Boundary Boss Quotes

...(S)uffering is universal. But victimhood is optional. There is a difference between victimization and victimhood. We are all likely to victimized in some way in the course of our lives. At some point we will suffer some kind of affliction or calamity or abuse, caused by circumstances or people or institutions over which we have little or no control. This is life. And this is victimization. It comes from outside. It's the neighborhood bully, the boss who rages, the spouse who hits, the lover who cheats, the discriminatory law, the accident that lands you in the hospital. In contrast, victimhood comes from the inside. No one can make you a victim but you. We become victims not because of what happens to us but when we choose to hold on to our victimization. We develop a victim's mind -- a way of thinking and being that is rigid, blaming, pessimistic, stuck in the past, unforgiving, punitive, and without healthy limits or boundaries. We become our own jailors when we choose the confines of the victim's mind.

It's not your job to educate every person in the world on healthy boundaries. It is your job to know and protect your own healthy boundaries.

Another person's bad, unconscious, or straight-up unhealthy behavior does not need to dictate yours.

A good business person knows how to develop boundaries that will help them minimize distractions and maximize their potential.

Sooner or later, someone will say a no to us that we can’t ignore. It’s built into the fabric of life. Observe the progression of nos in the life of the person who resists others’ limits: the no of parents the no of siblings the no of schoolteachers the no of school friends the no of bosses and supervisors the no of spouses the no of health problems from overeating, alcoholism, or an irresponsible lifestyle the no of police, the courts, and even prison Some people learn to accept boundaries early in life, even as early as stage number one. But some people have to go all the way to number eight before they get the picture that we have to accept life’s limits: “Stop listening to instruction, my son, and you will stray from the words of knowledge” (Prov. 19:27). Many out-of-control adolescents don’t mature until their thirties, when they become tired of not having a steady job and a place to stay. They have to hit bottom financially, and sometimes they may even have to live on the streets for a while. In time, they begin sticking with a career, saving money, and starting to grow up. They gradually begin to accept life’s limits.

We should not be concerning ourselves with the whys of others. After all, people can and will ask and expect ridiculous shit from us. That's not your problem unless you make it so. Focusing on them is only a distraction. Put your attention back on yourself.

Setting boundaries and holding people accountable is a lot more work than shaming and blaming. But it’s also much more effective. Shaming and blaming without accountability is toxic to couples, families, organizations, and communities. First, when we shame and blame, it moves the focus from the original behavior in question to our own behavior. By the time this boss is finished shaming and humiliating his employees in front of their colleagues, the only behavior in question is his. Additionally, if we don’t follow through with appropriate consequences, people learn to dismiss our requests—even if they sound like threats or ultimatums. If we ask our kids to keep their clothes off the floor and they know that the only consequence of not doing it is a few minutes of yelling, it’s fair for them to believe that it’s really not that important to us. It’s hard for us to understand that we can be compassionate and accepting while we hold people accountable for their behaviors. We can, and, in fact, it’s the best way to do it. We can confront someone about their behavior, or fire someone, or fail a student, or discipline a child without berating them or putting them down. The key is to separate people from their behaviors—to address what they’re doing, not who they are.

In these examples, triangulation becomes a defense. Triangulation becomes a way to offset the abuse of power and to get clarity about the wrongs committed. This kind of triangulation occurs in families where one member is abusing his or her power. Like a poor boss, an abusive parent who is deaf to protest gives the children no choice but to talk about that parent. When a parent refuses to hear the issues of adult children, the children turn either to each other or to outsiders, but both sides lose. The parent loses an opportunity for greater closeness with the child and the adult child must grieve the loss of the sought-for resolution that cannot come about.

