Leaders and Limits: How to Set Limits and Impose Consequences with Empathy, Attention and Respect

© 2025 by Bill Eddy, LCSW, Esq.

Leaders set the tone for the culture of their organizations. The leader plays a large role, whether one is a parent in a family; a manager or administrator at work; or head of a homeowners association, condo board, or city council. In order to maintain a healthy and motivated organization, it’s up to the leader to demonstrate how to set limits and impose consequences when necessary. Unfortunately, in today’s world of high-conflict people who regularly push the limits, many leaders are unprepared for this newly essential leadership task. 

This article addresses some of the issues about setting limits that leaders in organizations face and also describes our training called New Ways for Work® for Leaders. This article draws on some of the concepts described in our new book SLIC Solutions™ for Conflict: Setting Limits and Imposing Consequences in 2½ Steps, which can be helpful for anyone anywhere and will be available in November, 2025.  

High-Conflict Behavior

High-conflict behavior includes a preoccupation with blaming others, a lot of all-or-nothing thinking, unmanaged emotions, and extreme behaviors that 90% of people would never engage in. People with such behavior can show up anywhere in an organization and create difficulties, either as the lowest person in the pecking order, someone in the middle, or even those at or near the top. People with repeated patterns of high-conflict behavior may be 5-10% of adults, so that your likelihood of having to deal with them is very high. There appears to be an increase worldwide in high-conflict behavior since Covid.

Take, for example, a low-level employee who is caught taking office supplies home that he doesn’t need for work. Or a manager who is selling real estate during his work time. Or a surgeon who screams at the nurses in the Operating Room that they are idiots. None of these behaviors are the end of the world and these workers may be very good at their jobs. But these behaviors are also problematic. Should a workplace leader intervene? And how should they do it?

The Assertive Approach

Many leaders have not been trained in management skills. Some of them tend to take a passive approach, which means they often avoid dealing with such problems because there are always more pressing priorities. They just don’t like to confront people and don’t want to make people angry at them. 

Other leaders take an aggressive approach, criticizing the employee personally and sometimes publicly. They question the employee’s competence, intelligence, commitment and personal morals. These leaders may believe that humiliating someone will motivate them to act better, although that rarely is the result except in movies and TV shows.

The most successful leaders take an assertive approach. They don’t delay dealing with problems because they know that they may grow much worse. But they also don’t attack the person, they focus on behavior. They want to know the facts of the situation and then want to motivate behavior change once they have enough information. The SLIC Solutions method encourages this approach.

Sooner Rather Than Later

Setting limits and, when necessary, imposing consequences is better done sooner rather than later. In scenario after scenario of difficult organizational behavior we have addressed as High Conflict Institute, we have found that leaders have waited too long to deal with these situations; sometimes a year or two or three. In some cases, good employees have left because they saw that high-conflict behavior was tolerated, even when they reported it. In other cases, high-conflict employees have felt empowered by the lack of consequences and escalated their difficult behavior. 

In cases where organizations have been sued, it is not unusual to read the history and find that the problems went back several years before they were seriously confronted. Often this is because the organization wants to give the difficult person a chance—or two or three or four chances. Ironically, once high-conflict behavior reveals itself as a pattern of ongoing behavior, it is very unlikely to change. One of the characteristics of people with high-conflict personalities is that they rarely reflect on their own behavior (it’s always someone else’s fault) and they rarely change. Once this pattern is clear, perhaps after being given one chance to change that had no effect, there is little benefit in additional chances. Yet that means that leaders need to take uncomfortable action sooner. Let me reassure you it will be harder later on, not easier.

Step 1: Setting Limits 

Most organizations have rules and policies that lay out what is acceptable behavior and what is not. Most employees follow the rules. Occasionally, a new situation arises that no one faced before so that the rules are not clear. However, the most common situation for setting limits today is that someone violates an obvious limit (like taking supplies, selling real estate during work hours, or screaming at nurses). In these situations, it makes sense for a leader to talk with the person and explain what the limit it. 

“Hey buddy. I heard you’re taking supplies home. If that’s true, that’s not allowed and you’ll get in trouble for that. So bring them back and don’t do that in the future. I’m just trying to help you out and give you the heads up. I want you to succeed here.”  

In some situations that’s all that it takes. However, with high-conflict people, that is usually not enough. They often just become more secretive or persistent in their negative behavior. What they really need is to know that there are clear and credible consequences waiting for them if they violate the limit. This is why we talk about SLIC: Setting Limits AND Imposing Consequences.

Step 2: Imposing Consequences

When you set a limit it helps to think through what the consequence will be if the person violates that limit. Then you can warn the person about the possible consequence when you set the limit or wait to see if the limit is violated after the first warning. Sometimes the warning is enough to get their behavior back in line. But you have to be prepared to impose the consequence, otherwise your threat will have no credibility.

In thinking through your consequence, we have five questions in the SLIC Solutions for Conflict book:

1. Is the consequence proportional to the limit that I have set?
2. Have I considered both positive and negative consequences?
3. Is the consequence safe?
4. Am I ready to enforce my consequence?
5. Do I need to get help in imposing my consequence?

