Crucial Conversations: Navigating Communication Boundaries in the New Age of Remote Work

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Marisa Eikenberry
Welcome back to the Long-Distance Worklife, where we help you lead, work and thrive in remote and hybrid teams. I'm Marisa Eikenberry, a fellow remote worker. And joining me is my co-host and remote work expert, Wayne Turmel.

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Wayne Turmel
Hello.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Hey, how are you doing.

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Wayne Turmel
Welcome aboard right.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Welcome aboard the long distance work life ship right. So today we're going to be talking about boundaries with your team members, with your boss, with people that you work with, whatever that work, whatever that looks like. So I wanted to start off, Wayne, because, you know, we have episodes all the time where we have a topic and you go on a rant and so it's my turn.

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Marisa Eikenberry
I'm taking the reins. I'm sitting in the rant chair today.

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Wayne Turmel
Excellent. I love this. Ranting. Very few people know Ranting Marisa, and she is well worth the price of admission.

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Marisa Eikenberry
So there's another story I'm going to say later, but I'm actually going to start with something different than what we had talk about right before we started the show. But I had a situation, a couple of weeks ago where email was treated like a synchronous form of communication, and it drove me absolutely up the wall.

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Wayne Turmel
So when you say that, when you say that it was treated as a form of asynchronous or synchronous communication, help our listeners. Yes. What specifically was going on?

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Marisa Eikenberry
So I volunteer with an organization. I will not name the organization because I also won't be what the much longer for this reason. But essentially an email was sent to me after hours on a Friday and at Monday at 8 a.m.. Well, they hadn't heard from me yet, so they contacted somebody else that knows me. Well, she didn't respond and apparently also called me, but didn't leave a voicemail or a text message.

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Marisa Eikenberry
So I couldn't respond to anything. We've talked about this on a couple episodes before. I'm a recovering workaholic. Like, I was so bad about boundaries when I first started. I worked all the time. I would I would respond to your email as long as I was awake. Like it was it was bad. It was really bad. And I have done everything in my power, and even more so in the last year to try and prevent that.

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Marisa Eikenberry
And one of the things that I do is on Friday night, I don't answer emails. I don't look social media for 24 hours. I don't look at anything until Monday morning. I don't care for my personal email. I don't care if it's my work email. I do not look at it at all. And unfortunately, this person sent me an email at 8:50 p.m. on a Friday and then wondered why I hadn't seen it by 8 a.m. Monday morning.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Well, versus how? It's fine. It's like whatever I'm at, but it's fine. And then a couple of days later, she sent another email, which I knew was coming. I just didn't know what time it was going to come at like 435 in the afternoon, I end my day at 4:00. I go hang out with my husband. I make dinner, we watch a movie, whatever.

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Marisa Eikenberry
I don't look at my email at night. At 845 that evening, I get a text message. Well, you didn't respond to my email yet. I didn't know I even got it. And there was just this idea that email was going to be used as their synchronous form of communication as this, you know, chat or text in a way that, like, we don't preach here.

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Marisa Eikenberry
And I've been very lucky to not have really experienced this very much in the last nine years that I've worked here. And I think there was just a moment of this goes against what we teach. This goes against the boundaries that I have set. This goes against everything we stand for. Like, I was ticked.

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Wayne Turmel
Well, and understandably so. Right. Right. Here's the thing. I'm putting myself in the other person's shoes. Mm hmm. Obviously, everybody who works with this person knows how she operates and has allowed this to happen. And by the way, many of them may have may operate in the same way.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Right. Yeah. And this is not somebody I never worked with before.

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Wayne Turmel
So this is a cultural behavior thing. And the problem with human beings is we assume that our behavior or our position is the default until proven otherwise. And that proof seldom comes in the form of gentle correction, usually comes in the form of conflict.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

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Wayne Turmel
Right. So-and-so never answers my email. So-and-so is driving me crazy with text messages. We have what we have and we're doing what we're doing and we're communicating what we need to communicate. And our natural assumption, even to the outside world, it looks like insane behavior. But the most insane behavior has a rational purpose and and reason for existing, if you know what that is.