The day-to-day horror of writing gave me a notion of tournament time. Writing novels is tedious. When will this book be finished, when will it reveal its bright and shining true self? it takes freakin’ years. At the poker table, you’re only playing a fraction of the hands, waiting for your shot. If you keep your wits, can keep from flying apart while those around you are self-destructing, devouring each other, you’re halfway there. … Let them flame out while you develop a new relationship with time, and they drift away from the table. 86-7 Coach Helen’s mantra: It’s OK to be scared, but don’t play scared. 90 [During a young adult trip to Los Vegas] I was contemplating the nickel in my hand. Before we pushed open the glass doors, what the heck, I dropped it into a one-armed bandit and won two dollars. In a dank utility room deep in the subbasements of my personality, a little man wiped his hands on his overalls and pulled the switch: More. Remembering it now, I hear a sizzling sound, like meat being thrown into a hot skillet. I didn't do risk, generally. So I thought. But I see now I'd been testing the House Rules the last few years. I'd always been a goody-goody. Study hard, obey your parents, hut-hut-hut through the training exercises of Decent Society. Then in college, now that no one was around, I started to push the boundaries, a little more each semester. I was an empty seat in lecture halls, slept late in a depressive funk, handed in term papers later and later to see how much I could get away with before the House swatted me down. Push it some more. We go to casinos to tell the everyday world that we will not submit. There are rules and codes and institutions, yes, but for a few hours in this temple of pure chaos, of random cards and inscrutable dice, we are in control of our fates. My little gambles were a way of pretending that no one was the boss of me. … The nickels poured into the basin, sweet music. If it worked once, it will work again. We hit the street. 106-8 [Matt Matros, 3x bracelet winner; wrote The Making of a Poker Player]: “One way or another you’re going to have a read, and you’re going to do something that you didn’t expect you were going to do before, right or wrong. Obviously it’s better if you’re right, but even if you’re wrong, it can be really satisfying to just have a read, a feeling, and go with it. Your gut.” I could play it safe, or I could really play. 180 Early on, you wanted to stay cool and keep out of expensive confrontations, but you also needed to feed the stack. The stack is hungry. 187 The awful knowledge that you did what you set out to do, and you would never, ever top it. It was gone the instant you put your hands on it. It was gambling. 224

Explain that you’ve realized it isn’t good for you to mix your personal life with work. It could interfere with your effectiveness as an employee. To prevent that, you’ve decided to participate only in activities that directly relate to your job. The company picnic is fine. Lunch with an account is fine. But you’ve decided to keep personal information to yourself and to relate to your boss on a professional basis. If your boss is healthy and tuned in, she’ll get it. If she isn’t, that’s not your problem.

Disease in the organization. It’s a fact of life that some bosses are very unhealthy and abuse their power, sometimes unknowingly, to get their needs met. Unhealthiness in the boss shows up throughout the organization. I’m amazed that more companies aren’t aware of the pyramidal effect of their failure to select healthy managers. A non-recovering alcoholic, codependent, or compulsive manager can have a detrimental effect on subordinates she never sees. By the same token, a supervisor in therapy can lift up her entire department.

A boss over steps the boundaries of good taste and the implied condition of good faith in an employment agreement whenever they demand that their subordinates assist them resolve their personal as opposed to professional problems.

If development unfolds optimally and the child makes headway in becoming her own person, the need for attachment wanes. As it does, the maturing child will be even more sensitive to coercion and even less amenable to being bossed around. Such a child will feel demeaned when treated as if he or she does not have his own thoughts and opinions, boundaries, values and goals, decisions and aspirations. She will resist adamantly when not acknowledged as a separate person. Again, this is a good thing. Counterwill is serving the purpose of protecting the child against becoming an extension of anyone else, even the parent. It helps to deliver an autonomous, emergent, independent being, full of vitality and able to function outside of attachments.

Learn the power of “no” I was so busy working inside my company that I failed to work on it. I was answering support tickets, posting app store listings, making landing pages, writing low-level code, and doing other tasks that employees could’ve performed. If you can delegate work, do it. I should have said “no” to busywork and “yes” to growing my company. When I delegated work, I had time for professional development. Reading books on business and focusing on professional development were two reasons why my company grew into a mid-sized company. Too many founders focus on their day-to-day responsibilities. When I started, my issues were funding and product development. When my company became mid-sized, the issues centered around alignment, time-management, technical support, marketing, and automation. I learned how to set boundaries with customers and employees. Neglecting the power of “no” was why my company failed to reach the next level at certain stages. My boss at the software company was overwhelmed because he tried to perform the same work as his employees. He had hundreds of emails that remained unread. He once said he would wake up at 4am, but he still failed to complete all his tasks. Unlike him, I decided which problems were the most important to focus on. I transformed from a technician to an executive with a grand vision for the company.

You will never win with a Boundary Destroyer. Even if you have the best bullet-pointed argument in the world, the Boundary Destroyer is not going to acknowledge your truth. Convincing them of your perspective is a thankless, energy-zapping task... Just as it's pointless to win with a Boundary Destroyer, it's also a waste of your precious time and energy to convince people to see your point of view. Those who know the real you won't for a second doubt you or your intentions. Others may take the Boundary Destroyer's side, but you have to let go of caring what others think.

