Boundaries: The Struggle is Real

Audio with Captions:

Transcript:

[00:00:00] It might be super obvious to many of you that are listening that I do not write these audio blogs out as scripts that I just sit and read. They are my legitimate, honest, real thoughts at the time that I record the blogs. And yes, I could polish them and I could create a more structured content, but ,the reality is I want to just share my thoughts with you. In the moment as they happen.

[00:00:33] So today I wanted to talk about boundaries. And this is one that touches our personal lives. Our professional lives. Every aspect of everything we do in every relationship.

[00:00:48] And I have met people who are really good at setting boundaries in their personal lives and then not so good at setting them in their professional lives. And vice versa. But I rarely find people myself included who are pro level at setting boundaries. For me, I tend to let my boundaries slide in my personal life.

[00:01:11] And I let people push those boundaries and jump over the boundaries way too often because I want to be helpful and I want to be kind and help people with the problems that they're having. But that's not always the best approach for them or for me. And if people continually push our boundaries, then we find ourselves in a place where we are drained, strained, stressed, burned out, or worse.

[00:01:45] So let's talk about professional boundaries today. An expression that I use quite often with people when I am talking about professional boundaries or work culture is "start as you intend to go forward." Because with anything, it is always easier to start out the way that you want things to happen or to be set up than it is to try to reverse course later and change them.

[00:02:14] So if you have boundaries as a person and your team has boundaries as a group, it is really important to identify and address those early on so that you know, when you're approaching the boundaries or when someone is trying to cross them. But more importantly, you have discussed what you're going to do about them when that does happen. Because when you are collectively working together as a team, and you all understand where the team's boundaries are, then you can also collectively protect those boundaries.

[00:02:46] So here are a few examples of boundaries or boundary issues.

[00:02:51] A few months ago, I was doing a workshop with an organization on leadership and there was an underlying current of people working too many hours, overstretching, overreaching, potentially not putting out the quality of work that they wanted because they were always pushed on deadlines. And so I finally asked the group to raise their hands if they had a set time that they went home every day or that they logged off or finished work every day.

[00:03:27] And over a group of 10, only one person raised their hand and her justification was because she had to get to daycare in time to pick up her daughter. It had nothing to do with work setting boundaries at work. So that told me a lot about the people in the workshop. But it also told me a lot about the work culture. Now, I don't know the organization well enough to know if it was something that was implied or was a stated policy that people were expected to work hours. But I will tell you this. When I find an organization where people are working an inordinate amount of hours to try to keep up with deadlines or to finish work, it is often because there is no prioritization of the work. And realistic expectations have not been set on the time to complete the work so everything becomes a firestorm. That is not healthy and it is not sustainable. As leaders, we have a responsibility to understand the volume of work, the priorities of that work, and the capabilities and capacities of our workforce. And if we do not, we will constantly be putting our teams in a position where they cannot complete the work in what you have set as the timeline. Also no one should be arbitrarily setting deadlines for the work product.

[00:05:08] The team should be intimately involved in understanding what the assignment is, what is involved in completing it, and their estimate of how fast they can get the work finished. And it needs to be a realistic estimate, not some inflated, fluffy thing that people just throw out because they think that's when they're supposed to have something finished.

[00:05:33] That's one form of boundaries with a team. They have to informed enough and strong enough to be able to set realistic boundaries around the work that they're doing. And to do that, they have to understand the priorities of the organization and how they align with the vision and mission of the organization. If they don't, then everything is an emergency. Everything is a crisis. And everyone is always flapping their wings, trying to get things done.

[00:06:02] Another example that came up in a different workshop was someone asking how they navigate the actual work that they need to do when they are constantly in meetings. Now someone might be asking, what does that have to do with boundaries? It has a lot to do with boundaries. If you were constantly in meetings, how are you actually spending any quality time on the work that you have to do? Where boundaries come in is when we look at whether or not an employee feels that they have the ability to refuse a meeting invite.

[00:06:46] And that has to do with our culture of safety and the autonomy that teams have. If I am invited to a meeting and I just show up because of who invited me and I don't really understand what the purpose of the meeting is or what the outcomes are, then I'm just wasting time when I could be doing work that I do understand.