There isn’t room in this article to explain each one and give examples (there are over 30 examples in the book), but you can immediately get the idea and ask yourself these questions when you are thinking of consequences.

Step 2½: EAR Statements (or Not)

We call this Step 2½ because about half the time it helps to give an EAR Statement (one that shows empathy, attention, or respect) and about half the time it’s not advised. When it helps is when you have an ongoing relationship and you want to encourage the person to change their behavior. For example, in the above scenario of taking home supplies, the leader said “I want you to succeed here,” he or she was giving an EAR statement because there was some empathy shown for the employee. You don’t have to show all three of these for an EAR statement; a sentence of empathy, and/or attention, and/or respect is often enough. 

However, in some situations, whether ongoing or not, the person needing limits and consequences is so manipulative that it is not advised to give an EAR statement, because they will tie you up in an argument about your empathy, attention or respect for them.  “If you really respected me, you would cancel this consequence. I’m going to tell everyone that you are really not the nice person you pretend to be.”

Healthcare Leader Example

Healthcare is one of the areas where there has been a lot of recent education about conflict resolution and the importance of respectful behavior. In this hypothetical example, a hospital administrator sets limits on a surgeon whose behavior has stepped out of bounds.

HOSPITAL ADMINISTRATOR: “Good afternoon Dr. Star. Thank you for coming in today.”  

1. STAR (slouches, spreading out over two chairs): “Why am I here? You know I’ve got a very busy surgery schedule and just finished my day.”

ADMIN: “Ok, I’ll get right to the point. We value your time and your work is a very important part of this hospital.”

1. STAR: “You’re damn straight it is. I bring in about 10 million a year in surgeries for this hospital.”

Step 2½: EAR Statement 

ADMIN: “You’re absolutely right and we want you to be happy. We are very pleased with the quality of your surgeries, and the world is better off for all the people you have helped – whose lives you have saved!”

Step 1: Setting Limits

ADMIN (continues): “The Medical Director asked me to speak with you about a problem with the nursing staff. Have you heard about any problems with the nursing staff?”

1. STAR: “Oh, they’re always complaining about something. What is it this time?”

ADMIN: “Communication. They’re telling us that nurses are quitting because of how you communicate with them. But that’s something that can easily be improved. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but many healthcare systems are hiring physician coaches to help their best doctors with their communication skills. We want you to meet with one of these coaches.”

1. STAR (sits up): “I won’t do it. What can they teach me? What are they (sneers) – social workers?”

ADMIN: “Some are social workers and other professionals who all specialize in working with doctors and managers in healthcare. They understand the pressures you’re under and they have worked with many doctors who say they liked them – that they really helped them.”

1. STAR: “What do the nurses complain about – specifically?”

ADMIN: “That you yell at them and sometimes throw things at them in the operating room. That you scream that they’re idiots. It’s hard to keep nurses when that happens – and it’s several that have told us this. But we respect you so much that we think you can change this behavior.”

Step 2: Imposing Consequences

ADMIN (continues): “Otherwise, the Medical Director tells me there will need to be a hospital Board meeting about you – and we’re hoping to avoid that. And we hope you’ll want to avoid that too. So what do you say? Can we get you started with the physician coaching within the next 7 days?”

1. STAR: “How long do I need to go to this (sneers) ‘physician coaching?’”

ADMIN: “It’s at least six weekly sessions, but you can decide if you want more. It’s up to you and the coach. We just get a notice you completed six sessions. We don’t hear what you talk about at all. It’s all strictly confidential. We’ll just notice if things get better with the nurses. I can give you a list with the names of three coaches. The one you pick will notify me when you begin and when you have completed six sessions. I think you’ll find it really helpful. The other doctors have said that it’s helped make things easier for themselves as well as the staff around them.”

1. STAR (leans over): “Give me the list.”

ADMIN gives him the list and he walks out without saying another word.

Discussion

This example demonstrates how the consequence of having a meeting about him with the hospital Board of Directors was more undesirable to him than going to the coaching. Without the threat of that consequence, the limit that was set of being required to get coaching may not have worked. Also, you can see how the EAR statement right at the beginning seemed important to him. This also demonstrates how helpful it was that the administrator was prepared for each of his challenges with a ready response.   

Coaching as a consequence of poor behavior for valued employees is becoming more popular. Rather than firing someone like this, it gives them a chance to change and improve. This is a common situation in high-tech companies and other organizations where they want to keep people with specialized training and experience, but they can’t tolerate their poor behavior. With High Conflict Institute with have a method for employees called New Ways for Work® Coaching and we also provide coaching for leaders who want to or need to strengthen their conflict resolution skills.

Conclusion

SLIC Solutions in three steps is a simple method to understand but takes practice to implement. Setting limits on its own is often insufficient when it comes to high-conflict people and their high-conflict behavior. Yet many organizations and leaders hesitate to impose consequences until their situations have gotten much worse. Setting limits and imposing consequences early on can help turn around poor behavior or make it clear that someone does not fit in your organization before other people leave or things escalate into lawsuits. 

If you are interested in learning more about High Conflict Institute’s training for leaders and workplace coaches, please go to: https://highconflictinstitute.com/new-ways