This is why I don’t get involved. This is why I’ve always kept up boundaries. Because someone ends up getting hurt if you don’t. I’d just never thought that person would be me.

From the French perspective, this can feel demotivating, even disrespectful. By contrast, American bosses may feel that French workers are uncooperative because, instead of acting quickly, they always ask “Why?” and are not ready to act until they have received a suitable response.

At the next team meeting, Bethari explained carefully to the team why she was putting everything in writing and asked for their indulgence. “It was that easy,” she says. “Once people understood I was asking for a written recap because the big boss requested it, they were fine with that. And, as I explained that this was a very natural way to work in Germany, they were doubly fine with it. If I ever need my staff to behave in a non-Indonesian way, I now start by explaining the cultural difference. If I don’t, the negative reactions fly.” If you work with a team that has both low-context and high-context members, follow Bethari’s lead. Putting it in writing reduces confusion and saves time for multi-cultural teams. But make sure to explain up front why you are doing

Klopfer described how his failure to decode a message from his British boss almost cost him his job: In Germany, we typically use strong words when complaining or criticizing in order to make sure the message registers clearly and honestly. Of course, we assume others will do the same. My British boss during a one-on-one “suggested that I think about” doing something differently. So I took his suggestion: I thought about it and decided not to do it. Little did I know that his phrase was supposed to be interpreted as “change your behavior right away or else.” And I can tell you I was pretty surprised when my boss called me into his office to chew me out for insubordination!

In business, as in school, people from principles-first cultures generally want to understand the why behind their boss’s request before they move to action. Meanwhile, applications-first learners tend to focus less on the why and more on the how. One of the most common frustrations among French employees with American bosses is that the American tells them what to do without explaining why they need to do it.

absolutely will not be following Emerson's lightly floral scent home. That would be creepy. I've lived nearly four hundred years without being a stalker. I'm not going to start now. Probably. Although, it couldn't hurt to make sure she made it home safely, right? No, of course not. That makes me a good boss, not a creep with boundary issues.

Your boss is a woman, isn’t she?” He examined my face closely. “What makes you say that?” “You were careful to avoid a singular pronoun right there—you said ‘that person’ instead of ‘he’ or ‘she,’ even though it made your sentence awkward.

In an urban environment, people share space and resources locally, understanding territorial boundaries and responsibilities. Of course, there are laws and governing bodies to define and enforce those laws, but people don’t have bosses ordering them around all the time. If the residents of our cities had to wait for authorization from the boss for every decision they made, the city would quickly grind to a halt. Yet in our companies we see a very different organizing principle at play.

Do not let your boss, your spouse, your kids, your neighbors, or anyone push you around or walk all over you. This does not mean you need to be a butt-hole - but you may need to draw some clear lines for the people in your life. Want to do it right? Communicate expectations clearly, and consistently. People cannot treat you the way you want them to treat you unless you tell them HOW to treat you.

I haven’t had sex for six months and all this talk is making me…” He struggles to think of a word. “Horny?” I suggest. That makes him laugh. “You really have gotten used to me, haven’t you?” “Sorry. I forget you’re my boss sometimes.” “That’s good. Successful working—and personal—relationships rely on knowing where the other person’s boundaries are, and on understanding their sense of humor. I’m glad you’re used to mine.” “I sometimes wonder what Natalie made of it.” His smile fades. “I don’t think she ever got me. We were like two binary suns, always circling and destined never to meet in the middle.

