Setting Healthy Boundaries in Construction Management
Last Friday, our team woke up to a post on Microsoft TEAMS that let us know our team lead, Andreanne, was at the hospital. Later that day, we celebrated—three weeks earlier than anticipated—the arrival of Cole Michael Zislin into the world.
Although her husband was at her side, Andreanne’s extended family and friends, both inside and outside of work, were praying for them and offering support with what needed to be done in her absence, inside or outside the office. Andreanne’s responsibilities at home and in the workplace were transferred to her backup in her absence, as last Friday was different than the Friday before. It was also different than a single PTO day. We were now in extended-leave mode. Her home support system stepped in to care for her toddler, dog, and house. Her work support system stepped in to take over the responsibilities she is first in line for in the workplace.
Hopefully, Andreanne was and remains able to, in each moment away, enjoy becoming a mother again and can mentally be sound knowing “we’ve got this.” Maybe not as well as it would be if she were there—but well enough to offer the support she needs to eliminate any worry or guilt surrounding being out.
Work-Life Separation for Construction Professionals
The latest social media buzz is the posts that say, “Work Is Not Your Family.” That is correct if you take it literally to mean you think of the people you work with as your only connections in life, twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year. If you put them above your health and well-being and emotionally wrap yourself around the words “family in the workplace” to mean a surrogate for others in your life outside of working hours. The “work family” statement is strictly an analogy, which is a comparison between two things, typically for the purpose of explanation or clarification.
Work Is Not Your Family
Gloria Chan Packer explains in her TED Talk, “Work Is Not Your Family,” her journey of discovering how her thought processes on the subject were construed in her early career, and she discusses boundaries and communication.
Three of her main points are:
- Boundaries = The ability to identify, communicate, and act on our needs. The ability to communicate, “I need something.”
- Cognitive schemas are how our brain forms our subconscious behaviors, formed early in life—how we feel, think, and act. These can be outdated and need updating.
- Communication is key to staying both mentally healthy and relevant. She states: “Clear communication is kind—unclear communication is unkind.”
Chan Packer goes on to ask in her TED Talk, “What piece of the problem does the employer own, and what do you own?”
Effective Communication Strategies for Construction Teams
For over a decade, I have been writing about communication in the workplace for mutual commitment, mutual growth, and relevancy in your profession. I often use the analogy of comparing similarities between relationships in your personal life and relationships in the workplace.
Communication and Boundaries in Construction
In my book, Happily Married To Your Employer, available on Amazon, I use the analogy of effective career dating for mutual commitment, fulfillment, and farewell. The mutual farewell clearly states the obvious difference between your work and personal life. You can physically leave your personal family, yet they are still your family. In business, a parting of ways most often, if healthy, does not have the same level of emotional connection.
My book, written for everyone in the workplace, and my weekly blog, specifically geared toward those working in construction management and real estate development, focus on communication, boundaries, and understanding how your tendencies and experiences keep you either relevant and thriving in the workplace or strictly surviving.
For example, if you are in the role of construction project manager, whether you are thirty or sixty years old, the job of construction project manager is the same. This means that just because you are now sixty, you can’t say you won’t do something within the job responsibilities of a project manager because of your age. You can set boundaries around your choice of employment as a project manager. What you choose is the boundaries you set around the company you choose to work for and that chooses to hire you.
Construction Work-Life Balance
You may want a better work-life balance. You would then work for a company that may specialize in a market segment of the industry that has working hour restrictions and an employer that shares your definition of work-life balance instead of a more demanding market segment, such as high-rise, that typically works long hours and often six days a week or occupied institutional work that often requires nights and weekend work to meet deadlines.
You can’t just say you are working 8–4, Monday–Friday, because you worked long hours all your career and now you are a certain age you don’t want to do it. The job is the job. It is not about age. It is about learning how to set boundaries and choices at any age that keep you healthy yet meet the obligations you agreed to in order to stay in that relationship.
The Importance of Self-Love in Construction Careers
It just so happens that our church is hosting a Life Group in Deerfield Beach called Boundaries around the live stream and book by John Townsend and Henry Cloud. In one of my past blogs from a decade ago, I shared Henry Cloud’s book called Necessary Endings and the profound influence it had on my life.
If you are a people pleaser or struggle with the best use of your time, love, energy, or money without feeling guilty about your choices, both the books above and the TED Talk are a good start. I valued what I heard from Matthew McConaughey recently, who said that one of the best lessons he learned from his family was how to say, “I love you, but I don’t like you right now,” and the ability to ask for time to balance your feelings around the moment of letdown. He further explained how this helped him carry that ability into all his relationships—personal and professional—and choose how to allocate his time, love, energy, and money for the best relational results.
Healthy People Have Healthy Boundaries
Instead of using the analogy of a work family, the advice from many out there is to say, “We’re not like a family—we are like a professional sports team.” The reality is there is good and bad with both of the analogies. Just read in the press about what goes on within professional sports teams. Professional sports teams and work families are only as healthy as the people who reside within them and their ability to set boundaries with time, love, energy, and money and communicate what that will look like for their business and personal families. If they don’t, then they might find both destroyed in time with unaligned expectations.
The good news is that if we learn with boundaries to love ourselves and others for who they are and not what they do, we see the right results.
To Self-Love with Boundaries,
Suzanne Breistol
