Accessibility vs. Boundaries | Leadership Tensions | Part 5 of 10

Welcome back to our conversation all about leadership tensions. Today Chip Parker is discussing the tension of accessibility vs boundaries (a hot topic!). Boundaries are necessary in leadership, so listen in as Chip explores some ways to be accessible to your team but still clear on your boundaries and personal needs. Let’s dive in!

Thanks for listening to the Impact Leadership podcast! We are so glad that you're here. If you're looking to connect with Chip Parker, send him a message at chip@theorchardcc.org. New episodes are released weekly on Wednesdays. We'll catch you in the next episode!

Transcript

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Hey everybody, welcome into the Impact Leadership Podcast. My name is Chip Parker, and I'm the lead pastor at the Orchard Community Church, a multi-site church in North Central Florida working to impact lossness and impact the next generation. This podcast is all about helping you as a church leader grow your leadership to grow your impact. Let's hop into this week's conversation. All right. Well, welcome back into the conversation. We are in part five of a 10-part conversation that is all about tensions. And if you are a leader, you experience tensions. And really, what we've been talking about in this conversation is the reality that not every tension is actually a tension. Yes, we are going to face some tensions as leaders that we need to learn how to manage. We hold both sides of this tension and can't go too far one way or the other. However, some things that feel like tensions in our leadership are actually decisions that need to be made. We don't need to hold both sides equally. We need to choose which is most important. And in the past weeks, we have looked at a bunch of different topics. Last week we shifted gears to tensions around how we lead people. And we began last week with this idea of grace versus accountability. And obviously, that is a tension that we need to hold, not a boundary that we need to draw. So speaking of boundaries, we're going to shift gears today into this new conversation around how we lead people with the tension of accessibility versus boundaries. And I'm going to go ahead and tell you this is a tension you have to hold. You can't choose to be an open door leader and just have no boundaries. And you can't be a leader who has strict boundaries and are never accessible to the people you lead or the people you serve. This is attention that we have to figure out. And the truth is, I don't see many leaders who have figured it out well. As a matter of fact, I think this is something that I struggle with. And it's partly because of how I'm wired. I am not a very compartmentalized person. I tend to be all over the place, jumping from one thing to the other. And so for me, it is often hard to build boundaries in my leadership. But I have learned over the years that I have to build boundaries because without those boundaries, I'm going to struggle, not just as a leader, but as a person. So here's the big idea that we're going to talk about with this tension of accessibility versus boundaries. Leaders must learn to be present, but not always available. Leaders must learn to be present, but not always available. So let's talk about what that means. What does it mean for us to be available? What does it mean for us to be accessible to the people we lead? It means that we are a leader who is in contact and communication with our teams and with the people that we serve. It means that we are not up on the top floor in the penthouse in the C-suite, and nobody can get to us without taking a month of different appointments before they can sit down. No, as a leader, we have to be accessible to people on our teams so that they can come to us when they encounter challenges, when they encounter problems. As a pastor, it is important for me to be accessible to the people that I serve, not just the people on our staff, but the people who I serve and lead who attend our church. I need them to know that I'm accessible to them and we can sit down and have a face-to-face conversation. Why that accessibility is so important is that that accessibility is going to build trust in your leadership. It is going to make you a real person that people can lean on when they are facing difficult times, when they're having problems that are hard to solve. It is going to build trust in who you are as a leader, again, in the people you lead and in the people you serve. But I think even more than that, accessibility is all about transparency and humility. It allows us to kind of pull back the curtain, so to speak, and let people see who we are, how we operate, what we value. It is going to build trust and transparency in the organization, but it's also going to make us model humility. And again, that's one of the tensions that we've talked about humility and confidence. As a leader, we have to have both. We have to lean into humility. And I think maybe even one of the most practical benefits that being accessible as a leader can bring to your team and organization is when you are accessible as a leader, you increase the speed of your teams, the speed of decision making, the speed of getting things done, the speed of innovation. When you have to set a meeting weeks in advance to have a five-minute conversation with somebody you lead, you are going to slow everything down. And in the world we