On Boundaries
Recently, a client of mine ran into a seemingly little dilemma. Kate had been waiting for a response from a colleague for a while. She needed the go ahead on a major project that she was enthusiastic about. Finally, word came down: all systems go.
The email came in on a Sunday.
Kate was tempted to pull her laptop out right away and write up the project launch. With the delayed approval, the team was now under a compressed timeline, so it was natural to feel pressure to get the process going right away — get the ball rolling that sunny Sunday — so they wouldn’t be playing catch up in the coming days.
But another part of Kate paused and wondered what she’d be saying to her colleague by responding on a weekend.
Would she be saying – I’m available for you anytime? Would she set the expectation that she would be on call all weekend, and kick into high gear at the drop of a hat?
I often see this tension in my work on leadership and time. We say we want something — division between work and life, let’s say — but then find ourselves undercutting the very boundary we’ve set through the messages we send, the behaviours we pattern and the actions we take (and I fully include myself in this as I actually did this last weekend).
This seemingly small tension sheds light on a dilemma we come up against in multiple ways in our work and our lives.
It is the question of whether this short-term action is building to what you want for the long-term.
Do you choose to work on Sundays in order to get to a place where you do not work on Sundays? Or is it the opposite — is that a boundary you need to draw now?
In Kate’s case, it might feel better to send the email. She’d feel good knowing she had moved the project along, giving her something to cross off the list and creating a little more time to do the next step. But then again, this was a colleague she wanted to build a long-term relationship with. Building that invisible line could be positive down the road. And in this case, it wasn’t as though they were in an emergency.
It’s a grey area, because sometimes, it feels easier or better to take care of these things immediately.
But in these kinds of situations — where doing something today may not set you up for the tomorrow you want — it is helpful to pause and ask yourself, what message am I sending in the way I handle this?
It may be a weekend email, but it could just as easily be a team situation, where you want your team to be independent and competent but then you don’t let them stumble and learn from their own experiences. You’re stepping in to help is actually preventing the outcome you really seek.
In the modern work world, there’s often no hard and fast rule for navigating this – there’s complexity and consequences no matter the choice you make.
When you find yourself in one of these circumstances, when your response today is just as much about the boundaries you are creating for tomorrow, consider these three questions before proceeding:
Pause: Before you respond or take any action, just give yourself more than a moment. Are you reacting or responding? Are there other options beyond the obvious?
Do an internal check: By reacting, what are you hoping to achieve? What would support you and what would chip away at your goals?
Flash forward: Finally, do a mental flash forward to your future self and your future relationships with those involved. If you make this choice now, what are you designing into the relationship in the future? Is it worth it?
We have all had the experience of making decisions in the moment that do not align with what we want longer-term.
Especially when it comes to boundaries, awareness is the first step towards alignment between what you need today and what you want for tomorrow.
