How to Set a Boundary, Damnit!

Stop setting yourself on fire to keep other people warm

I once had a boss tell me that he just gave people more and more work, overloading them until they asked him to stop.

“But don’t you think we have a certain responsibility?” I asked.

“To do what?” he replied, distracted.

“Uh, to monitor things. To see how people are doing. We can’t just give them more and more work. They’ll quit,” I ventured.

“No, I just keep giving them work. They’ll let me know what their limits are,” he said, before disappearing to his next meeting.

Obviously I disagree with this approach. It’s problematic. It’s gross. Empathy and feeling into other people’s limits is, apparently, not a skill that’s highly valued in Corporate America.

I share this not because I want to drag this boss (OK, maybe a little, ha) — but because I want one thing to be perfectly clear: do not give people the benefit of the doubt. You have to advocate for yourself and your needs. You have to set your boundaries and then maintain those boundaries. And you need to speak the fuck up when you don’t like something.

“No” is a feeling. It’s a gut thing. It’s a hard twist in your gut, a flinch in your eye. You know immediately when it’s a no. The problem is that we allow too much distance between when we feel something and when we say something. Then all of our “no” energy just floats around, protesting and crying, while we ignore it. Eventually it sets the house on fire (read: unexplained illness, mental breakdown) to get your attention.

Most of the time we never connect the feeling and the doing. I’m guilty of this, too! In fact, with the boss example that I just gave — I never called him out on it. Ugh!!! If only I could go back in time. But I was too knocked off my game to say anything. And trained to be too good and didn’t want to cause a kerfuffle.

What could we have said? I think we should go here because language is important. Having the words and a path to articulation is important. Sometimes when we don’t know how to put things into words, we just don’t. We sit silent, holding back to be “professional” (whatever that means, everyone else is allowed to be a hot mess and get away with it) and trying not to get in trouble.

Here’s what I should have said:

“Well, I disagree. I think we, as leaders, are responsible for checking in on the people on our teams and keeping tabs on their workload.”

Or,

“A lot of people don’t feel comfortable speaking up. We can try to be accomodating.”

Or maybe —

“I don’t agree. It doesn’t take much effort to just check-in and make sure we’re not overloading people. Respectfully, I think we could make an effort.”

No apologies.

Just say what you think.

Saying what you think in the moment is so important. You have to let people know, and more importantly — let your inner self know — that you’re not going to take any shit. I know this feels exhausting, and like, when did it become my job to educate everyone about their inadequacies, nothing’s going to change anyway. Well. Even if nothing changes, then at least you’ve shown yourself that you’re willing to speak up about things that matter.

And it is this relationship with ourselves, knowing that we have a backbone, that we’re willing to fight the good fight, that we have integrity, that is the most important thing to nurture, anyway.

You can also use your actions to speak up. For example, when I was an account manager at a startup, there were always these clients that wanted my personal phone number. “Hey girl, what’s your number — can we just text,” they would plead, “it’s just so much easier.” What you meant to say was: “it’s so much easier for me.” To have direct access to me and be able to harass me at all hours? Uh, no.

Nope. No way.

One particularly unhinged client even found me on What’s App, added me, and started sending work related messages. Ew. Please stop.

I could have stressed out about it, but instead, let me share my strategy. It’s all about actions, not words. First, no matter what — I never replied to the texts. Never. Put the phone down, Mandy. Resist it. Just pretend like you never saw that fucker. Then, I casually wait at least six to eight hours. Then, I open up an email and say, “Hi, I saw your text message. I actually don’t use text. Let’s use email please because it’s easier for me to manage all of my communications and I will be sure not to miss anything.”

It’s all about the action. The action of, I am not responding to your text. Instead, I am diverting it to email after a healthy waiting period. People remember actions.

You might say, “but I can’t do that Mandy, my clients would escalate. They would tell my boss, and then my boss would side with them and come down on me for being unresponsive.”

And I would say: do you want peace of mind, or not? Because drawing a boundary and saying no isn’t all sunshine and happily ever after. It’s pain. It’s disappointing other people. It’s conflict. It’s messy and ugly and people grimacing at you. But you know what? At the end of the day, you had to fight like hell to protect your peace — but then you HAVE PEACE. You’ve hissed and clawed and now people know not to bother you with stupid shit. You’ve shown your teeth.

Good! I say!

Why? Because I have seen, one thousand times as a career coach, what happens when you don’t fight. You give too much. You get burned out. You are a crisp, a shell, a husk of your former self. You are checking your email at 10 pm, 11 pm, and 11:40 pm, and then reaching for your phone as soon as you’re waking up. You are miserable!!!

Don’t do it to yourself.

Instead, fight a hundred small stupid petty fights. Voice your opinion a dozen times and piss some people off. And then congratulations, you’ve prevented yourself from going absolutely bonkers and rage quitting.

Does this make sense?

Will you try this?

I love you guys.

Thank you for being a part of this awesome, weird, squishy community.

xoxo

Mandy aka Career Coach Mandy