Syn stared into Furi’s sparkling eyes. He brought one hand up and tenderly brushed Furi’s cheek. “Congratulations.” “Thank you.” Furi kissed his lips gently. “I’ll be fine. I’m a big boy.” “I know you are.” Syn winked. Furi flushed with embarrassment. “Shut up. Don’t start something you can’t finish.” “I’ll finish it later,” Syn promised. His look was pure lust as he pushed his rising cock against Furi’s jean-clad thigh. “Fuckin’ right you will,” Furi moaned against Syn’s cheek, rocking back against him. “I’d fuckin’ take you right now if your bosses weren’t in the front room.” Syn groaned. Furi gripped Syn’s cock in a firm grip and stroked a couple times, wrapping his other arm around Syn’s back to hold him close. He nipped at Syn’s stubbled chin, peppering sweet kisses along his jaw to his ear. Furi flicked his tongue out and pulled the fleshy lobe between his soft lips. Furi’s lips were pressed against his ear as he spoke in a low, sexy drawl, “I’d bend you over this sink and fuck you until you yelled my name and begged me not to stop.” “Fuck,” Syn moaned. Heat tore up through him at Furi’s nasty words. “Fuck you hard, just how you like it, baby.” Furi increased the speed of his stroke. “Oh fuck, fuck. No. Stop honey,” Syn protested weakly, his balls already throbbing with the need for release. “Why?” Furi hissed. “Because I fucking refuse to let Day hear me come.” Syn put some room between their bodies and kept backing up until he hit the wall. He tried to control his breathing, but staring at Furi’s gorgeous, flushed face didn’t help. “You guys are crazy.” Furi shook his head. “Day’s pranks have no boundaries. I wouldn’t be surprised if my moans are broadcasted over the loudspeaker in the office today.” Syn opened the bathroom door and gestured for Furi to look out into the hallway. “See.” Furi busted out laughing at Day standing there in the hallway with his cell phone in his hand, studying the non-existent art on Syn’s bare wall. He whistled like he was just lounging around not looking for trouble. Syn just flipped him off and pulled Furi into his bedroom, slamming the door behind them. “Oh my fucking god. That shit is too funny.” Furi laughed while he put a few things into his backpack. “Yeah, because you don’t’ have to deal with his silliness.” Syn hurried to get dressed.

Men and women can't be just friends. Two minutes ago we were talking just like friends and the next minute I'd stepped over the boundary and we were discussing things that friends shouldn't. It's only another small step for mankind for us to be doing things that friends shouldn't either. And by tomorrow I'll have forgotten what I said and we'll be back to boss and secretary again. Yet you'll think of it every time you see my desk piled high with paperwork. That's the difference between men and women.

Oh, there would be no begging. Not from me. Not after tonight. I’d have him on his knees by the time I was done with him. No man was so strong they could walk away more than once. I was determined to push the boundaries of his restraint. I knew one thing for sure: I wouldn’t be the one with regrets.

The idea of being reachable 24/7 by anyone, let alone her boss, was a nightmare. It was important to have some boundaries, and as long as she was clear about them from the beginning, surely people would respect that.

I broke an arm once,” Muriel said. “An arm is no comparison.” “I did it training dogs, in fact. Got knocked off a porch by a Doberman pinscher.” “A Doberman! Came to to find him standing over me, showing all his teeth. Well, I thought of what they said at Doggie, Do: Only one of you can be boss. So I tell him, ‘Absolutely not.’ Those were the first words that came to me—what my mother used to say when she wasn’t going to let me get away with something. ‘Absolutely not,’ I tell him and my right arm is broken so I hold out my left, hold out my palm and stare into his eyes—they can’t stand for you to meet their eyes—and get to my feet real slow. And durned if that dog doesn’t settle right back on his haunches. Good Lord, Macon said.

I broke an arm once,” Muriel said. “An arm is no comparison.” “I did it training dogs, in fact. Got knocked off a porch by a Doberman pinscher.” “A Doberman! Came to to find him standing over me, showing all his teeth. Well, I thought of what they said at Doggie, Do: Only one of you can be boss. So I tell him, ‘Absolutely not.’ Those were the first words that came to me—what my mother used to say when she wasn’t going to let me get away with something. ‘Absolutely not,’ I tell him and my right arm is broken so I hold out my left, hold out my palm and stare into his eyes—they can’t stand for you to meet their eyes—and get to my feet real slow. And durned if that dog doesn’t settle right back on his haunches. Good Lord, Macon said.

If you can’t afford fancy products, know that using any symbol important to you will repel negative energy and provide energetic protection. I once encouraged a client to wear a Christian cross necklace on her back, instead of her front side, to protect herself from her backstabbing boss. Almost immediately, she felt better.

our primal instincts for survival are hardwired into our DNA. Often, this primal fear clouds our judgment and prevents us from seeing life as it really is. Or even how it could be. We’re too busy (unconsciously) hoping we don’t get rejected/annihilated.

As Marianne Williamson once wrote, “It is not too late. You are not too old. You are right on time. And you are better than you know.

Ignore culture and you can't help a conclude: Chen doesn't speak up. Obviously, he doesn't have anything to say; his lack of preparation is ruining this training program. Or, perhaps, Jake told me everything was great in our performance review, when really he was unhappy with my work. He is this sneaky, dishonest, incompetent boss.

Give yourself permission to be the one who makes decisions for you.

The countries most influenced by the Vikings consistently rank as some of the most egalitarian and consensus-oriented cultures in the world today. So it is no surprise that, even today, when you walk into a meeting room in Copenhagen or Stockholm, it is often impossible to spot the boss.

