In the fast-paced world of corporate competition, emerging and experienced leaders alike, often find themselves needing to juggle multiple responsibilities.
This blog post delves into the importance of mastering the art of setting boundaries. It explores practical strategies for identifying priorities, communicating effectively, and creating a healthy team and workplace culture. As a leader, when you establish clear boundaries, you’re better able to navigate the demands of your role with confidence, ensuring sustainable success without compromising bandwidth and well-being.
Identifying priorities
Jim Collins, the internationally revered leadership coach is famous for saying: “If you have more than 3 priorities, you have no priorities”. I have lived by this mantra for a few years now and it’s been a game changer in terms of my focus, productivity, delegation and where I need to develop my team in order to take on more complex tasks to grow their skills and confidence. This enables me to take care of the work that is at more nebulous, requires significant planning and collaboration or putting out ‘fires’.
When I take the time to prioritise – the big tasks that I know will move the needle on what we are working towards finalising, achieving or laying the ground work for, it frees me up to also have bandwidth for life’s little surprises. And we all get them. Prioritising for me is a form of budgeting, I know how I have left in the tank to take care of the things that crop up and more importantly, how much atttention I can realistically give them.
Why 3 priorities? Because on top of the meetings already scheduled in your calendar; incidental conversations that can sometimes take longer than you want; last minute meetings that weren’t in your calendar; team issues….. you need to allow yourself, or better yet give yourself permission to hone in and focus on tasks that are meaningful. If you’re spread too thin, you won’t feel great about the work you’re able to produce, especially if you have frequent surprises throughout your day like I do. Or worse, it eats into time away from work with your family.
Less is more. And it really is more. Stick to 3 priorities and give them everything you’ve got.
This is a personal boundary first and foremost, that needs to be communicated with your team and people around you. Let them know what you’re focusing on and how long you expect it to be a priority. It helps them to better understand your workload and how they can best work with you.
Effective communication
Honestly, the best communication is when the person speaking uses a style of language and tone that will resonate with the audience of either 1 or more. So this means you need to pay attention to the people around you and how they communicate with you.
Yes it takes effort – but that’s what leadership is, it’s putting in the effort to influence and make a difference where it matters the most. So start listening to and watching the people around you that you need to influence. How do they communicate with you? This is how you need to communicate what you need from them.
The process for setting boundaries is fairly iterative but the content and context is not. If the boundary is important to you, then communicate it in a way that will get you closer to what you require and how you expect to be treated. The only VIP in boundary setting is you.
Creating a healthy team and work culture
Culture is everything in a workplace and I pay very special attention to it at both a micro level (with my direct team) and macro level (the broader culture of the organisation). And one most definitely influences the other.
Culture is a predictor or performance, team loyalty, reduced conflict and engagement. And culture is without doubt supported by boundaries.
Sometimes these will be in the form policies and processes as well as guidelines when we’re talking macro. How they are communicated and enforced is what makes the difference.
At the micro level, boundaries very simply are about expectations. These include:
- How do you expect your team to perform
- How do you expect your team to communicate with one another
- How do you expect your team to work together and play together (play is very important)
- How do ou expect your team to come to you with issues and concerns.
Not all of these boundaries need to be set at all once. Some will take longer and in my experience, it’s been more effective to set them in the context that they need to be set. The most important part of all this though, is ask yourself, how do you want to feel and how do you want your team to feel. When you’ve got a clear idea of this – then it will be a matter of using the language and tone that is most appropriate.
And as a side note: Boundaries are repetitive! Don’t think they are set and forget. You will need to remind people multiple times in multiple different ways of your own and their boundaries with you.