[00:07:08] And that I know needs to be accomplished. Our meetings should always use a P.O.W.E.R. Start so that we're clear on the purpose, the outcomes and why people need to attend. But also, we need to trust that our employees are able to decide where their value is going to be greatest. And if sitting in a status meeting, which quite frankly should be outlawed, is not beneficial to them, then they should have the power to be able to say, "I have a boundary here. And my boundary is that I do not attend meetings that do not have a P.O.W.E.R. Start or where I cannot clearly determine the value and the purpose of the meeting."

[00:07:54] This person that brought this up in the workshop was constantly being dragged into meetings. And then people were using a scheduling tool that the company used to schedule her time for the actual work that she needed to do. So she's in all of these meetings, but people are scheduling her time to do work product without ever talking to her about that work product. One of the mechanisms to help her with her boundaries was that she would work with her supervisor to find a way to communicate to the people asking for her time that if they did not have a kickoff or introductory meeting with her to discuss the work and to get realistic expectations on the time it took to complete the work, then she could decline the work until that had happened.

[00:08:46] And I haven't touched base with this person for a while, because life has taken them in a different direction. But I hope that that person's direct leadership was able to influence because quite frankly, that is something that should have been put in place from day one. How can you have outside teams scheduling your team's time without discussing what was involved?

[00:09:15] That's like saying, "I want you to make a five course dinner, but I've decided is only going to take you an hour to do that." That's not realistic, and you've not involved the person who has to do the actual work.

[00:09:29] Boundaries on our time are the things that we allow shift the most. We're afraid to say no, whether it's in our personal time or our professional time, and as a result, we end up doing things that we don't want to do. We have all gone to events or parties with friends that we didn't really want to go to because we didn't want to say no and we allowed the person to cross our boundaries and convince us to do it. The same thing happens in the workplace.

[00:10:00] Employees need to feel comfortable saying no. But leaders also need to create that culture and lead by example.

[00:10:12] I had someone send me a message yesterday asking me to change a presentation. I sent it a message back saying I was not going to be able to get to the changes that late in the day, I would do it in the morning. And the person responded to me. "That's okay because I'm not going to send a work email to my boss at this time of the day because it sets a bad precedent.

[00:10:39] That's an example of a good boundary. You don't want to be sending things after hours to your employees or to your peers, because it makes it seem like you don't have any boundaries and you're not turning off. We all need an end to the work day. And this particular email was not critical, was not high priority and there was no need to be sending it outside of hours. That person that needed to send the email is also a manager for other people.

[00:11:11] And you want to lead by example and not send emails at random times that would make people think they need to be on duty and responding. Now I've had someone say, "but you know, I have to work when I have a free minute and that's when I need to send the emails." I get it. We have flexible work schedules. We work in different time zones. We're not all working at the same time.

[00:11:37] But our work agreements with our teams need to reflect how we're going to handle those boundaries, such as communication off hours. There's also a way in most email platforms to schedule the email so that they are sent during the work hours or the core hours. And I hope that your teams have set boundaries around your core hours as well, but that's another whole episode I feel.

[00:12:00] I've shared a lot today about boundaries and setting boundaries, and I'm sure there are quite a few of you sitting at the other end of this audio thinking. "Yeah, that's great for her to say, but I'm at this level in the company or I have this to do, or I feel like I'm supposed to be here and I have to get these things done and I have to shift my boundaries."

[00:12:20] Those are convenient excuses. And yes, if you didn't set the boundaries from the beginning, it's hard to reverse and change it, but it can be done. And you are hearing from someone who used to be a mission critical personnel. And I still had boundaries about what time I went home every day and how I was going to handle those emergencies. So it can be done. It takes work. It takes stamina to stay on top of your own boundaries. And it takes commitment to yourself and to your teams to be able to create those lines for those boundaries. We will continue this conversation. I always tend to revisit things because I think of other things to say, but in the meantime, let's go set some boundaries and think about how we want to start the new year.

Weblink to the Recording:

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INDRA A. BOOKS

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