Healthy Boundaries
Today, I came across something a friend had posted:
Boundaries are a funny thing and so many of us have negative views of boundaries when WE set them. Many of these same people are completely understanding and 100% okay with other people having boundaries, yet set unreasonable and unhealthy expectations around their own boundaries. The wonderful thing is, boundaries can be really helpful for the other person, too. Boundaries help others understand how to interact and engage. Boundaries help others know what’s appropriate and what to expect.
I often encounter boundary issues in my line of work. I work in an organization called Customer Success Management. Customer Success Management is, at its core, an organization within a company whose charter is to manage the success of the customer. Sounds clear enough, but it is actually fraught with boundary issues and deep misunderstanding of what the “managing” part means. You’ll notice that the organization is not called “Customer Success Delivery” or “Customer Success Doing” or “Customer Success No Matter What it Takes”, yet this is often what I see.
The Customer Success Managers, or CSMs, I work with may find themselves maxed out: incapable of serving every single customer they have. More often than not, this is the direct result of insufficient boundary-setting, confusion about what boundaries exist or a lack of expectation setting around where the boundaries are. CSMs who struggle most with this may have trouble setting boundaries in their personal lives as well.
I can usually tell when I’m working with someone who struggles with setting boundaries in general. When I describe how to set and maintain boundaries with customers and why this is not only important for them, but good for the customer, for our company and for the health of the business relationship, they usually stare, wide-eyed, back at me. They are clearly terrified of trying to take this step to set even the smallest boundary. They often have fear-based questions like “What if they get angry?”, “What if they say, ‘No’?”, “I’m already struggling to keep them happy, won’t setting boundaries make them more upset?!”
The thing is, most reasonable people accept boundaries, or even appreciate them — especially when they are consistent, but not ultra-rigid. That’s the other wonderful aspect of healthy boundaries: they are considerate of the fact that life and circumstances are ever changing and because of that, the definition of the boundary may change as well. This is where expectation setting and communication comes in, but I’ll get to that in a moment.
Healthy boundaries are clear, consistent and flexible to modification as the circumstances that require them change. In the CSM realm, the most consistent boundary that is missing or too porous is when a CSM gets in and does work on behalf of the customer or on behalf of another department in the company.
Let’s give a specific example: imagine you work at a company that just purchased software to help send email newsletters. As your CSM, my job is to empower you; to provide you with the resources and support you need to be successful with your new technology. Now let’s imagine that you need to make several email newsletter templates and you have a question about how to do it, so you ask your CSM for help. In this situation, the CSM should connect with you to understand what you need help with, provide you with resources and guidance, support you and provide feedback, if needed, but basically teach you to fish, so to speak.
In this example, the CSM has honored the boundaries of their role and has provided their customer with what they need to be successful, not only today, but LONG TERM as well.
Often, though, I will encounter a CSM who gets in and builds the email templates for the customer. Perhaps the customer asked for this, “I don’t have time to learn this, can you just do it for me?” or perhaps the CSM heard, “I need you to do this for me,” when all the customer said was, “I need help.” The thing is, it doesn’t actually matter. The CSM didn’t express or honor the boundaries of their role.
That’s not a big deal though, right? You may be thinking this very thought at this moment. But imagine what this simple exchange does to this soft or unestablished boundary: now I’ve set an expectation with my customer that I will build their email templates. I’ve set an expectation with my customer that when they need help, they can simply ask and I’ll just do the thing they want help with.
Wow! That’s great for the customer, right? Well, maybe at first. But now look even farther in the future: their business is growing and they are sending more and more email newsletters… but no one on the team knows how to make a template because they never learned. Now they need me to build every template and they get frustrated because I’m too busy to do it! But I set the expectation that I would, and I never corrected that expectation.
Now imagine I have 10 or 20 customers that I’m responsible for… see how this becomes a nightmare? By setting the expectation with the customer that I’m ready, willing and able to build templates for them, they never learn how to build templates, never understand how time consuming or challenging it actually is to build templates (I make it look so easy!), and don’t respect that I shouldn’t be building templates for them in the first place — “You already did it once, can’t you just do it again?”
This is why establishing, communicating and consistently reinforcing your boundaries early and often is so critical. It ensures you always have a clear understanding of how to work together. In this scenario, it also ensures that the customer has the knowledge and resources they need to be self-sufficient — which is a good thing!
But what happens to this poor CSM who is stuck building templates for customers? Well, this is where resetting expectations comes into play.
If there’s anything that scares people more than having to set a boundary, it’s having to reset expectations. Setting a boundary from the start is always easier than trying to set a boundary once an expectation is already formed. But it’s not that much easier. The key to setting a boundary after a habit has already formed is to clearly communicate, reset expectations, and be consistent going forward.
In this scenario, I would coach this CSM to provide the customer with resources they need to understand how to build a template themselves. Since they’ve relied on the crutch of the CSM for a while, the CSM may need to supply some extra support and extra resources to ensure the customer gets what they need to feel confident. The key here is to STOP BUILDING TEMPLATES for the customer and clearly communicate with them to ensure they can be successful with this change. Communicate why this change is happening. Communicate what the new expectation is and how the customer should expect to work with the CSM going forward. Provide the support to make the change and stay consistent.
Aside from clear communication, the most critical thing to do after resetting an expectation is to be consistent about how you act going forward. One more story…
When I was in my 20s, I lived in an apartment that neighbored a young family. They were two parents with twin 3-year-old girls and we could hear quite a bit through the walls. The girls would shriek and run and scream and cry and play and stomp and it was all very loud. We could hear the parents’ pleas for quiet, urging the girls to stop their antics, but the noise would continue. Eventually, we could hear the parents give up. The girls had won, yet again.
Why am I telling you this? The most critical thing those girls learned is that eventually their parents would give in to what they wanted. They learned that they didn’t actually have to do what their parents said, they simply had to outlast them. This parenting style was inconsistent. The girls learned that threats were empty, there were no consequences and if they simply kept on with their insanity, the parents would do what they wanted, not the other way around.
This is nature. We learn it from when we are literal infants: cry enough and you’ll be comforted, fed, changed, etc. Animals know it too! Inconsistent potty training with a pet will always lead to “accidents” in the house. Am I really comparing customers to babies and puppies? Yes. Yes I am.
At the end of the day, it’s our consistency (combined with clear communication) that matters most. Through our behavior, we can shape the behavior of others, for better or worse.
One final word on boundaries and expectations: lead with kindness. Kindness to yourself and others. Bringing kindness to your work and to your life consistently can change the world.