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Wayne Turmel
Right. What's going on in that person's mind? Right. And so we've got somebody who behaves in a certain way as obviously not had this be a problem before.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Which is so surprising to me. But yes.

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Wayne Turmel
Well, because one of two things happens. Either she's working with people of a similar generation mindset or whatever. So they all kind of think the same way. And they've been doing it for a while. Mm hmm. Right. Or nobody wants to have that conversation with cruel.

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Marisa Eikenberry
And I think that one might be might be the sticking point.

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Wayne Turmel
And especially with nonprofits and volunteer type organizations. I remember I had a guy who worked for me on a part time basis who was at one point CEO of a very large nonprofit. And we were having dinner one night and I said, Steve, what is the best thing about leading a nonprofit? And he said, Oh, if people are motivated, they're not driven by money, they're doggedly determined, and they don't take no for an answer.

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Wayne Turmel
And they said, Very cool. What's the worst that they're not motivated by money. Doggedly determined. And they don't take no for an answer.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Right. The blessing becomes the curse in that way.

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Wayne Turmel
When people are driven to do something and their mission is the most important thing. It becomes very easy either not to pay attention to the needs of other people or to assume that the needs of other people are always subservient to the needs of the mission.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Right. Well, and before we go too far down, because, like, I don't want anybody to think we're bashing nonprofits or volunteer organizations. No, no, no.

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Wayne Turmel
Not at all. But we're talking about the behavior.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Right. And so just kind of to build off of this, how can managers or team leaders actually effectively communicate expectations around these boundaries to their remote team members? Like, how can we set up these these things so that way stuff like this doesn't happen?

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Wayne Turmel
I think it's like so much. We haven't had explicit conversations or if we have, it's been kind of one on one. Mm hmm. As a team, when you're coming together, when you're forming, storming, norming, all those lovely phrases about team construction and design, when you are coming together as a group. Have you had the conversation about when do you email and what are the expectations?

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Wayne Turmel
What are when do you text? When do you use your webcam? When do you not? Those need to be explicit or somebody is not going to live up to somebody else's expectations because we all have our preferences and our styles and and whatever. One of the things that obviously nobody has told this well meaning person is and listen to me, dear podcast listeners, I cannot stress this enough.

00:08:52:20 - 00:08:56:10
Wayne Turmel
Email is not a synchronous form of communication.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Amen.

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Wayne Turmel
If you are sending an email and then sitting there drumming your fingers waiting for an answer, you are using it wrong.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah, it should have been a text message or a phone call or a Slack message or any number of these.

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Wayne Turmel
Simply number of things that we have come to realize are more synchronous now. I can remember back in the day when email was kind of a synchronous form of communication because there was no other way. There was a phone call or there was an email and what we now use chat for. MM. Didn't really exist.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

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Wayne Turmel
Especially in the workplace. It's funny, we had Yahoo chat and all that stuff. Right. For our personal use. But it wasn't really in use in the workplace for a really long time. Mm hmm. And so and this kind of goes to expectations around when people are in the office and when they're not. And what do they do with their I mean, this woman would be shocked to know probably, that you can turn off notifications.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Right. And that people don't check their emails a certain hours of the day.

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Wayne Turmel
But here's the thing. Nobody had that conversation. Nobody had that conversation with her. No, you did not have a conversation with her before you decided to turn off your notifications.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Right. Well, and even I was going to say because of this and I've teased about it, but I'm almost I'm almost serious about it. I know that there are some people that use their out of office type messages when they're not online just to say, hey, I'm not online during these days or these hours. Here's when you can expect a response from me.

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Marisa Eikenberry
And up until last week, this has never been a problem for me, but I've almost considered adding one for this reason, because there's a reason I'm not online during certain hours of the day and certain days of the week. And and people should feel like they're safe to do that.

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Wayne Turmel
Well, absolutely. And so I've seen people do some really interesting things. One is they actually set their out of office on their email when the day ends. Right. They have two standard out of office message that they do. I'm out of the office now. I'm back in at 9:00 tomorrow morning. Talk to you that. Mm hmm. If it's an emergency, text me.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Of course.

