3 ways to communicate your boundaries
A few days ago, I was arranging a time to call a client, when I said, “after 9.30am is best for me”.
Her immediate response was “is that so you can get your morning beach walk in?”.
She knows me well.
One of the reasons I live where I live is so I can walk on the beach every day. The feel of the sand between my toes, the water and the fresh air play a huge role in my self-care routine, and an almost-daily beach walk is one of my top priorities.
As I am not a morning person, and don’t like to rush my morning routine, getting up before 7am is not a consideration for me!
This year I celebrate 17 years in business, and it took me a long, long time to set this boundary around mornings and meetings!
In the early years I thought that if I said yes all the time, it would make me easier to work with. And in some ways, it did, but it also meant that I was often turning up to early meetings not at my best.
I was sacrificing things that were important to me to suit the needs of other people.
Unsurprisingly, this sometimes made me quite resentful. Especially when I had pre-7am flights to get to Sydney or Melbourne for a 9am meeting.
These days I am SUPER clear about communicating my boundaries, especially when it comes to how I work.
My clients deserve me to show up with peak energy and focus and having the confidence to clearly communicate what does and doesn’t work for me helps ensure they get my best.
If you have boundaries that aren’t being met, have a think about why this is. Is it because you’re not communicating them? And yes, I know this can be hard sometimes.
If you’re wanting to better communicate your boundaries at work, make sure you keep things professional. Keep the focus on what is important to you and why it’s important, without blaming others when things don’t go as you might like.
There are three main guidelines I follow when talking about my boundaries:
Be clear and specific around what you want – sometimes it also helps to say why this is important to you.
Choose the right time – if you’re cranky or feeling resentful because your boundaries are being breached, that is NOT the right time!
Be consistent but keep a little space for flexibility – for example, my no early meetings requirement has wiggle room if it’s a group meeting and hard to find the time another time, when there are time zone challenges (looking at you daylight savings…), or if it’s someone I really want to meet with and it’s the only time that works for them.
How do you communicate your boundaries?
If you need some help with this, please book in a clarity call so we can have a chat about how I can help your leaders and teams have stronger relationships and become more fully connected.
