Maintaining Healthy Boundaries

Do you find it challenging to create or honor your boundaries? If so, you're not alone. Self-sacrifice runs rampant in the nonprofit sector and it can be hard to stick to your boundaries when someone is in need. This behavior leads to burnout and it's not really helpful to anyone in the long run. Join us and learn to reduce stress, enhance productivity, and improve your overall well-being by maintaining healthy boundaries. 

Connect with host Jill Fowler on LinkedIn and Instagram.

This episode was brought to you by Songbird Leadership -- Amplify your organization's mission through outcome-based executive coaching, strategic planning, and capacity building.

Transcript

Thank you for joining us today. I’m your host, Jill Fowler of Songbird Leadership.

Many of my executive coaching clients struggle with time. There are never enough hours in the day for work, let alone for family time or self-care. The topic of creating or maintaining healthy boundaries often comes up in our conversations, so I thought I’d take some time to talk about this important topic today.

First, what is a healthy boundary? A healthy boundary is one you can clearly articulate. It’s respectful of both yourself, and the other person. It’s consistent and reflects your needs, limits, and values, while supporting your wellbeing. 

There are many different types of boundaries, such as emotional, time, intellectual, material or financial, and physical. You may desire stronger boundaries in just one area, or maybe several are necessary in your situation. And that’s okay. 

When setting healthy boundaries, you’ll want to start with a self-assessment of your current capacity. Where are you spending most of your resources? What are your values? If these two things aren’t aligned, reflect on what you can realistically accept or accomplish, and prioritize your most critical tasks or responsibilities.   

Once you have identified your boundary, you’ll need to be direct and firm when communicating it. Now, this doesn’t mean be unpleasant or unprofessional. Simply state your need and don’t beat around the bush about it. Using “I” statements is a nice way to frame your needs in terms of your own experience. For instance, saying, “I need to leave by 5pm today to make it to my yoga class on time,” is specific in terms of time and clearly communicates your needs and values. And if talking about your yoga class is too personal for you, that’s fine. Just say something like, “I need to leave by 5pm today due to a personal commitment.” As an aside, I recommend the transparency and vulnerability of sharing specifics as you are comfortable and as appropriate. It humanizes you and creates connection. But you don’t have to. It’s your call.

The example I just gave was based in time, but other types of boundaries can look like this:

-       Politely declining requests that overextend your capacity.
-       Disabling non-essential electronic notifications outside of regular work hours.
-       If working remotely, have a designated workspace in your home and don’t work in personal areas.
-       Scheduling time for yourself.
-       Not tolerating guilt-tripping or emotional manipulation.
-       Respecting differing opinions without feeling pressure to conform.
-       Protecting your financial resources. 

As you begin to implement or strengthen your boundaries, you may experience some pushback from people who aren’t used to you expressing your needs. If this happens, stay calm, politely restate your boundary, and discuss the situation with the person. Ask about their concerns and offer alternatives, if the situation warrants. Depending on who it is, you may also wish to share the reasons behind your boundary, but, again, you don’t have to. However you respond, you want to do so in a professional manner at all times.

And don’t let the respect for boundaries start and stop with you. Lead by example and promote a culture that values balance. Model healthy boundary-making and encourage your team to do the same. This will not only help reinforce your own boundary-setting, but it will make for a happier, healthier, more productive team, as well.

If you set a boundary and then break it, don’t beat yourself up. Simply take a step back, assess what happened, and start again. Boundary-setting is like a muscle – the more you use it, the easier the activity will be. I’m generally pretty good at identifying and keeping my boundaries, but last week, I found myself in a situation in which I agreed to something that was very much outside of my boundaries because I felt badly saying no. A member of a professional group I belong to asked me to help him with something. I was not the right person for the job and I told him so, but he persisted. I’m also at capacity with personal activities this summer, so I truly don’t have the time. I also shared this and he was adamant that he needed help and I was the best person to do it. And this might sound shallow, but I truly didn’t want to do what was being asked of me. But he was looking at me with puppy dog eyes and I felt really guilty saying no, so I very reluctantly said yes. And I immediately regretted it. Because here’s the thing – I’m obviously doing a disservice to myself by taking something on that I don’t have time to do or interest in doing. But I’m not really helping him by agreeing, either. Someone else with greater interest, better skills, and more capacity will undoubtedly give him more of what he needs. So, I ended up texting him later and politely declined. Had I just said no in the first place, I wouldn’t have dwelled on it, taken extra time to communicate about it, and then felt extra bad about it. I should have just been brave and ripped off the bandaid.

This feeling of guilt is prevalent in the nonprofit sector, where everyone is used to self-sacrifice on a day-to-day basis. It’s unfortunate, because in doing so, everybody loses. You lose whatever your boundary was protecting, the other person loses quality/patience/respect/whatever, and your organization loses because neither of you are in a good situation.

So, what do you do if you continually try to create boundaries with the best of intentions, only to struggle with seeing them through? It’s always a good idea to take a step back and reassess. Is the issue with a certain type of boundary or with a specific person? What is causing the lack of follow through? How can you approach things differently for greater success? Third-party support is also really valuable. This can come in the form of an executive coach, a mentor, or a trusted friend. They can serve as a safe sounding board, ask you the tough questions, hold you accountable, and support your efforts.

They key is to just start. Give it a try and see how it feels. It may be uncomfortable at first, but over time, enforcing healthy boundaries will help you reduce stress, enhance productivity, and improve your overall well-being.