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Wayne Turmel
I've also seen people put it in their signature.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Mm hmm.

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Wayne Turmel
That says, you know, Wayne Trammell, Kevin Eikenberry group, blah, blah, blah. In order to maintain work life balance, I will answer all emails first thing in the morning.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah, I've seen some similar ones. They don't say it quite like that, but they'll say I use email as a asynchronous form of communication. You can expect a response within 24 hours.

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Wayne Turmel
Exactly. And at first blush that a feels really formal and weird.

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Marisa Eikenberry
It does.

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Wayne Turmel
Right. It's interesting. A lot of people do that with their work email. They've gotten better about that. What they don't do it with and I'm bad about this is their personal email. Mm hmm. I constantly forget to set out of office stuff on my personal email.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah, I mean, I do too. I just don't check.

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Wayne Turmel
Well, because you are a disciplined, highly intelligent human being and very aware.

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Marisa Eikenberry
And it took me a long time to get there.

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Wayne Turmel
And you weren't born that way.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah. Hey, man.

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Wayne Turmel
But this is. This is the thing that we talk about so often when there is not an explicit conversation, when we have not set guidelines that everybody has agreed to. It's the Wild West. Everybody is going to respond the way that they respond, and they assume that that is the natural order of things. It took me a long time to come to the very obvious realization that the world does not think like I do.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Right. The day I learned that people don't communicate the same way I do, my mind was blown.

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Wayne Turmel
I was like, Really? You don't do that. No, we don't, Wayne. You are a freak of nature. And you must understand how we mortals choose to deal with things.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Yes.

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Wayne Turmel
And so explicit conversations. But they don't have to be super formal. There is a biblical admonition that says the first time you have a problem with somebody, you let it slide. The second time you talk to that person, The third time you take it to the authorities in a crisis. I paraphrase, but that's kind of the thing, right?

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Wayne Turmel
The first time somebody does it. You know, I'm a firm believer that once is happenstance, twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

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Wayne Turmel
And so anybody can get frustrated and stuff once. Oh, yeah. The second time there is definitely a pattern developing here. By the third time, if you do not address it, you are in fact, condoning it.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Right?

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Wayne Turmel
There is the pattern has been established. If you don't do anything to disrupt that pattern, it is going to continue. And if it is going to continue, you have two options as human beings. One is to just get with the program and say, okay, when I'm dealing with moreso, this is what I got to deal with.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

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Wayne Turmel
The second thing is to get really angry and bitter and start gossiping and talking smack about here is a until we finally have to have it out and deal with it. I would prefer to do that in a civilized fashion. So to be able to say, hey, Marissa, and this is an important feedback thing for anybody when you do X.

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Wayne Turmel
This is how it appears to me or this is how it affects me.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Yes.

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Wayne Turmel
Be very specific. Not just what are you doing sending emails after 830. Right. Or I'm not going to answer e-mails that come in effort. I'm struggling with my work life balance. I am trying to do this. And if it is really time sensitive, here's an alternative way to reach you. Have my phone number. Text me. That conversation needs to be explicit.

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Wayne Turmel
As a manager, when you see people struggling with boundaries. Mm hmm. Do not take advantage of it. I mean, it is really tempting. It's like, Well, Marissa's going to be around anyway. I'll ask her this question because she's going to respond. You don't be that person. You don't want to take advantage of somebody's foibles like that. But when you're having your one on one, have that.

00:16:28:11 - 00:16:46:18
Wayne Turmel
Hey, I notice that you're sending a lot of emails late at night. What's going on there? Well, I have FOMO. Well, it, you know, freaks me out to show up in the morning. And I've got 32 emails waiting for me and it stresses me out. Whatever the reason.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

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Wayne Turmel
And there probably is one.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Oh, yeah.

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Wayne Turmel
I need to know what that is so I can coach you, help you let you know that it's okay.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Mm hmm.

