Boundary-Setting, Incivility, and Why I Want to Live in Hawaii with M.D.

The following is a response to a valued colleague who is thinking about how to work with his faculty on boundary setting issues.  My templates for preventing and handling incivility and boundary setting are on our web-page, http://tap.msu.edu/workshops/resources.aspx.  I thought that letting you into my thinking about how I define workshops themes on this subject might prompt meaningful reflection for you.  As always, contact me with questions and comments.

NOTE:  If you are interested in teaching and learning issues in higher education, I recommend that you join to very helpful listservs:  1) Rick Reis's Tomorrow's Professor http://ctl.stanford.edu/Tomprof/index.shtml and 2) the Professional and Organizational (POD) Network Listserv https://listserv.nd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=POD .


"Dear M.,

Because I believe all development is local, let’s do this together and you shape themes I use relevant to your environs. How about if we consider the issues following as a means for engaging conversation about what it means to set boundaries? Allow me to advise, you cannot teach others in this context to set authentic boundaries (I believe professionals exist in other learning contexts in which one can, but not our general training ones.) Of course, I’m addressing something beyond the importance of regulating contact and establishing clear guidelines. In my experience with talking about these issues, I’ve found that many of my colleagues must come to an understanding that boundaries exist for a reason, they must identify what they are, they must embrace the idea that social space is ALWAYS negotiable, and that sometimes my friend, we lose. That said, a little awareness raising can go a long way to helping others prepare, organize, and facilitate learning contexts that minimize potential conflict. I generally consider boundary setting, volitions, errors, crossing, repairing, and retaliating (I’m not kidding) as foundations for my workshops.




1. One person’s “no problem” is another’s “I can’t believe you just did that!” And wow, how opening a newspaper can hit people in different ways always amuses and confounds me. One thing I try to do is to get folks to identify what bugs them. After doing that, multiple opportunities arise to talk about why. I will send you an attachment personally. It’s a template for a longitudinal project I have in the works. It’s unique in that it asks participants not only to rank behaviors, but also that they rank their imagined abilities to handle them. Until I get official funding for this, you are welcome to use it as you see fit. If you do, share your results with me. Oh, I’ve got my conflict stuff on our website too. It’s available for all.

2. Why consider this stuff? My quick public response is that we’re concerned with creating workable and effective learning environments and that inappropriate conflict inhibits our ability to do that. But that’s not why I really do this. Conflict makes me extremely nervous, especially the kinds we most often address, those emotional assaults that render meaningful dialogue impossible. (I, of course, am “heart full” in sympathy with those feeling physically threatened. But that is a rarity.). In fact, emotional bullying is wildly more threatening to me than a threatened punch in the face. The latter is so easy to deal with because it’s clear. Anyway, as developers, the large proportion of what we face with our charges is helping them to avoid or negotiate gray space – that thing that emerges when dialogue seems impossible.

3. A dear colleague, decades of powerful impact and support, believes that as teachers, our decisions about what we do shouldn’t be about solving our own problems, needs. By the way, what are those? I am in agreement with her for most issues. I’d like to think that teaching is the ultimate expression of my desire to connect with the human race – of course, that could cause some conflict, but you know what I mean…

4. What’s making us respond in certain ways to certain situations?

5. CASE STUDY – Do you invite undergrads in a senior seminar over to your palatial hut on Waimea for dinner and class? What about your grad students? Really? Why? Why not? [Heck, when can I hang out in your five-bedroom, three-level 10,000 square foot party house?]

6. When are boundaries “blur-able?” When not? Braxton and Bayer’s (1999) fine work concerning “norms” still shapes my thinking about this stuff. What absolutely positively shouldn’t be “crossed.” What’s less serious?

7. Are boundaries ethical or moral issues? Both?

8. When do you break your own rules? You don’t? Really?

9. At the root of many boundary setting issues, lies a startling denial of what it means to have power in the teacher-student relationship. Wow. Can I hear an “Amen!” from the congregation!

10. How does your professional life emerge in your teaching? Just what are we modeling?



Okay – let me know how you take my seminal themes and mold them into the great instructional/conversational space you create for your faculty."

KMJ