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Why leaders should learn to value the boundary spanners
Published July 3, 2025 in Leadership • 10 min read • 
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Entrepreneurial talent who work with other teams often run into trouble with their managers. Here are ways to get the most out of your ‘boundary spanners’.
The most resilient and innovative organizations work fluidly across internal boundaries. Cross-silo collaboration enables firms to harness diverse perspectives, producing more integrative and impactful ideas. At the heart of this process are “boundary spanners”: employees who connect across departments, bridge expertise, and facilitate knowledge exchange. Yet, despite their value, these employees can unintentionally provoke tension. For managers, the boundary-spanning activities of their subordinates may feel less like a welcome display of taking the initiative and more like a threat to their authority.
In our paper Protecting Their Turf: When and Why Supervisors Undermine Employee Boundary Spanning, we uncovered a surprising dynamic: managers may become obstacles to collaboration across groups. Even when cross-silo work aligns with corporate goals, some supervisors respond with undermining behaviors, driven by fears of losing control, harming their reputations, or diminishing their status. Our study examines when, why, and how managers react negatively to boundary-spanning behavior and what organizations can do to prevent it.
The research: boundary spanners and supervisors
To investigate why supervisors might react negatively to boundary spanners, we conducted a two-part study combining real-world survey data and a controlled vignette experiment. This mixed-method approach allowed us to identify behavioral patterns and the psychological mechanisms driving them.
The first part of our research involved a field study with 302 full-time employees from various industries and organizational settings. Each was asked to reflect on their work routines and report how often they sought advice from colleagues outside their team. This behavior, known as informational boundary spanning, captures the extent to which employees venture across organizational silos in search of knowledge or problem-solving perspectives. We also asked how frequently employees sought advice from their supervisors and whether they experienced undermining behavior from them. Such behavior might include public criticism, exclusion from decision-making processes, or a lack of support in advancing career opportunities.
The results revealed a striking pattern: employees who frequently engaged in boundary spanning were more likely to be undermined by their supervisor when they did not seek “upward” advice. In other words, the positive relationship between boundary spanning and supervisor undermining was stronger when the supervisor was not included in the advice network (represented by the solid line in the graph). This changed when employees sought advice from their supervisor (the dotted line), suggesting that including the supervisor in the boundary-spanning effort, arguably a sign of deference, served as a protective buffer.
The field study did not explain why such behavior occurs, so to address this, we designed a second study involving 410 managers who participated in a scenario-based online experiment. Each was randomly assigned to read a vignette describing a fictional employee. The scenarios varied in two dimensions: whether the employee engaged in boundary spanning and whether they sought advice from their supervisor. Managers were asked to respond to statements measuring their perceptions and intended behaviors. We assessed whether managers felt they had lost control of their team’s image and decision-making, whether they attributed political or malicious motives to the employee’s behavior, or whether they intended to respond with undermining behavior.
The data revealed that managers who read about an employee engaging in boundary spanning without seeking their advice reported a greater sense of losing control over their team. They were likelier to attribute harmful intent, such as political maneuvering or disloyalty, to the employee. Managers were especially likely to consider undermining their employees when they felt both a loss of control and believed the employee had acted with questionable intent.
These results suggest that managers’ reactions are not purely emotional or impulsive but are shaped by a structured psychological process. When managers are excluded from collaborative decisions or cross-team interactions, they often interpret these actions through the lens of territoriality. They feel they are losing influence over how their team is represented and how decisions are made. If they believe the employee’s motives are self-serving, they retreat into defense mode and take steps to reassert their authority, draw boundaries, and punish perceived disloyalty.
Together, the studies reveal a consistent pattern: when employees reach outside their team for advice without involving their manager, some supervisors respond with defensiveness and even retaliation. But these reactions aren’t arbitrary. They follow a recognizable psychological logic rooted in how managers interpret threats to their authority, identity, and control.
Why managers react defensively
It may seem puzzling that a leader would resist behavior that benefits their teams and organization. Cross-silo collaboration often leads to new ideas, better decisions, and increased learning. Yet our findings show that boundary-spanning behavior can trigger specific psychological responses in managers, particularly when they feel left out. These reactions reflect concerns about authority, alignment, and loyalty. Boundary spanning can be ambiguous for a manager: it can be seen as proactive and prosocial or political and disloyal. The way it is perceived determines how a manager responds. Three mechanisms help explain this dynamic:
1. Perceived loss of control
Many managers view themselves as responsible for their team’s strategic direction and external image. When employees bypass them to collaborate across teams, managers may feel that their influence over key decisions and narratives is slipping away. This perceived loss of control over team boundaries, especially in hierarchies where managerial oversight is emphasized, can trigger defensive behaviors intended to assert authority.
2. Attribution of harmful intent
Managers don’t just respond to what employees do; they respond to what they think it means. If an employee’s boundary-spanning behavior is interpreted as genuine curiosity or collaborative effort, managers may welcome it. But if the same behavior is seen as self-serving, politically motivated, or designed to bypass authority, it becomes a perceived threat. Our study shows that this attribution of harmful intent is a key trigger of undermining responses.
3. Absence of affirmation through upward advice-seeking
When employees seek advice from their supervisor, it signals deference, inclusion, and alignment. This simple act reassures the manager that they remain valued and consulted. In our study, this behavior significantly reduced the likelihood of defensive responses. When that advice element was absent, supervisors were more likely to feel bypassed and react negatively. It’s not just what employees do outside the team; it’s whether they maintain the symbolic link inside it.
