Boundaries
When I started writing about assertive living — a philosophy I call “martialism,” which isn’t militaristic despite what the name implies — I stressed heavily the importance of setting and maintaining boundaries. Boundaries establish your expectations of other people. It’s a question of mutual respect: If you establish and then defend certain guidelines for how others conduct themselves when interacting with you, everyone benefits. You are, in effect, writing a rulebook for every encounter you have with another person.
All business relationships are about power. The most audacious and successful people in business are those who assume and take power — those who seek forgiveness rather than permission. A great deal of power is created and acquired simply by acting as if you have authority.
The opposite is also true. Very early in my working career, when I was fresh out of college, I made an offhand comment to a coworker that was misunderstood. A third party, someone I liked who was in a position of authority (I was probably the lowest person on that particular totem pole) was told an inaccurate version of what I said. He then phoned me and cursed me out before hanging up in my ear.
As a young man I was aghast at having so angered this person unintentionally. My gut reaction was to grovel — to bow and scrape and beg for forgiveness. Three years later, when I worked for my father’s business, his domineering attitude (reinforced by years of paternal interaction) led him to speak to me in ways that would get you sued if you treated a non-family employee that way. Some time after that, when I worked for a grumpy fellow who was the sole proprietor of his publications company, I realized at some point that precisely the same interaction my father and I had in the workplace was developing at my current job. My employer had taken to browbeating me and speaking to me as an angry father would to a wayward child.
It was at that time that I started developing my take on the philosophy of assertive living. I was also training in the martial arts much more earnestly than I had in years previously. As my competence grew in that field, my confidence grew. As I became a more confident person, I stopped accepting abusive or condescending behavior from coworkers and friends. The change wrought was significant.
I worked next to a woman whom I’ll always remember for her calm, confident demeanor. I forget her name; I just remember that she was good at her job and she was always polite to me. At some point, our supervisor told me I had become “so aggressive lately.” I mentioned this to my cubicle neighbor and she laughed. She told me that I wasn’t “aggressive,” as she saw it; it was just that I had become much more confident, that I wasn’t taking other people’s grief, and that some people who had previously treated me poorly were now uncomfortable with that.
It was a threshold moment.
To that point I was unaware of a change. What it comprised, though, was fundamentally the setting of boundaries. When you establish new boundaries with someone accustomed to mistreating you, they will be uncomfortable with the change. They may react badly. You may lose friends. You just might get fired. It boils down to the behavior you are willing to accept in your daily life. If you don’t want to live your life on your knees you’ve got to be willing to stand up to other people, whether coworker or boss, neighbor or friend, lover or relative.
Many years after that first phone call, another coworker of mine (at a completely different job) was having a bad day. He called me about something he needed and, because he was frustrated, he raised his voice to me. Instead of groveling or trying to placate him, I simply raised my voice back, informing him that if he was going to call me up and bark at me, we were going to have a problem.
The interaction worked out very well. Neither one of us was having a particularly good morning, but we established a mutual understanding: Bark, and I’ll bark back. Ask, and I’ll do whatever is required to get you what you need.
The fellow in question had always shown my department a great deal of consideration. That was a factor, too, in that I do not hold grudges when a coworker vents in my direction. We’ve all done it, some worse than others. I try to understand what each of my coworkers’ drivers are — what motivates them — and respond to their needs accordingly. The function I’ve performed at every job I’ve held (technical publications) is a service function.
If someone acts in a way that demonstrates power over you (or a willingness to exert power over you), such as by yelling at you or otherwise crossing your boundaries, he’s telling you something about his personality. This is not good or bad; it’s just a datum, like hair color or whether your coworker likes Mexican food. The fact is, before a rational person will lose his temper with you, he’s got to feel relatively confident in who he is and what he does, or he’d swallow his anger out of fear.
Someone like that won’t respect you for backing down, apologizing, or groveling. Someone like that respects strength (as do most human beings to varying degrees). More importantly, you can’t afford to establish a subordinate relationship with your fellow employees. I don’t mean “subordinate” in the sense that someone is higher than you on an organization chart. I mean you can’t allow someone to treat you as if you are inferior, and thus you cannot allow someone to speak to you with a lack of professional respect.
When I want something from someone at work, I ask respectfully, mindful of the negotiation that may take place regarding resources and “bandwidth” (one of those business buzzwords I hate but which I find myself using). When someone wants something from me, I expect the same consideration. You don’t have to like me; you don’t have to want to help me; you do, however, have to be polite. I will do the same for you.
Those are the boundaries, which must be established, maintained, and enforced. Erect these battlements now and you will preempt many skirmishes later.