds to congressional maps. I reviewed the congressional maps from Massachusetts. While some of the Massachusetts districts look “reasonable,” there’s at least one that stands out as odd. That’s the 7th district. That district clusters around Boston and then extends like a peninsula down to Randolph. I guarantee that the people clustered around Boston have very different concerns and objectives than the people clustered around Randolph. Yet, they share the same representative.
Somehow, we have to draw boundaries for our political system. That’s how Congress works. And the state maps designate each state’s boundaries.
Many of us can choose to live where we want, whenever we want. But some people cannot easily move. That’s why we have responsibilities to our local neighbors, our districts, and our states to treat everyone with respect. We don’t have to agree on the various problems and solutions. However we can choose how to change the things we don’t agree with as long as we treat people with respect.
We can evolve our boundaries and responsibilities, if we start with respect.
Start with Respect
Boundaries often start with shared objectives. And while family boundaries might evolve slowly, sometimes work and societal boundaries evolve very fast.
In all cases, the People In Charge decide a lot. Parents decide for the family. Managers decide for work. And our elected officials decide at their various levels how society will work.
Whether people are “in” or “out,” the one thing we can do is start with respect. We can draw lines for our responsibilities, as long as we start with respect.
Announcements…
I recently read a book I can recommend: Stage 5: A Cancer Journey. David Chill chronicles his decade-long journey with lung cancer to survival. His journey has all the hallmarks of an adaptable life: a risk-based approach to gathering more data, learning to experiment, being open to possibilities. I enjoyed this book and recommend it. (That link is a universal book link with my affiliate code embedded in it. I use universal book links because people buy books everywhere.)
Read More of Create an Adaptable Life
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Here are other links you might find useful:
- Create an Adaptable Life Blog to see the weekly question of the week, not just the newsletter.
- My Books
- My Workshops
- Managing Product Development Blog
- Johanna’s Fiction
Till next time,
Johanna
© 2024 Johanna Rothman