Psychotherapist Dana Skaggs joins our intergenerational pod to discuss the wisdom of boundaries in the workplace.

Well hello there—and happy Tuesday! Welcome to the Mode/Switch Pod, a biweekly roundtable on work-culture questions. Our intergenerational team equips you to do more than cope when work’s a lot! This episode asks why boundary-setting’s so tricky, especially in the workplace. Do you wish you could assert yourself at work—without creating more passive aggression? This conversation’s for you!

We are all two kinds of humans at once--those who want closeness and those who need their space. But being both kinds of selves gets tricky at work. We feel the need to assert our rights. We feel the need to get along with others. How do we do both?

Does self-care require fences? Does working community require eliminating fences?

This week, our intergenerational crew—LaShone, Emily, Ken, David, and I—talk with psychotherapist Dana Skaggs about how to create strong but open boundaries at work. It’s not about building a fortress, or even a fence. It’s more like—well, you’ll have to listen to find out!

Dana’s good at finding the laughter in difficult conversations. She’s an easy-going communicator with a gift for vivid analogies. And we should know! We pushed her pretty hard, probing her concept of boundary-setting on the job, asking questions like:

• Don’t boundaries become some people’s excuse for getting out of work?

• Won’t boundary-setting make us all lonelier?

• Aren’t boundaries easier for people who like conflict?

Our workplace-focused conversation today focuses on interpersonal conflicts at work: How do we assert our rights on the job and show up to collaborate generously with others?

But the question of boundaries today quickly raises urgent, widely felt questions about society and culture in our divisive times. My wife and I felt this keenly in Northern Ireland recently, when we did some dark tourism and wrote prayers on the Peace Wall (see below). Our tour guide’s father was murdered in The Troubles, and hearing stories like that made it feel urgent to keep boundaries from becoming barricades.

I produce the Mode/Switch because I think the workplace is a space where we can seek ways to be human together. I believe this episode equips you for that good work!

-craig