I have always been fascinated by our collective ability to create, and give meaning, to boundaries.

This human superpower became visible to me one day during a basketball tournament. Between games, the players’ siblings would run around and let off steam, but as soon as the teams started their official warm-ups, the children were expected to respect the lines on the floor, which separated the players from the spectators. Some of the youngest children didn’t seem to understand the relevance of these unremarkable demarcations. In gyms like this, there tend to be a lot of lines that simply get ignored – for instance the volleyball lines that are inevitably painted in high-school gyms.

Other children had internalized the directive, however. They would run right up to the court, and then almost bouncing off the social force field, turn around and remain on the safer side of the line. At times, the slightly older children demonstrated their worldliness by helping the littles understand this enduring aspect of their social environment.

As I watched, I was struck with a question that continues to plague me – “do I recognize the boundaries that I have accepted, and encourage others to accept, as our enduring reality?”

As we mature, these types of boundaries move from the life of games to the game of life. They delineate our work spaces, defining for instance who sits on which floor of the corporate headquarters. They can take on enough power to determine a lifetime of opportunities – as in whether one’s home falls within a “good school district” or the “wrong side of the tracks.”

One of the things that captivates me about social boundaries is how fully they are normalized and become the basis for subsequent rules and cultural expectations. Take the practice of “redlining” in the U.S. from 1934-1968. With the involvement of the Federal Housing Administration, banks drew lines on maps to determine where they would lend mortgages to black families – essentially assuring separate white neighborhoods and black neighborhoods by rule. This was adjoined with a corollary cultural expectation – if black people weren’t living in white neighborhoods, then there was no reason for a black person to linger there, especially after dark. Some “sundown towns” proceeded to make it illegal for a black person to be in a white neighborhood at night. But even in municipalities that didn’t, a call to the police would very effectively enforce this cultural expectation.

Today, the power of these historical boundaries can echo in people’s perceptions about the dangers of “driving while black” or renting an Airbnb as an African-American in upscale American towns.

I recall this history and current disquiet to remind those of us in leadership positions to think critically about the rules we find ourselves enforcing. When we apply “systems thinking” to our analysis of everyday rules and expectations, we realize that our rules – and the way that have been utilized over time – inevitably reinforce the status quo.

Even our national borders, as crucial as they are, are essentially the cartological equivalent of the line on the school gym floor. And our experience as spectators or players (or even referees) inform our relationship with the line, even as we have internalized its power.

I am not going to use this space to make a case for or against any specific border policy. That’s not my role on behalf of Leadership Eastside (LE). But I am going to remind us that the power of any boundary is leadership’s enforcement of its meaning using the powers of influence (as fellow siblings navigating the ways of the world) and/or authority (parents, referees, and eventually armed forces).

There is a staggering line early in the primary textbook used by LE, “The Practice of Adaptive Leadership.” It reads, “And one of the most seductive ways your organization rewards you for doing exactly what it wants—to provide operational excellence in executing directions set by others—is to call you a ‘leader.’”

The cold, hard reality is that when we persuade and supervise people to follow rules set by others, those who laud us are encouraging us to continue to reinforce the current outcomes of the existing system – whether that is their intention or not.

Many times, the current outcomes are exactly what we want. And often, many of the people we lead benefit when we clearly articulate and enforce the rules handed to us by precedence or history.

But sometimes, if we apply a clear-eyed analysis of the origin and consistent outcomes of the boundaries we are called to protect, we will find that we have been seduced into executing plans set by those whose intent might have been good, but whose impact is no longer defensible.

And as we judge the people advocating one national border policy or another, let’s be sure to turn appropriate attention to the history and impact of the boundaries and expectations we find ourselves reinforcing locally every day.

Those lines on the floor define reality for the people around us. Let’s not seduce ourselves into believing we have no responsibility for who ends up as winners, losers, or people who never see themselves as equal players in the game.

The lines painted on the gym floor, written in an employee handbook, or adopted in a municipal code, are only as powerful as the people who agree to enforce them. I encourage us all to consider critically, enforce deliberately and courageously dissent, dismantle and openly disregard rules that your analysis – and your heart – tell you are rigged against your brothers’ and sisters’ ability to fairly play the game.

Let’s make sure the lines we defend are defensible.

For the rules we choose to play by today will create the outcomes that will be judged by history.

James Whitfield is the president and CEO of Leadership Eastside. For more information, visit www.leadershipeastside.com.