In today’s hectic workplaces, leaders are increasingly recognizing the importance of setting, communicating, and managing boundaries. These skills are essential, both for maintaining personal well-being and for fostering a productive, positive team and work environment. Overwhelm, burnout, having no time for yourself, daydreaming about running away, avoiding people who might ask for something, resentment, and anger are all signs that you may need to put a boundary in place.
Boundaries are our rules of engagement in our relationships or in a given situation. They define what we are comfortable with and how we would like others to behave around us. They are a way to communicate our needs to others as part of creating and maintaining healthy relationships at work and at home.
Boundaries facilitate our well-being and our leadership. Yet, many of my clients still struggle with boundaries, particularly with setting and communicating their own. Boundary challenges are often rooted in deep-seated normative and cultural stereotypes coupled with a lack of know-how and practice.
One of my clients, a Gen Z Latina leader, has difficulty setting and communicating boundaries at work because she perceives this to be “not nice.” Consequently, she is overwhelmed, exhausted, and deeply unsatisfied with her post. Not only has she fallen victim to cultural and gender stereotypes of what it means for a woman to be “nice,” but this also affects her ability to establish and enact boundaries, leaving her without the boundary-setting experiences and skills she........