There are a few reasons why setting boundaries is important and unfortunately, most managers only learn these reasons when things go wrong and boundaries are broken or don’t exist.
Boundaries exist so that you can:
- Protect your mental wellbeing and energy.
- Focus on important tasks and get things done.
- Define what topics are appropriate to talk about at work.
Sometimes, you can set boundaries without being overly explicit about them, but this usually relies upon having a team who are fairly experienced and very self-aware. This means that they self-regulate their behaviours and are less likely to push boundaries beyond where they should be.
However, this generally isn’t the case for most managers because many will be managing people who are younger in their career and may need specific direction (and education) on what boundaries they need to respect. Of course, this is also for their benefit in that they’ll also need to establish boundaries for themselves at some point and will learn from your example.
The types of boundaries that you need to think about (and how to establish them)
To help focus you a bit, here are some of the common boundaries that can be broken, leading to you struggling with your mental wellbeing or your ability to get things done.
Working hours
It’s quite easy for working hours to be forgotten about, particularly when things get really busy and also because everyone is different when it comes to their schedule and more effective times to work. For example, you may have core working hours of say, 9am-5pm, but there may be occasions when you work longer hours for some reason. This isn’t necessarily unreasonable but isn’t something that you should be expected to do all of the time.
When it comes to your team, there may be times when they work later than usual (again, not unreasonable) but they may expect you to be available during these times as well.
It’s important to be clear when you’re prepared to work longer or unusual hours and when you’re not.
How to establish boundaries for working hours
As a first step, let your team know what your typical working hours are and whether they change on certain days of the week. You should then tell them how flexible you are with these hours e.g. whether you sometimes work over or whether you’re ever available outside of these hours if they need you.
Personal issues
Another common way for boundaries to be broken is when someone expects you to talk about issues that may not be related to work and lean more towards personal issues. For example, they may be having issues with their partner / relationship and having a difficult time at home. This may even extend to them asking you for help and advice.
Whilst this is understandable, especially if you’re done a good job of building trust with your team, it’s almost certainly not appropriate for them to expect you to help with these types of issues.
How to establish boundaries for personal issues
When it comes to personal issues, it’s hard to establish clear boundaries in advance, because you never know what type of issues someone may bring to you or how comfortable you may be talking about them.
My advice here is to be prepared to establish a boundary as soon as it becomes apparent that a conversation may be going in a direction that you’re not comfortable with.
For example, if someone is struggling with work and you ask them if they’re okay, they may reply by telling you that things are bad at home. If they start to go into detail and are seeking advice from you, it’s better to tell them that you’re not the best person to have this conversation with them and to signpost them more towards their friends or family outside of work.
You should try and do this with a tone that balances kindness with directness and clarity.
Social media
Should your team follow your personal social media accounts like Instagram? Or be friends on Facebook? Should you follow them so you can see what your team gets up to on a weekend?
There is no right or wrong answer, it’s a personal choice for you and your team.
But you need to decide where your boundaries are here and importantly, almost certainly take the lead on avoiding putting your team in an awkward spot. For example, if you decide that you want to follow their private Instagram account and request to do so, they may feel like they can’t say no. Instead, you should establish what their boundaries are here too before making assumptions.
How to establish boundaries for social media
This is personal preference, but you may also want to check if your company has any policies or guidelines on this topic too.
Again, you may not necessarily need to communicate these preferences in advance, you may just need to communicate them if the time comes. For example, if a team member tries to follow you on Instagram etc, then you may need to address this with them.
My one piece of advice here would be to be consistent with your choice and boundary. If you decide that you don’t want your team to be connected with you on your personal social media, then this should apply to all of them.
Communication
Are you okay with your team sending you a message on WhatsApp? What about texting you over a weekend? Would you prefer all work related communication to be done via Slack and email? What about in an emergency situation?
Again, there is no right or wrong answer here but you should decide what you’re comfortable with.
When it comes to communication that is directly about work, you should almost certainly keep this focused on whatever platforms your company enables and moderates – such as email and Slack. This helps ensure that all communication is kept secure and subject to any relevant policies.
How to establish boundaries for communication
Somewhat obviously, the approach here is to communicate with your team 🙂
Decide what you’re comfortable with and set this expectation with your team. This is one that you can communicate about in advance and also combine with the boundaries around working hours.
For example, you may say that you don’t mind someone sending you a text message during working hours, but would prefer not to be contacted outside of work hours unless it’s urgent.
Deep work time
A less obvious area where boundaries need to be established is your time spent on tasks and projects. Although the problem this causes is one that is very common and obvious.
I’m willing to bet that there have been times when you’ve intended to get your head down and get a big task completed, only for one or more of your team to interrupt and pull you into whatever they are working on.
Right?!
This is quite a tricky one to manage because of course you want to support your team and be there for them when they need help.
But you also have a job to do which includes tasks that aren’t related to what your team is working on. It’s important that you are able to not only carve out the time for this kind of work, but also that you can focus and not be interrupted during it.
If you’re not able to do this, then it’s pretty much inevitable that you’re going to end up feeling overwhelmed and unable to control your workload, leading to stress and burnout.
How to establish boundaries for deep work
You can tell your team how you prefer to work when it comes to deep work and head down time. This should include things such as if you like to block out certain times of the day or week for deep work. It’s generally a good idea to tell your team that you need to take time sometimes for deep work so that they know that there may be times when you need to prioritise other tasks.
In addition, you can also do a few tactical things that help you enforce these boundaries such as:
- Using Slack or Teams statuses to tell colleagues when you are in deep work mode.
- Blocking out time in your calendar for deep work and not allowing meetings to be booked during this period.
- If you work in an office with your colleagues, be prepared to tell someone that you’re focusing on a task if they ask if you have time – if the issue isn’t urgent, tell them that you can check in with them once you’re done.
In summary, setting boundaries is important but doesn’t need to be a task that worries you or that you should avoid. Take some time to think about what your boundaries are and then communicate them at the appropriate time.
