The greatest gift you can give yourself and your team is learning to set boundaries.

Boundaries are the rules we set ourself to maintain a sense of self and to help avoid anxiety and overwhelm.

For many, boundaries sound so fixed but remember they offer you space. And space is crucial if you are to lead effectively. Reactive leaders will too often say ‘I will when...’ Proactive leaders, who have a vision for what they want to happen, put in place the systems, boundaries, calendar blocks. Why? Because change is hard. Decide how you want to be, how you want to behave and create around that. Make it as easy as you can for yourself.

And not when you reach forty or fifty people in your team, but now.

Be Proactive

Decide what leader you want to be, what boundaries you need and set them from the start. But where do you begin? This is where it’s very tempting to read lots of business leadership books trying to find the solution. Good luck with that! Amazon will be thrilled to keep selling you the books, but the answer to boundary settings is as unique as you.

Take a look around at peers or industry leaders, Who is doing it well? Who do you not want to emulate, who makes themselves too available, or looks exhausted? Perhaps there are no role models, and you need to lead the way.

Establishing boundaries means you lead from a cleaner place. You can approach things with a clear perspective. Plus, great leaders have clear communication – they clearly communicate their boundaries. You know those people who you can’t work out how they manage to run their company and go running three times a week? They value those runs, so they do it. And their team don’t book in meetings during run time. They know that time is unavailable to them.

They are not upset by this. Knowing when their boss is available actually makes their life easier. Plus, they are more likely to set their own boundaries.

Prioritising Yourself

What do you value in your life that isn’t getting done? I’m not talking about something you ‘should’ be doing but something that’s important for your life.

Running, Pilates, time to call your brother, reading a bedtime story to the kids, listening to podcasts? Write them down as a list, and then ask yourself how do I protect these things? How do I put a boundary around them? Maybe it is blocking off time in your calendar. Perhaps it is creating a fictional meeting so no one will disturb you. It could be telling your team that you do not want to be contacted between 5-7 pm?

We all work differently. Do not assume others in your team know what boundaries you need. You might need to make it very obvious like a do not disturb sign. Before I had children, I had no idea what my colleagues who were parents might need. Don’t make the assumption that others know.

Let’s not forget those boundaries may have massively changed in recent months. Do you need to go for a walk and a takeaway coffee and rethink about what you need now you work from home?

I can answer that one for you. Yes, you do.

Don’t Make Excuses

The most challenging boundary to make is one of the most critical when your business is growing at pace - dream space. You can call it strategy or vision space. It’s the day-dreaming/blue sky thinking/phone-on-silent space every leader needs to achieve success. We all know what that means to us, and it is often the hardest for people to carve out. Why? Time for ourselves can seem indulgent. It’s not billable. It doesn’t focus on clients. It doesn’t feel like a productive use of time when there are so many other tasks to complete.

Does that sound familiar? It is the voice of someone who prefers to feel in control. Controller types often get uncomfortable when not much seems to happen in this time, and they give up dedicating time for it. Science now tells us that this time unlocks the part of your brain where creative and innovative thought lives. It is a massive gift for your business if you want a business that grows, has great ideas, and creates profitable services and products.

And it is what keeps you on track. Having space will give you clarity. It is a place where you remember to breathe and can take a step back from everything. It will remind you about why you are doing what you’re doing. There is no requirement to move off-site, book two days off or check into a business hotel. Stop making excuses. You can spare one hour - an hour that is protected and acknowledged as important - a boundary.

Boundaries are one of the areas where you can have some degree of control which might appeal when it seems like so much is out of your control.

Recognise the Signs

How do you know when all your boundaries have collapsed? Are you sobbing in the corner? Do you start to micromanage? Do you get sick? How does it feel for you?

Me? I get pissed off. I want to chuck it all in. Like a kid throwing the toys out of the pram, I become moody and pouty. This tells me I have squeezed in every request and forgotten about me in the mix, and that’s not a good feeling. I am thankful that I now recognise the warning signs and have strategies to avoid my mood!

Being knowledgeable about your own behaviour will help you anticipate when boundaries have been forgotten. When you recognise the signals showing the boundaries have slipped, you can start to rebuild them again. I am an idealist, and I also know we need to anticipate that life gets blurry sometimes. Anticipate what will go wrong so you can recover quickly.

When your business is growing, there will always be more projects, more requests for your time, more people to recruit or collaborate with. It’s a great sign, and boundaries are what set successful leaders apart from those who are continually squeezing and running on empty.

I can’t be authentic if there are boundaries

It’s the age-old issue – you can’t be an individual because the rules won’t allow it. But that isn’t a valid argument for getting rid of boundaries. As Seth Godin says in this article, ‘a person who authentically wants to go to work naked can’t.’

He argues that it’s about being consistent with boundaries. Flexing them when you need to and protecting what is most important to you. We thrive when boundaries are in place. Children crave them. Adults like to know where they stand. They keep us focused.

Tackling a lack of boundaries

I asked a client to draw five circles on the page and write in each something that needed protecting. He had spoken earlier about how stressful it was always to be needed by someone. He was trying to squeeze too much in.

Looking at the paper, he realised he had drawn five circles all of differing sizes. In the smallest circle, he had written the word ME. This was his realisation that he had made himself too available and was too involved in everything. That’s not leadership. Leadership means you need to take personal responsibility, and sometimes the best way to do this is to have boundaries in place.

I believe that acknowledging something you need already starts to shift things in the right direction. I’ve witnessed it enough times now in others. This client acknowledged that he had let himself be squeezed so that any time for himself was not happening. Those that I work with love their work, sometimes obsessively. The boundaries are very blurred, and these same people feel the difference when they protect certain parts of their day, spaces which are theirs. It offers a space for calm, clarity and focus.

Another client realised that there were too many lines of communication now open with her team. ‘My leadership team reach me by WhatsApp, email, text, teams. It’s worked ok up to now, but I want our leadership team to expand, and I don’t think I will be able to cope if more people are contacting me. It’s like you are always on’’. She has asked her team to now use email and the good old phone to reach her. WhatsApp for her is for friends and family. It’s not her workspace, and her team respect this.

Benefits of Boundary Setting

I think Nedra Glover Tawwab lays out a convincing argument for boundary setting here. She refers to them as healthy boundaries. You are not closing yourself away from people. You are ‘mentally protecting your space’. Tawwab says that you are honouring yourself when you set boundaries and frustrations, resentment and anger we hold against other people can be eliminated. Your behaviour is aligned with your needs, not anybody else and that is a truly calming experience.

What size circle would you draw for yourself currently? If you have found yourself losing grip of your boundaries, I can help. I’m Sally, and I’m a leadership coach and trainer. Get in touch and let’s start prioritising you.

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