We live in a world of vast collaborative potential. Yet, when times are tough, our natural tendency is to hunker down . All too often, we focus on what divides us.
Battle lines are drawn. Organizational silos get taller. Worldviews shrink, attitudes narrow, and positions tighten. Without meaning to, we find ourselves separated by the natural boundaries of most organizations.
All too often, these boundaries become borders, splitting groups into Us vs. Them . Without boundary spanning skills, people struggle with fractured relationships, divisive conflict, diminished resources, and suboptimal results. Innovation grinds to a halt as groups compete with one another, instead of collaborating together.
The flip side is also true. Boundaries are also frontiers — a place of emergent opportunity and new possibility. Where group boundaries collide and intersect, there is potential for new ways of working and collaboration. By definition, boundary spanning is when leaders can work with a wide variety of others of differing positions, backgrounds, and locations.
The most effective leaders are successful at spanning 5 common organizational boundaries , whether among peers ( horizontal boundaries); between levels of the org chart ( vertical boundaries); with external groups like customers or the supply chain ( stakeholder boundaries); across age, gender, culture, ideology, etc. ( demographic boundaries); and across locations ( geographic boundaries). That’s why boundary spanning is the key to breaking down silos at your organization and pushing it forward into the future.
Your leaders need to be able to practice these 6 key boundary spanning leadership practices:
Start breaking down silos at your organization by equipping your team with these boundary spanning skills. We can deliver our world-class, research-backed boundary spanning leadership content to them — or you can.
We can equip your facilitators to deliver a workshop or internal training on boundary spanning, either online or in-person, whichever you prefer:
Access everything your internal HR or team leaders need to upskill your people by holding a leadership workshop on this topic
Let’s talk about how you can leverage this proven leadership program content on boundary spanning leadership in a custom internal development initiative
Or, we can incorporate boundary spanning as part of a larger leadership development initiative for your organization:
Combine with other topic modules and interactive experiences into a customized learning journey for your leaders
Our highly personalized leadership programs prepare leaders to address common challenges with boundary spanning
Organizations who have partnered with us to upskill their people’s boundary spanning leadership skills consistently tell us the same thing: their experience with 足球电子竞技(济南)官方入口 made a significant impact on their culture — and their bottom line.
But don’t just take our word for it — take theirs.
“The unit-of-effort, team-of-teams approach made us twice as powerful as we would have otherwise been.”
General Lloyd Austin
U.S. Department of Defense
Boundary Spanning in a High-Pressure, High-Stakes Environment
“There are a lot of positive changes. People have started thinking more about communications and teams are more integrated. There were silos between teams, and right now teams are talking to each other.”
Program Participant
Merrimack Pharmaceuticals
Our experts are here to help. Let’s have a conversation about breaking down silos at your organization and how our boundary spanning leadership content could help support your development initiatives.
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Package our research-backed boundary spanning leadership content with other proven leadership development topics and solutions for a customized scalable solution perfect for your organization’s unique needs, context, and culture. Related topics include:
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