These dynamics don’t just affect a single interaction. Over time, they can influence how employees approach collaboration, especially when similar signals repeat across different teams or contexts. Let’s look at what can happen when such reactions become a pattern.
What happens when collaboration is undermined
When managers respond defensively to cross-silo collaboration, the effects may start small (for example, a hesitation to support a new idea or a subtle signal of disapproval), but they rarely stay contained. Over time, these behaviors can discourage initiative, weaken trust across teams, and reduce the likelihood that employees will take the interpersonal risks that cross-silo collaboration requires. What begins as a moment of interpersonal defensiveness can contribute to broader patterns of hesitation, fragmentation, and missed opportunities.
A chilling effect on innovation
Subtle signals from managers can shape what employees are willing to share. When cross-functional efforts are met with skepticism or resistance, even informally, employees take notice. Prior research shows that employees who experience undermining behavior are less likely to trust their leaders or feel safe speaking up. This lack of psychological safety can discourage the behaviors organizations depend on: sharing ideas, testing new approaches, and proposing cross-team solutions.
Initiative slows down
Over time, employees adjust their behavior to fit what the environment seems to reward or punish. When those seeking new perspectives are met with disapproval or subtle resistance, others quickly learn that staying in their lane is safer. Initiative gives way to caution, and learning opportunities are lost. Employees may become more hesitant, less curious, and increasingly disengaged. This gradual withdrawal can reduce energy, job satisfaction, and commitment to the organization.
Adaptability starts to suffer
Teams retreat into their silos when boundary spanning becomes risky. Knowledge remains compartmentalized, and challenges requiring cross-functional solutions are addressed in isolation. As collaboration narrows, the organization becomes less responsive to change, slower to spot emerging trends, less coordinated in decision-making, and more reliant on rigid structures. What suffers is not just speed, but adaptability: the quality organizations need to navigate uncertainty and compete in complex environments.
Hidden costs accumulate
The consequences of managerial defensiveness are rarely captured in formal metrics. Undermining behaviors tend to be subtle: a manager might delay a project involving external collaboration, an employee might be left out of a conversation, or a subtle comment in a team meeting casts doubt on an employee’s motives. The impact of these small acts gradually accumulates and takes a toll. Employees on the receiving end may report greater emotional strain and lower confidence. Talented employees who value autonomy and intellectual freedom may eventually disengage or leave. As more employees disengage or exit, institutional memory fragments, and cross-team coordination suffers. The organization loses the connective tissue that enables collaboration to thrive.
The solution: how to prevent managerial resistance
Our research points to a simple yet powerful insight: inclusion can disarm defensiveness. When employees seek their manager’s advice before or during boundary-spanning activities, it signals respect and alignment. This small gesture reassures managers that they remain part of the process and are not being bypassed or sidelined. It addresses the root of the threat response by preserving the managers’ sense of control and relevance.
What employees can do:
- Involve supervisors early. Don’t wait to be asked: initiate brief, respectful conversations about planned collaborations.
- Clarify intent. Make it clear that the goal is to strengthen the team’s work, not to circumvent authority.
- Acknowledge the supervisor’s role. Ask for their input, credit their support, and reinforce their value in the process.
What managers can do:
- Recognize the impulse to defend territory. Self-awareness is the first step toward supporting, rather than resisting, collaboration.
- Foster openness. Encourage transparency around external relationships, even if they fall outside the formal chain of command.
- Reward initiative. Create a climate where employees feel safe to connect, explore, and bring outside insights into the team.
Three organizational strategies to support this shift
1. Clarify the role of managers in collaboration. Provide clear frameworks for when and how boundary spanning should occur, and explicitly position managers as enablers, not gatekeepers. When expectations are clear, managers are less likely to interpret employee initiative as a threat.
2. Increase visibility without micromanagement. Use shared dashboards, team check-ins, or collaboration tools that keep supervisors in the loop without requiring constant oversight. When managers feel informed, they are less likely to feel excluded or blindsided.
3. Redefine leadership success. Shift the criteria for strong leadership to include enabling innovation, facilitating cross-team work, and creating psychological safety. When these qualities are rewarded, the organization signals that power-sharing is a skill, not a weakness.
Building a culture that supports cross-silo collaboration demands deliberate design. The following practices can help ensure that boundary-spanning behaviors are recognized, supported, and sustained:
- Invest in leadership development. Focus on relational leadership, emotional intelligence, and adaptive power-sharing.
- Reward collaborative behaviors. In performance evaluations, recognize the underlying actions that enable innovation, and not just the outcomes: boundary spanning, knowledge sharing, and mentorship.
- Create forums for open dialogue. Establish cross-functional communities of practice or shared digital platforms where collaboration is visible and valued.
- Foster psychological safety. Support employees in taking interpersonal risks, including reaching across team lines, by reinforcing that initiative is valued, not penalized.
Cross-silo collaboration offers clear benefits for organizations, from unlocking innovation to building adaptability. Yet these outcomes depend on employee initiative and managerial support. To realize the full potential of collaboration, organizations must address the psychological dynamics that shape how it is perceived, especially concerns about control and recognition. When managers feel respected and included, cross-team work shifts from being a perceived threat to a shared opportunity. It’s not enough to tell teams to collaborate; leaders must be prepared to support it, not just in principle, but in practice.
- The research paper Protecting Their Turf: When and Why Supervisors Undermine Employee Boundary Spanning was co-authored by Julija N Mell of the Rotterdam School of Management, Giles Hirst of the Research School of Management, Australia National University, and Andrew Carnegie of Carnegie Consulting Group, Melbourne.
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