Boundaries are rarely the problem.<\/p>\n
The language you use to set them often is.<\/p>\n
In an environment where power likes to personalise, moralistic language can unintentionally become fuel for exactly the dynamic you are trying to break. “This is disrespectful.” “This really cannot happen.” These are true sentences, sentences you probably feel are entirely justified. But they immediately open a side door you would rather have kept shut. Then it is no longer about the behaviour, but about your tone in naming that behaviour. No longer about agreements not kept, but about your sensitivity to those agreements being broken. You may win the moral high ground in your own head, but you lose the conversation that actually matters.<\/p>\n
Procedural boundary language does something different. It makes your boundary a condition for the work, not a judgement of the person.<\/strong><\/p>\n It is calm. Almost boring in its precision. And precisely for that reason effective in a way the moralistic version cannot be.<\/p>\n You might say: I can carry this out once there is a written decision. Or: this falls outside my mandate, it needs sign-off from X. Or, when the atmosphere is fraught and you feel the conversation slipping: I want to have this conversation if we stick to facts and agreements.<\/p>\n Sentences like these are not a cold shower, even though they can feel that way in the moment to whoever hears them. They are a form of maturity. They protect not only you but also the organisation against arbitrariness, because they establish a standard that applies to everyone, not only to the current situation. And they lift you out of the game of approval and rejection that dominant dynamics want to keep you trapped in, the game where your behaviour is judged on whether the leader values it, rather than on whether it matches the agreements.<\/p>\n Research into conflict communication confirms why this shift is so effective. Messages that focus on behaviour and its associated conditions, rather than on the other person’s intentions or character, provoke considerably fewer defensive responses. That holds even when the content of the message is equally confronting. The difference is not in what is said, but in where it draws attention: to an external, verifiable criterion, or to an internal, unprovable judgement.<\/p>\n Psychodynamically, this is the move back towards autonomy. You are not asking for love, approval, or recognition of your feeling as legitimate. You are asking for a framework. That distinction matters more than it sounds, because it changes the entire tone of the conversation. Whoever asks for love or recognition makes themselves vulnerable to whoever can choose to give or withhold it. Whoever asks for a framework positions themselves as an equal party in a professional relationship that has rules, rules that apply to both parties.<\/p>\n That difference also explains why the same content can land so differently depending on how it is packaged. “I don’t feel respected” is a statement that asks for recognition of a feeling, recognition the other person can choose to refuse. “This decision falls outside the agreed mandate” is a statement that asks for compliance with an agreement, an agreement that is harder to deny than a feeling, simply because it was once explicitly recorded or implicitly accepted as the way things work here.<\/p>\n The key is consistency. A boundary you set once and then let slide teaches the system that your boundary is negotiable.<\/strong><\/p>\n That is perhaps the most underestimated aspect of setting boundaries in this context. It is not about the strength of the first time you set a boundary. It is about what happens the second, the third, the tenth time the same situation arises. If your “no” is firm the first time but becomes “yes” again under mild pressure the second time, the system has learned that your “no” is actually a negotiating position, not a real boundary. And from that moment on, every subsequent boundary you set becomes less credible, because the history shows that boundaries eventually give way under sufficient pressure with you.<\/p>\n Then your “no” becomes an invitation to apply pressure, rather than a closing of the discussion. That is an uncomfortable truth to acknowledge, but it is the truth that explains why some people constantly have to renegotiate boundaries they thought they had already set, while others, with exactly the same message, are apparently challenged less often.<\/p>\n Consistency requires preparation, and that preparation is not excessive or needlessly formal, even though it can feel that way the first time you do it. You choose one sentence that suits you, that uses your own wording rather than a formula you read elsewhere. You practise it, out loud, until it sounds natural rather than rehearsed. You use it calmly, without apology in your tone, when the situation arises. You expect resistance, because it often comes, especially the first few times you show this new consistency. But you do not fight that resistance. You simply repeat your sentence, with the same calm precision as the time before.<\/p>\n That distinction between fighting and repeating matters more than it might sound. Fighting suggests a contest in which someone wins and someone loses, with all the escalation that comes with it. Repeating suggests a fact that simply continues to exist, regardless of how many times someone tries to deny or sidestep it. The second position is far harder to undermine than the first, precisely because it does not enter a contest that can be won or lost.<\/p>\n Choose one boundary sentence today. Write it down, exactly as you want to say it. Not too long, because longer sentences give more footholds for debate. Not too sharp, because sharpness provokes a defensiveness that undermines the procedural character. Use it three times this week, exactly as you wrote it, without adjusting it to the situation or softening it because the moment feels uncomfortable.<\/p>\n And feel how your body responds when you do this: not because you are weak if it feels uncomfortable, but because you are interrupting an old pattern that has probably existed longer than you realise. That discomfort is not a signal that you are doing it wrong. It is a signal that the pattern you are breaking was rooted deeply enough to put up resistance.<\/p>\n And ask yourself afterwards, quietly, something that strikes at the heart of what this whole exercise is really about: which boundary have you moved so often that you now distrust yourself at the moment you want to set it again?<\/p>\n That distrust in yourself may be the greatest damage this dynamic causes, greater even than the specific boundary violations themselves. Restoring a single boundary is a good first step. Restoring your trust that you are allowed to set boundaries and have them hold is the work that follows after.<\/p>\n Notes for those who wish to read further:<\/em><\/p>\n Boundaries are rarely the problem. The language you use to set them often is. Part six of a series on dealing with a leader who bends rules and makes people feel small.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1650,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,96,81],"tags":[94,89,99,95],"class_list":["post-5018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-dominant-leadership-series","category-english","tag-dominance","tag-english","tag-narcism","tag-toxic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbvp.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbvp.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbvp.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbvp.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbvp.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5018"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dbvp.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5018\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5080,"href":"https:\/\/dbvp.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5018\/revisions\/5080"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbvp.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbvp.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbvp.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbvp.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n