The Art of Setting Boundaries

Boundaries come up time and time again when I am working with clients. The further you climb the leadership ladder, the trickier it can seem to keep any kind of grasp on them. And yet the more important it is to maintain them. Otherwise you run the risk of ending up overwhelmed, burning out or underperforming because your days are spent dancing to other peoples tune rather than doing what’s needed for your role

Generally, people are pretty clear they need to have good boundaries. They’re a little less clear on how to go about creating them. And often the million dollar question is how the hell to actually maintain them. So let’s dig in and explore

What even are boundaries?

Even though boundaries get talked about a lot, the answer to this question can be a bit murky. So it helps to define it before trying to set them. Boundaries are simply expectations by another name. They can be expectations you place on yourself (about working hours, ways of working, what you will or won’t accept from other people)

They can also be expectations that relate to how you interact with your team and how they interact with you and each other. If someone can cross a line then that’s a boundary right there

The need for boundaries often comes up for clients because they feel overwhelmed and / or knackered after ending up with too much on their plate

How to start creating them?

Before you start creating boundaries, there are some questions it can be useful to answer. Let’s start with some practical ones. The juicy stuff about mindset comes later

• What boundaries do you already know you want to put in place?
• What would you set if it was easy to set them?
• Who do you most need to set boundaries with?
• What pushback or challenge might you get from other people if you put new boundaries in place?
• How could you avoid that or handle it constructively?
• What are the distractions that draw you away from maintaining good boundaries?

Thinking through the practicalities often creates some straightforward actions that people can put in place pretty quickly. Things like limiting working hours or days, declining meetings that they don’t need to go to, working in a private space when they need to concentrate, and delegating more. None of it is rocket science but if you don’t take the time to consider it, then habit has a nasty way of keeping you doing what you’ve been doing rather than what you need to do

Then we have the deeper questions that relate to mindset. Because very often the practical stuff is all well and good, but sometimes it’s easier to avoid the risk of kickback rather than implement boundaries. Fears, doubts and deeper seated stuff can be at play when you know you want (or need) better boundaries but it still aint happening ?

Some questions to ask yourself if you’re in this boat and need to up the motivation to do what you’ve promised yourself you are going to do

• What example are you setting to other people by not implementing boundaries?
• What are you gaining by not setting them?
• What are you losing out on?
• Who is gaining from your lack of boundaries?
• What might change for you if you set & maintained the boundaries you want?

Some of these can be pretty confronting (anyone else wincing at the one about setting an example?!). Others might need a bit of thought.

The question about what you’re gaining by not setting them can seem daft when you’re clear on what you are losing out on. ?Yet when you’re reluctant to take action or make a change, it’s almost always because it’s more comfortable to keep the status quo than to make the change stick

Some of the drivers I see for leaders taking on too much and not setting the boundaries they need include

• They value being liked too much to risk being unpopular
• They have a perfectionist streak
• They enjoy the sense of challenge
• They crave variety and don’t want to let go of stuff that’s interesting but not important
• It’s an ego stroke to be asked for advice or to take on new projects
• They’re competitive and driven to stay ahead of their peers
• They don’t know how to say no
• They don’t want to ‘dump’ on other people by delegating or passing work over
• They find it hard to ask for help / admit they need it

If some of these drivers are at play for you, then having the self-awareness and willingness to acknowledge it to yourself is key. I speak from experience here – I kept going with barely any boundaries for waaaay too long and it didn’t end well…

Practical Strategies

So once you know what boundaries you want or need and you recognise why some of the implementation might be tough, let’s look at some ways to make life a bit easier. Some of these are about freeing up time and energy, others are about sticking to your guns so you don’t fall back to old ways

1.??????If you know you want to reduce working hours, (especially if you have a perfectionist streak and tend to spend time on detail that goes above and beyond expectations), get ruthless with prioritising and force yourself to reduce over delivery.

Ask yourself the question

‘If I only had X hours in my working week, what would I do?’

Make X smaller than the number of hours you’ve actually got – the point here is forcing yourself to consider how you would work if there was a genuine time constraint. What would you not do and what would you reduce standards on? What would you delegate or postpone?

2.??????Reflect on how you communicate with people who tread on your boundaries. This might relate to the way people treat you, or to the workload expectations you’re under.

It can be easy to either vent to other people (and not front up to the person who’s causing you an issue), or to address it with a softly-softly communication approach for fear of being seen as strident or harsh.

Avoiding it by venting to others can either let people off the hook or be unfair to them – they might not even realise they have trampled on your boundaries. And with the attempt to soften the blow, messages can become blurred. A no can seem like a maybe, and a maybe like a yes

Being clear and straightforward can still be done with empathy and self-awareness. Assertive is not the same as aggressive

3.??????Learn to say No. I’ll be honest here, if you have even the slightest tendency towards being a people pleaser, this is not easy. But it can be a game changer.

If you find it hard, there are a couple of ways to start to make it easier. You can buy time by using the ‘yes, but’ principle rather than giving a flat no. It’s based on the idea that saying yes and then immediately placing conditions on it isn’t really a yes after all

If you’re asked to take on additional workload this could mean saying something like ‘in principle yes, I’d love to take that on. Let me just reflect on how it would work alongside what I’ve already got on and come back to you’. Or ‘It’s flattering you think I could take the lead on that, but with my current workload I am going to struggle to give it the attention it will need’

Another tactic is to get into the habit of asking yourself ‘If I say yes to this, what am I saying no to?’. You might think you’re not great at saying no, but by default when you say yes to something there is always a cost associated with it. By saying yes to working an extra 2 hours a night, you’re probably saying no to time with friends, family or for yourself

4.??????Find the balance between consistency and rigidity. For boundaries to stick, you need consistency. An expectation isn’t an expectation if it keeps changing. But the pressure of trying to get boundaries exactly right and then maintain them all the time can add to the overwhelm that’s already there

One approach that can help with this is to think of the poker chip analogy. The idea is to think of each task you have to do or each commitment you make as being a poker chip. You’ve got a limited number of them and you want to either keep or grow the stack rather than spend them all and go bust

You can be flexible and give a couple away or gamble them from time to time, but if you do it too often you’re liable to burn out. It’s about being intentional with when and how you flex your boundaries, recognising that sometimes the payoff is worth it and sometimes you’re just going to deplete your resources

So there we have it. My top tips on the art of boundary setting.

If you know it’s an area you need some help with I’m only a DM away. If you REALLY know it’s an area you need some help with you can skip the DM and book a Practical Leadership Power Hour for ￡199