Boundary Spanning Challenge Case Study
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Boundary Spanning Challenge Case Study
Provide feedback and comments on why you agree or disagree with this and what you would do different!!!
Boundary Spanning Challenge
Boundaries are created to help people keep things out that are not wanted and create a space that we can be with others who are like us and feel comfortable about it. It helps make us feel safe. When creating boundaries, you want to keep them permeable enough that you get the information you need but unyielding enough to keep out the bad (Ernst & Chrobot-Mason, 2011). In managing or monitoring boundaries, there are many different methods of doing so. Two of them are buffering and reflection. In buffering, (Ernst & Chrobot-Mason, 2011) state that there are different ways such as separate groups or eliminating interaction between groups, reducing the threat from external influences, making the boundaries visible for others, creating a unified team identity, and building team cohesion. With reflection, there is creating opportunities for groups to listen and learn from one another, posing questions to see the deep differences, bring out the commonalities from differences, stop them from trying to make the groups be alike, and slowing them down to speed them up.
Anytime you supervise a large group of people you are going to have personality conflicts or issues with coworkers dating and it not working out. Recently, we have had two different occasions in which coworkers were in a dating relationship and it ended up not working out. During the separation, there were issues because one person did not want the breakup, so they attempted to try to talk things out while at work to the point of harassment. This, in turn, made things at work stressful for the persons involved and those working around them. You might even have other coworkers take sides, so you have one group of employees against another group of employees. This type of conflict makes it very difficult to supervise and take care of the day to day problems while working to achieve our goals.
In this situation, we used several of the buffers to diffuse the situation. First, I believe we used one that was not listed in our textbook but in an article about proactive personality. “People high in proactive personality tend to identify opportunities, show initiative, take action, and persevere until they have achieved their goals and brought about significant change” (Han, Wang, & Dong, 2014, p. 476). We also used the separate groups by issuing a document to each of them to cease and desist all communication at work about the personal relationship. They each had to sign the form and acknowledge that they also would not bring in others to try to communicate for them. This was reducing the threat from external influences as well as making the boundaries visible for others. They could only communicate in relation to business matters while at work and all personal matters had to be dealt with outside of work. By doing these it did what buffering sets out to do and that is to regulate and insulate the work environment from uncertainty and scarcity (Lynn, 2005).
We were also able to utilize reflection in managing the boundaries with this situation. Slowing them down to get perspective was important because it gave them a chance to take a time-out and realize what type of drama they were bringing into work. Most of the time, people are in the heat of the situation and are moving so fast they don’t realize the chaos they are creating. Getting them to slow down and look at what was going on became a learning moment for them. It becomes a moment when they also realize the effect it is having on their coworkers.