Boundaries need the counterbalance of responsibilities.

“Demanding your rights without accepting your responsibilities isn’t freedom, it’s adolescence.”

I saw this on a picket sign during the Covid masks/vaccines dramas, and it's stuck with me since.

It’s punchy, provocative, and deeply relevant to culture and psychological safety.

Because somewhere along the way, we’ve started talking about workplace culture as though it’s something you receive.

Psychological safety. Flexibility. Boundaries. The right to speak up. The right to be heard.

Yes. Those matter.

Yes, employers owe you things.

You should be able to give feedback without retaliation.

You should be protected from bullying.

You should have clarity, fairness, and dignity.

But culture is not a product you consume.

It’s a system you participate in.

Resilience and psychological safety are team sports.

If all we do is take, take, take, that’s not community, it’s entitlement.

And I don’t say that lightly.

Many of the people entering our workplaces recently were, quite literally, adolescents not that long ago. They’ve grown up in a world saturated with messaging about individual rights, personal boundaries, and radical authenticity.

Some of that shift is healthy. Long overdue.

But without the counterbalance of responsibility, it destabilises teams.

1. Setting boundaries at 5pm on a Friday is healthy.

   Unless your hard exit means four other people now stay an extra hour covering what you didn’t finish.

   
   

2. Demanding the right to express your opinion is healthy.

   Unless you can’t tolerate someone expressing an honest opinion about your opinion.

   
   

3. Feeling entitled to be your authentic self at work is healthy.

   Until that authenticity shows up as unmanaged moods, chronic lateness, or sharpness under pressure that other people have to absorb.

   
   

4. Holding firm on psychological safety is healthy.

   But only if you’re equally committed to protecting others from your own snappiness, defensiveness, or eye-rolling.

Culture is reciprocal, as is psychological safety.

Psychological safety does not mean freedom from discomfort.

It means we can navigate discomfort without fear of humiliation or retaliation.

There is a difference.

In healthy teams, we talk about your rights AND your responsibilities.

You have the right to boundaries.

You have the responsibility to consider the system.

You have the right to feedback.

You have the responsibility to hear feedback.

You have the right to support.

You have the responsibility to contribute.

When leaders (or teams) only focus on what the organisation owes people, they create dependency.

When leaders only focus on what people owe the organisation, they create resentment.

The sweet spot is mutual accountability.

That’s adulthood - where boundaries need the counterbalance of responsibilities. And adulthood, individually and collectively, is where sustainable culture lives.

Not in performative safety or rigid individualism. But in a shared understanding that freedom without responsibility isn’t culture. It’s adolescence.