So a first historical point is that the countries that fell under the influence of the Roman Empire (including Spain, Italy, and, to a lesser degree, France) tend to be more hierarchical than the rest of Western Europe. Although your Italian boss is unlikely to wear a purple toga, invisible and subtle remnants of these attitudes still remain today.

Yes, well . . . that depends who we are speaking with, of course. One point is that we tend to be a very hierarchical culture. If you are a boss speaking to your subordinate, you may be very frank. And if you are a subordinate speaking to your boss, you had better be very diplomatic with criticism.” Carlson smiled, perhaps realizing why she had never personally experienced any of Golov’s frankness.

Then another participant, Mr. Deng, raised his hand, I restated the specific question: “What steps should the team leader in this case take to manage different attitudes toward confrontation on the team?” Mr. Deng began: Let me give my perspective. I have been working in the technology industry for many years. In my company, we have lots of young people who are very eager and hardworking. Yet hierarchy is still strong in our company. During a meeting, if a young person is asked a question, he will look to his boss first to see if the boss’s face indicates approval. If the boss approves, the younger employee will also express approval.

On a global team, such as in this case, Chinese employees may confront their colleagues, but they will certainly never confront the boss. The team leader could remove himself from the meetings in order to allow for more comfortable discussions amongst his team members.

Here is a clue to the difficulties you’ve been having. You begin to reconsider the common Israeli attitude that the boss is “just one of the guys.” You realize that some of your words and actions, tailored to the egalitarian Israeli culture, may have been misunderstood by your Russian team and may even have been demotivating to them. In the weeks that follow, as you begin to make adjustments to your leadership style, you find that the atmosphere slowly improves—and so do the bottom-line results. This is an example of how we use the eight scales and the culture mapping process to effect genuine, powerful changes within organizations, to the benefit of everyone involved.

Begin each morning with a quick preview of the coming day’s events. For each one, ask yourself how you can use it to develop as a manager and in particular how you can work on your specific learning goals. Consider delegating a task you would normally take on yourself and think about how you might do that—to whom, what questions you should ask, what boundaries or limits you should set, what preliminary coaching you might provide. Apply the same thinking during the day when a problem comes up unexpectedly. Before taking any action, step back and consider how it might help you become better. Stretch yourself. If you don’t move outside familiar patterns and practice new approaches, you’re unlikely to learn.

What's the point of getting educated if you're going to end up stuck as a housewife?" Jane's heard that one before. Some people find it hard to accept that housework is preferable to inflexible deadlines and bosses with no respect for personal boundaries. But after spending too many late nights making slides for men who talked shit about her in the break room, she's glad she's left that life behind. "Because I get to spend half my day shopping and watching TV.

Kicking self-abandonment, deceit, denial, and resentment to the curb allows you to create a life based on joy, freedom, and genuine intimacy.

She had a misguided sense of loyalty, even to those who didn’t deserve her devotion.

The different boundaries that need your attention are physical, sexual, material, mental, and emotional. Within these categories, your boundaries may be rigid, porous, or healthy.

If you deny yourself the right to change your mind, can’t speak up, or say no, every decision carries the weight of a life sentence.

For hundreds—if not thousands of years—women have been marginalized and objectified.

Your personal boundaries are informed by your childhood experiences, cultural norms, gender roles, and an array of other factors. In the meantime, individuals like us still need to sort out the overt and covert sexist assumptions, projections, and judgments we have endured and internalized since childhood. Whether or not we are conscious of the impact, these disempowering sentiments can powerfully inform our sense of self in a very negative way.

You must establish healthy boundaries to protect your gifts, talents, sensitivity, and life, so that you are making conscious choices about how you spend your precious time and energy.

The evolution of women’s rights directly impacts our conscious, unconscious, and collective relationship to our beliefs about boundaries, even today.

Don't forget who you are and what you stand for - you are the boss of your life, and no one can cross your boundaries unless you let them.

Your life, your rules. Don't let anyone else write your story. Be the boss of your own life and set your boundaries high.

Here’s what I reckon. In the olden days, there were institutional boundaries that kept us from getting overexcited. Our employers provided them, for instance. We worked a 9-to-5 day and weekends were off-limits. We didn’t take our phones home. We didn’t have home computers. We weren’t on call 24/7. We could whine if the boundaries were crossed and someone - a boss, the HR department or the Union - would fix the issue. The church ordained days of rest each week and the shops were closed on Sundays. Plane trips were once-in-a-lifetime experiences. We communicated with letters, written slowly and mindfully. No one experienced one-hour-or-less response times.

