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GREAT COMMUNICATION SECRETS OF GREAT LEADERS
MAINTAINING PERSONAL BOUNDARIES
In our chapter vignette, Bill does a good job of building an e-community, but
he ultimately goes too far. E-communications is a Janus-faced proposition.
(Janus, you will recall from Roman mythology, was a god with two faces.) On
the upside, email permits the boss and her or his team to exchange ideas at any
time of the day or night. On the downside, all this emailing back and forth can
erode personal time.
While it is true that for many the boundaries between work and home are
blurred, the leader needs to respect the personal lives of her or his followers. A
relentless flurry of email from the leader can set up the expectation that
employees must do the same. The leader not only has to set limits on his or her
own messaging habits, but also must make it clear that followers do not need
to emulate them. In other words, just because a leader does email at two in the
morning does not mean followers need to do so. Unless the leader is explicit
in setting limits, employees will naturally assume that he or she expects peo-
ple to be monitoring their email in the wee hours. For example, the leader can
say, “I do my email in off-hours because it is my choice to do so, but I do not
expect you to be waiting around for my messages. Nor do I expect you to work
at those hours unless you want to.” In this way, the leader sets limits and main-
tains a differentiation between work time and personal time.
Note:According to a survey by Pew Internet and American Life Project,
98 percent of people who have access to the Internet at work use it. They
find email essential to their jobs, enabling them to accomplish their work.
Most of them find email effective for conducting fact-based business, but
less effective for “heart-to-heart” discussions. Many see email as “encour-
aging communications.” Surprisingly, while anecdotal evidence shows that
people feel overwhelmed by the amount of email they get, most users find it
“manageable.” Some 20 percent of emailers, however, fall into the “power
email category,” half of whom receive more than 20 emails daily, and a quar-
ter of whom receive upwards of 50 per day. All in all, this study confirms
what many employees already know: Email has become an integral part of
the workplace. 4

Communications Planner: Creating and Maintaining
the E-community

Leaders can enable the building of a virtual community where key stake-
holders can congregate to share information and learn from others.

1. Email is a terrific way to stay abreast of events and to provide
ongoing coaching. Think of someone in your organization