What are the 3 key levels of setting boundaries and how does it impact your career and business growth?
Let’s say you work in a space, which has an open cubicle culture with no private offices irrespective of which level you are at. The primary idea is to make people more visible, make people more accessible, and make workflow easier.
The outcome though can be a significant blurring of boundaries and people impinging on other people’s boundaries and space. You could have the occasional colleague who is a miscreant and who was born to dump files on your desk. Interestingly, when you tell your colleague to not do so, he/she dumps more files on your desk until you have steam coming through your ears! Is your colleague vicariously happy? Yes! Are you upset? Yes!
Let’s also talk about organizations that don’t respect the fact that their employees have a life outside of the office, and insist on their employees working 24/7 without a break. Such an organization would expect the employees to be on call even on your so-called weekend getaway; never take time off; work through the day and work through the night (yes! such organizations do exist!); being made to feel guilty for leaving office at predictably human hour to go home and get sleep, and they make doing consistent all-nighters a badge of honor. Is the organization happy squeezing its’ employees? Yes! Are the employees happy? No! Are they healthy? No! Will they experience burnout? Yes! Will their career have a short shelf life? Yes!
Let’s also talk about the client who believes you should answer every phone call, every message, calls you several times a day to ‘chat’ with you, and then before you know it asks for the deliverable. Could you work? No! Could you keep your client happy? No!
Let’s now talk about working from home. Here is where your employer thinks you are probably not doing any work and so you need to do more to make your employer trust you. Your family sees you in front of their eyes and thinks you are available. You don’t have a clear workspace at home and between your employer, family, and your own inability to set up a routine and self-discipline you look like a skewered kebab! That might sound delicious but you certainly don’t feel like it! Is your employer happy? No! He thinks you are a work shirker. Is your family happy? No! They want more of you. Are you happy? No! You aren’t able to please anyone — not even yourself!
Irrespective of the situation, the reason you aren’t happy in any of these scenarios is that you didn’t learn to say No! You didn’t learn to set boundaries. Not setting those boundaries affected your productivity, affected your ability to create value, and consequently impacted your ability to get what you wanted — peace, a clear mind that works well when it is refreshed, a happy boss or client, a happy family, a promotion or more money.
So what should you do?
The first level of setting boundaries is with yourself. You set a routine and self-discipline right from when you will wake up to what time you will sleep, and how you will structure your day. If you don’t build structure, you can’t expect others to.
The second level of setting boundaries is creating a demarcated workspace whether at the office or at home. In fact, this would be more so at home, since not creating a clear boundary will blur your own lines of self-discipline between work time and relaxation time, and your family assuming you are available for them. At the office, it would be to let people know that they need to respect your physical space to allow you to work.
The third level of setting boundaries is to create a boundary between you and your social media time and to take calls whether work or personal after scheduling them. This also needs to be communicated to your professional and personal connections so that they know that you may be focussing on other work commitments, and will be available at scheduled times. They can always drop you a message or email, which gives them the opportunity to share the work deliverables/issue for which they wish to connect and gives you the opportunity as soon as you get the earliest opportunity. Not doing so might mean you are either consistently answering personal calls during times that you need to give your attention to work commitments and vice versa. Doing so will enhance your work productivity and your ability to create more value both professionally and personally.
Some of you might say, but I can’t build structure because my organization won’t let me. My organization is fiercely competitive and working long hours is expected, it is a matter of pride and that’s the only way I will get a promotion or a better appraisal.
Here is news for you! You can work long hours, deliver excellent service to your clients, and ignore your family and your health but your organization/clients may still not promote you or give you a better appraisal/money commensurate with your time, effort, and expertise. Assuming even that they pay you well, and give you a promotion — was getting a burnout worth it?
Aspiring for promotion, getting more client referrals, and getting paid more is absolutely fine but when you are suffering burnout or are dead — your employer and your clients won’t be there for you. They will be making the next human sweat it out.
You need to learn to lead by setting clear boundaries and having the confidence that the results you deliver and the value you create for them are more important than just being at work to mark your presence or play to the whims of anyone who expects your constant presence.
Fear of not getting promoted or not getting more money or losing a client should not stop you from having honest and clear communication with those you work with professionally and set boundaries that will help you be more productive and create more value for them. At the end of the day, creating the balance will help you deliver more value in 1 hour than you could by sitting in front of your laptop for 24 hours.
Working hard is not the only thing that will get you promoted or make you more money or get more clients. You need to also build other aspects of your leadership skills that will help you get your promotion or more money.
Again, if it is an organization that has an unhealthy work culture then it needs to work on a collective leadership mindset based on sound core values. This can only be effected through consistently building leadership awareness and taking action collectively to build leadership qualities and skills across every member of the organization.
I wish more success to each Leader, each Team Member, each Organization, and each Business. Keep striving! Keep evolving! Keep shining!
If you resonated with this, please share this with the person who you feel needs to read or hear this the most.
Cheers,
Namrata Vishwanath
If you are a Corporate/Business Leader or Executive and would like to learn how to build your career, teams, and business through building a leadership mindset and skills, please join the Leader by Design Hub & click on the link for more information: https://linktr.ee/namratavishwanath