GENDER AND GUIDANCE GENDER DIFFERENCES MAKE guidance harder to give for both men and women, but in very different ways. Both bias and what I call “gender politics” can foil efforts to be Radically Candid with someone of a different gender. I’m focusing on gender here because this book is rooted in my first-hand experiences and I’m a Caucasian woman. But there are important parallels in race, and any instance where relationships cross group boundaries.

This happened to me!” Bethari Syamsudin, an Indonesian manager working for the multinational automotive supplier Valeo, told me. “My boss is German, but my team is all Indonesian. In my culture, if we have a strong relationship and come to a spoken agreement, that is enough for me. So if you get off the phone and send me an e-mail recapping in writing everything we have just decided, that would be a clear sign to me that you don’t trust me.

experienced players will seek out the boundaries of a new game as quickly as possible, even if it involves dying over and over again. They understand that, not only is it a more fun way to play, but the knowledge they gain from it will help them succeed in the long run.

It's not always wrong to have standards and expectations. These two things are boundaries. Respect is the standard and Co-operation is expected.

Indeed, fascist regimes tried to redraw so radically the boundaries between private and public that the private sphere almost disappeared. Robert Ley, head of the Nazi Labor Office, said that in the Nazi state the only private individual was someone asleep. For some observers, this effort to have the public sphere swallow up the private sphere entirely is indeed the very essence of fascism. It is certainly a fundamental point on which fascist regimes differed most profoundly from authoritarian conservatism, and even more profoundly from classical liberalism. There was no room in this vision of obligatory national unity for either free-thinking persons or for independent, autonomous subcommunities. Churches, Freemasonry, class-based unions or syndicates, political parties— all were suspect as subtracting something from the national will.121 Here were grounds for infinite conflict with conservatives as well as the Left. In pursuit of their mission to unify the community within an all-consuming public sphere, fascist regimes dissolved unions and socialist parties. This radical amputation of what had been normal worker representation, encased as it was in a project of national fulfillment and managed economy, alienated public opinion less than pure military or police repression, as in traditional dictatorships. And indeed the fascists had some success in reconciling some workers to a world without unions or socialist parties, those for whom proletarian solidarity against capitalist bosses was willingly replaced by national identity against other peoples. Brooding about cultural degeneracy was so important a fascist issue that some authors have put it at the center. Every fascist regime sought to control the national culture from the top, to purify it of foreign influences, and make it help carry the message of national unity and revival. Decoding the cultural messages of fascist ceremonies, films, performances, and visual arts has today become the most active field of research on fascism. The “reading” of fascist stagecraft, however ingenious, should not mislead us into thinking that fascist regimes succeeded in establishing monolithic cultural homogeneity. Cultural life in fascist regimes remained a complex patchwork of official activities, spontaneous activities that the regimes tolerated, and even some illicit ones. Ninety percent of the films produced under the Nazi regime were light entertainment without overt propaganda content (not that it was innocent, of course). A few protected Jewish artists hung on remarkably late in Nazi Germany, and the openly homosexual actor and director Gustav Gründgens remained active to the end.

The author Henry Cloud tells a story about just this kind of situation in his book Boundaries. Once, the parents of a twenty-five-year-old man came to see him. They wanted him to “fix” their son. He asked them why they had come without their son, and they said, “Well, he doesn’t think he has a problem.” After listening to their story Henry concluded, to their surprise: “I think your son is right. He doesn’t have a problem….You do….You pay, you fret, you worry, you plan, you exert energy to keep him going. He doesn’t have a problem because you have taken it from him.”3 Cloud then offered them a metaphor. Imagine a neighbor who never waters his lawn. But whenever you turn on your sprinkler system, the water falls on his lawn. Your grass is turning brown and dying, but Bill looks down at his green grass and thinks to himself, “My yard is doing fine.” Thus everyone loses: your efforts have been wasted, and Bill never develops the habit of watering his own lawn. The solution? As Cloud puts it, “You need some fences to keep his problems out of your yard and in his, where they belong.” In the working world, people try to use our sprinklers to water their own grass all the time. This may come in the form of a boss who puts you on a committee for her pet project, a colleague who asks for your input on a report or presentation or proposal she hasn’t taken the time to perfect yet herself, or a colleague who stops you in the hallway and talks your ear off when you have an important meeting to get to or a vital phone call to make or critical work on your desk.