This week Gomolemo Makolomako looks at the management of that all-important area, relationships. The management of relationships of all forms has everything to do with the type of relationship one is referring to, as well as the type of boundary one decides to set for each relationship.

Boundaries in relationships are important because they determine how much interaction one decides to have within each relationship group and also how much commitment and responsibility to provide.

As an example, the most important relationship for most people would be their immediate family, which could be sub-divided into ones’ partner, children, parents, siblings and additional extended family members. The level of responsibility in this type of relationship is usually quite high and involves a lot of nurturing and commitment. One may choose to have more boundaries and less responsibility with certain extended family such as aunts, uncles and cousins depending on the closeness of the relationship. However, it can sometimes prove to be a difficult task for you to set boundaries with family members, depending on the structure of the family. There are those families that do not give their children an opportunity to live their own lives by continuously making them feel like they owe them something. In some instances, children are not expected to grow up as their families make them feel powerless in some ways.

Setting boundaries with family is a difficult task and can be seen to be alienation by some; however, it is also important to understand traditions, cultures and generational practices because you often find that your parents are dramatising their parents’ and grandparents’ behaviour.

The next most important relationship group tends to consist of close friends that one interacts with on a frequent basis, which can require a similar level of responsibility to that of close family and sometimes may even be higher. It is much easier to set boundaries with friends; these can also be difficult because friends often create higher expectations and don’t know when and where to stop.

Boundaries for men and women in close friendships can often be quite different as men often don’t see the need to interact with a male friend on a daily basis, whilst women tend to be more sociable and can keep female friends quite close with fewer boundaries.

After family and close friends we have to develop workplace relationships and it is this group of relationships that often requires the most boundaries, as we spend a lot of time with the people we work with and yet often remain generally detached from developing close relationships with everyone in our workplace.

Workplace relationships can sometimes cross over into more serious ones, but most people are aware that it can be difficult to become more seriously involved with someone they work with as it can be very uncomfortable to continue to work with someone if the relationship sours.

In South Africa, there is also still the issue of race, and so while the different cultures may interact in the workplace there are often boundaries that are infrequently crossed outside the workplace. Many people in societies like the UK have developed an excellent ability to cross cultures and to work, socialise and date across cultures due to better communication between the groups, resulting in a higher affinity; many South Africans have still not integrated well enough to remove these barriers.

Business relationships are another group that people will seek to build and nurture especially from the viewpoint of developing and maintaining business. Furthermore, as with all relationships, there are varying degrees of barriers that one erects and none more so than in business relationships, as people see this group as a high value group and so will often seek to keep this type of relationship very professional and with a high degree of boundaries.

With the advent of social networking platforms like MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn & Twitter the need for barriers in relationships is as real in the virtual world as it is in the real world. These sites have helped to build relationships tremendously and allowed families, friends and business colleagues to keep in touch no matter what the location is.

Because LinkedIn is more a business relationship building site there is a high degree of professionalism and boundaries, while a site like Facebook can enable access to all the other types of relationships in one place and will therefore require more responsibility to manage relationships correctly whilst also keeping the correct type of boundaries in place.

Different types of boundaries we can set to ensure that our relationships remain healthy could include:

• Not engaging in a romantic relationship with an immediate colleague/ boss/manager, supplier, business partner.

• Standing your ground, especially with friends and family;

• Being able to say no without feeling guilty;

• Not tolerating abuse or disrespect.

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