‘Respect deeply the otherness of the other.’ (Richard Young)
Navigating boundaries is a critical skill in action learning. Anne Katharine describes this phenomenon succinctly in the subtitle of her book: Where You End and I Begin (2000). Incorporate Psychology provides a useful explanation of different kinds of relational boundaries and what can go wrong if they become blurred, enmeshed or rigid. Khalil Gibran writes poetically on this same theme in The Prophet (1923): ‘Let there be spaces in your togetherness. Let the winds of the heavens dance between you…Even as the strings of the lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.’
In action learning, a variety of boundaries can emerge in a group and need our attention for this work to be effective. The facilitator and participant group need to learn to navigate them skilfully including: their respective roles and responsibilities; their places and times of meetings; their accountabilities to any wider stakeholders; the scope or parameters of issues to focus on; their agreements on what will remain confidential and to whom. Further boundaries include those between the facilitator and group, and those between different group participants and roles.
At deeper human levels, Gestalt psychology speaks of risks of confluence, where a boundary is dissolved and the quality of healthy contact in a group is compromised. The peers and presenter need to differentiate between, for instance: what’s purely here-and-now and what’s transference from the past; what’s the peers’ own stuff and what’s that of the presenter; what’s just about the presenter and what’s a parallel manifestation of his or her wider contextual, systemic or cultural influences. Managing boundaries is, we discover, a key dimension to success in this field.
Nick Wright is a Director at Action Learning Associates….
