Episode 263: Do you know other people's boundaries?
In today's episode, Fiona highlights one point that you can discover and uncover about the people that you work with, whether it is your staff or it's a business partner, a supplier, a manufacturer, or anyone within the realm of your small business. Tune in!
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
On understanding other people’s boundaries
Conclusion
Get in touch with My Daily Business Coach
Resources and Recommendations mentioned in this episode:
Welcome to episode 263 of the My Daily Business Coach podcast. Today you're listening to a quick tip episode, and that's where we share a tip, tool, or tactic that you can immediately implement in your small business. It's a really important one, especially if you are lucky enough to have staff or contractors that you work with. If that is you, stick around. But before we get stuck into that, let me acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of the beautiful lands on which I record this podcast, and that is the Wurrung and Wurundjeri people of the East Kulin nation. And I pay my respects to their elders, past, present, and emerging, and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded. The other thing I wanted to mention is that if you have left it very late to buy somebody in your life, a Christmas or Hanukkah, or just end of year gift, then just know that the shop at My Daily Business Coach is always available.
You can buy all sorts of things from courses on How to Start a Podcast or How to Get Published through to a larger kind of marketing course. You can buy a one-off coaching session for them, or you can just buy a gift card that they can use on all sorts of things in the shop. If you're interested in that, it's open and available at mydailybusinesscoach.com/shop. We'll link to that in the show notes. It's never too late, even if you're listening to this on the morning of the 25th of December. Let's get stuck into today's quick tip episode.
As I said at the start if you are lucky enough to have staff, then that life as a small business owner can sometimes feel as if you are part owner, counselor, HR manager, part event planner, and all sorts of things because we all know that staff today want to have a whole experience at their work, and they want to be accepted and as they should be as their whole selves. What that can lead to though sometimes is us as the founders of the business, either not understanding what they actually want from their job outside of a paycheck or bending over backward and then kind of getting resentment or feeling resentful because they're not doing X, Y, and Z. There could just be a whole bunch of miscommunication happening between staff and the people running the business.
Today, I wanted to highlight one point that you can discover and uncover about the people that you work with, whether it is your staff or it's a business partner, a supplier, a manufacturer, or anyone within the realm of your small business and running it, if you can get to the heart of this question, then I really feel like it can set you up for success and set everyone else up to have a successful journey at your business as well. What is the question? The question is understanding if you know other people's boundaries. Now, this is something that was touched on by Dr. Rebecca Ray. She's the author of Setting Boundaries. She's also a good friend of mine, and she came on the podcast a while ago, that is Episode 238, and that came out in September this year, so not that long ago.
But Rebecca also comes into group coaching and other such things. One of the things that come up every time that we talk about boundaries with Rebecca is not only understanding your own boundaries but understanding other people's. I feel like this is a really important part of the conversation with staff or suppliers that tends to get missed. I know that when I've previously managed staff and I've managed teams of 1920 in bigger companies and small teams as well, quite often when we are hiring people, we can be so focused on their skillset or their personality that we don't actually think about the long term. It's going to happen at some point that no one loves their job a hundred percent of the time every single day for years on end. There may be some sort of clash, some sort of debate that comes up.
Maybe you mentioned something quite personal and they're triggered by it. There could be all sorts of things that come up in a business. Understanding where your boundaries are as the business owner, but also other people's boundaries. Are there certain things they don't want to talk about at work? Are there certain questions that are off-limits? Everyone should be quite professional, but work and life are more and more intertwined these days. There isn't always a necessary “I'm at work and I'm being professional 24/7” sort of cap that we put on. We can have a conversation that leads to this, that leads to that, that goes off on a tangent, and suddenly maybe you're talking about something quite personal. Understanding people's boundaries. Also understanding people's boundaries in terms of what they expect when things go wrong.
How do they like to solve a conflict? Are they somebody who likes to confront things? Are they somebody who likes to sort of shy away from that and maybe have a bit of time to dissect and think about things before they come back to it, even in terms of presenting is somebody happy to just do that on the fly, on the spot? Or are they somebody who needs to go away and work on that? And there isn't a right or wrong, but it's just understanding the wholeness of the people that you work with. And understanding where you can be the best manager or founder or colleague that they're working alongside the best one for them. If you can have people that come into work and feel really comfortable and feel supported and feel like they're set up to be successful in the business, then they're more likely going to retain those staff than having people that simply come in for a paycheck and go home.
How do you do that? How do you understand other people's boundaries? There are lots of ways. One, you can literally just ask. I think it's a good thing to ask within the realm of an interview process to really be showing people, that's our culture. We're open here, we talk about these things and we want to support you from day one. It might be things as simple as how do you deal with conflict. How do you deal with ambiguity? Standard questions that you might get in an interview. Like, tell me about a time when you had a really not great experience with your manager. How did that go? What do you think the boundary was that was being crossed? Those sorts of things can help. Personality tests can sometimes help in terms of people doing something like 16personalities.com, and you have an understanding of what drives them as a person, which can also sometimes lead to kind of the boundaries that they may or may not have.
The other thing that you can do is to work with a business coach or to work with a life coach or somebody else who's going to come in and facilitate a workshop with your team on this sort of stuff. But it's really important that you have these conversations. And then lastly, I would totally recommend checking out the book Setting Boundaries, because that will go into not only how to understand your own boundaries and how to set them, but how to pick this up in other people and have those sometimes difficult, awkward conversations. But without those conversations, what can happen is that people down the track don't feel that support in their job. They look around and what you want to do is if you've got great stuff, hold onto them. People can be such an incredible asset and one of your best assets as a business.
That is it for today's quick tip episode, thinking about other people's boundaries and what sort of questions, what sort of activities, what sort of workshops, and conversations can you be having in the next few months to really understand, or even, sooner if you'd like to understand how you can be the best support person for somebody who is coming into you, help your business thrive. And that is what every staff member is coming in to help you build your business. If you want to help them build the best experience that they can have. That is it for today's quick tip episode. If you're interested in Setting Boundaries booked by Dr. Rebecca Ray or anything else we've talked about, you can find the show notes over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast/263. Thanks so much for listening, I'll see you next time. Bye.
Thanks for listening to the My Daily Business Coach podcast. If you want to get in touch, you can do that at mydailybusinesscoach.com or hit me up on Instagram at @mydailybusinesscoach