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Wayne Turmel
Because a lot of times and I know that I've said this before, but it is crucial. We as managers don't understand how our actions are interpreted. We know how we mean. Like I say, if I send an email late at night, just so it's off my plate and out of my head and I can get on with what I'm doing, my expectation is not that you're going to drop everything at some bizarre hour of the night or make the kids read themselves to bed so you can answer this question.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

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Wayne Turmel
That was never my intention. But now I see how my actions impact you. We need to have a conversation about boundaries.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Well, into that point, too. I mean, now there are so many other tools out there that will allow you to schedule an email so that way it does reach them at a more reasonable hour. You can still get it out exactly when you're thinking about it, but it doesn't reach my inbox until 8 a.m. when I'm in the office.

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Wayne Turmel
You know what's funny is about two months ago there was a change to outlook that I you know, they update stuff all the time. Of course. What about when I log on at seven in the morning? There is a little message in the upper left hand corner of my screen that says you are outside normal working hours. Do you want to send this email or schedule it for later?

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Marisa Eikenberry
That's fascinating.

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Wayne Turmel
By default, up in the upper left hand corner of your outlook.

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Marisa Eikenberry
See, I haven't seen that because I'm only ever looking at Outlook during work hours. That's fascinating.

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Wayne Turmel
You know, the sun revolves around the Statue of Liberty and so all business takes place in the East Coast time. But that's just it's in pale blue font up at the top of your screen. And I actually know I need to send it now because it's 10:00 to the person that's sending it to. But that's kind of cool.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Well, Slack does something similar. Yeah. You know, if if I'm sending you a message, you know, the fact that you're in a different time zone, it'll tell me it's 7 a.m. for Wayne right now, you know, And I can still choose to send that if I want, especially if I know you're already online and there are also things to do where, you know, this person's in Do not disturb right now.

00:19:16:06 - 00:19:28:18
Marisa Eikenberry
You can send it and they'll they'll get it. But do you want to ping them? I'm also going to tell you to not ping people unless it's an emergency. I've been pinged for crap before that I was like, this could have waited until tomorrow.

00:19:29:16 - 00:19:44:11
Wayne Turmel
You know, it just occurred to me. Yes, it just occurred to me now. And we are running. Wait. Yeah. Forgive me. When software engineers are telling you you need to chill.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Right?

00:19:46:15 - 00:19:48:08
Wayne Turmel
You need to chill.

00:19:48:16 - 00:19:53:20
Marisa Eikenberry
I was going to say me as a tech person. Like, I'm, like, chill, but shut off your notifications.

00:19:54:01 - 00:20:02:13
Wayne Turmel
It's clearly a big enough problem that it is worth addressing in the tool itself. That should tell you something.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00:20:03:18 - 00:20:05:07
Wayne Turmel
And set your boundaries.

00:20:05:14 - 00:20:24:13
Marisa Eikenberry
Yes. And I know that there's so many more things that we can talk about with boundaries. So we're definitely going to have to do another episode to talk about some of the other boundaries that you can set with other people. But for now. Thank you so much, Wayne, for answering these questions. This was a blast. I can't wait to dive into more of this topic with you in the future.

00:20:24:20 - 00:20:40:20
Marisa Eikenberry
And for you listener, thank you for listening to the Long-Distance Worklife. For show notes, transcripts, and other resources. Make sure to visit LongDistanceWorklife.com. If you haven't yet, subscribe to the podcast so you won't miss any future episodes. And while you're there, be sure to like in review. This helps us know what you love about our show.

00:20:41:07 - 00:20:58:15
Marisa Eikenberry
Feel free to contact us via email or LinkedIn with the links in our shownotes. Let us know you listen to this episode or suggest a topic for Wayne and I to tack on a future episode. And if you'd like to learn more about remote teams, order Wayne Turmel and Kevin Eikenberry's new book, The Long-Distance Team. You can learn more about the book at LongDistanceTeamBook.com.

00:20:58:22 - 00:21:15:16
Marisa Eikenberry
Thanks for joining us. And as Wayne likes to say, don't let the weasels get you down.