live in today, our leadership must be able to move quickly. So that idea of accessibility, it builds trust, it shows transparency, it encourages humility, and it increases speed. All of those are essential to our leadership. Well, what about boundaries? When I say boundaries, what I mean are boundaries are those invisible lines that define our limits as a leader. Not just limits in our skill set, not that kind of limit, but limits in what is acceptable behavior in the workplace, the limit of actions that we can or cannot take, the limit of interactions that we can and cannot have. It is simply drawing boundaries in your leadership to say, hey, look, I am always going to be present for you as a leader. I'm always going to be accessible to you as a leader, but I'm not always available. Sometimes I have to go offline. Sometimes I need to put my phone down and quit looking at emails. Sometimes it needs to be okay for me to not answer your phone call. And those boundaries are important because as a leader, those boundaries help us focus. We have jobs that we need to do. We have work that needs to be done. And without boundaries, we're never going to be able to focus. And that is why I love the idea as a leader of us being accessible without having, you know, an open door policy. And I understand that open door policies have been and can be good, but oftentimes open door policies are just a way for you as a leader to never get something accomplished. You can be accessible and still have boundaries so that you can focus. And hear me, when you do, I think the other thing that boundaries do is they help us model healthy work habits. They show that, hey, look, there's times that we need to buckle down and get stuff done. As a matter of fact, I here at my office at the church have a sign that I will put on my door often that says, please do not enter because I am easily distracted and have a lot of work that needs to be done. And people know that. They get that. That's a boundary. But the other side of that healthy boundary, modeling healthy work habits, are when I'm on vacation, when I'm gone with my family for a weekend, it shows that it is acceptable for me to draw boundaries and say, hey, look, guys, the world is not going to burn down while I'm gone. There are other leaders in our organization that you can turn to. You don't have to contact me. And if that's true of me as a leader, it's true of the people I lead as well. I want them to have a healthy boundary around their work and around their personal life. I want them to feel that they can unplug and disconnect and put up the phone. I think that boundaries help us model these healthy work habits on both sides. And again, the other side of that that we talked about about being able to step away from work, really that boundary allows us to protect our identity. That leadership is something we do. It's a role we serve in, but it's not core to who we are. That we have lives outside of our leadership. We have lives outside of our job. It helps us protect our family. It helps us from being just ultimately consumed by what we do and remember who we are. So accessibility helps us to build that trust, but boundaries protect sustainability inside of our leadership. It allows us to be a healthy leader for longer. And without boundaries, you'll be depleted and you can't lead well if you're depleted. And so the reason, again, that this is a tension we need to manage and not a decision we need to make is that if we resolve this tension and choose accessibility over boundaries or choose boundaries over accessibility, if we relieve that tension, we're either going to burn out or we're going to become disconnected. Neither of those are options that we can tolerate in our leadership. We need to strive to have healthy boundaries so we do not burn out and we can be effective for longer, but we also need to make sure that we are accessible so that we do not become disconnected and disengaged from the people that we lead. So let me leave you with a question to think about. Where do you need clearer boundaries so that you can lead better? What part of your life, what part of your leadership do you need some clearer boundaries in? And then the flip side of that is where can you as a leader be more accessible to those you lead and those you serve? I think those are two very important questions for us to wrestle with. And here's maybe the takeaway that I'll leave you with today as we end the conversation. If you as a leader, if you are always available to everyone, you'll eventually be effective for no one. So make sure that you as a leader are holding boundaries, being accessible so that you can be effective in your leadership for the long haul. One last thing before we end this conversation is just let me say if you are a leader, specifically in the local church context or even outside of it, I would love to be able to connect with you if I can help. If you would like, I'm gonna have my email in the show notes. Reach out to me. We can set up a time to connect because here's what I know leadership is bigger than any one of us. If we're truly gonna have an impact in our communities, we need to lean on each other and we need to learn from each other. So I would be more than happy to do what I can to connect with you and help you lead right where you are. So reach out, let us know how we can connect. But until then, we'll see you right back here next week on the Impact Leadership Podcast.