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S1, E2 The Career Coven: Boundaries
181 Plays11 months ago
Our second ep of the Career Coven is on boundaries - the things that keep you sane, and can also drive you insane. In this episode we hear from Bec who has spent a lot of time thinking about boundaries, and Annie who is in her boundary ‘discovery’ era. We talk about types of boundaries, experimentation, the opportunity cost of saying ‘yes’ to everything, professional boundaries, the role of communication, powering through the awkwardness and guilt, and why is it that senior leaders all have weird niche hobbies? Because they have boundaries.
You’ll also hear us unpack some great questions from women on:
- What can managers do to ensure their teams achieve healthy work/life balance and encouraging high performance? Can you have both?
- Boundaries with self - how do you balance going that extra mile, upskilling, and challenging yourself, whilst maintaining perspective that there is more to life than work?
- As a people pleaser, sometimes I feel when I set boundaries I have to essentially apologise or make up for it later. How do I work on showing up authentically and standing my ground when setting deadlines and boundaries?
Content recs, references & extra reading
- A phenomenal podcast episode referenced throughout - Best Friend Therapy podcast, S01E01, Emma Reed Turrell & Elizabeth Day
- Designing Your Life, Bill Burnett & David Evans
- Personal Strategy by Kit Jackson
- The perils of getting sh*t done (and the need for boundaries), Roger Taylor
- How to say no - templates to help you say no in any situation
Are you a fan? Please like and subscribe on your preferred platform, and let us know what you think hello@careercoven.com
P.S. Thanks for bearing with the audio gremlins, we are working on improving this for future recordings!
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Transcript
00:00:08
Speaker
Okay. Okay. Hello. Hello.
Introduction to Boundaries
00:00:11
Speaker
Welcome to episode two of Career Coven. I'm Bec. I'm Annie. And today we're going to be talking about boundaries. Yeah. It's a big one. Boundaries is a huge one. I think you and I have quite different experiences of boundaries, which will make for an enlightening debate. Yeah. Important. I've got terrible boundaries. So I feel like this is a perfect opportunity for me to talk to you.
00:00:36
Speaker
someone who I think has really good boundaries about how you do that and why we think it's important.
Workplace Boundaries
00:00:43
Speaker
And I can definitely pepper in a smattering of the disastrous consequences that can happen if you have aggressively bad boundaries. But yeah, I'm on a learning journey. And also we should say this is Susan and she has also got terrible boundaries.
00:00:59
Speaker
No personal space boundaries. Well, I think she probably doesn't respect anyone's boundaries. And, you know, that's a vibe for Susan and I kind of love it, even when she licks me in the nose. Yeah. But not a vibe to lick people in the nose at work. If we get nothing else right today, we will be able to give that sage advice to people. Do not lick in the nose, in the workplace.
00:01:33
Speaker
So shall we start by how we define boundaries in the workplace? So what are the kind of dimensions of things that we're talking about here? Yeah, I would say number one for me would be time boundaries. I think that's one of the easiest ones to understand. Some people have specific boundaries around when they can work in the day, when they want to work in the day for various reasons, and you can set those or you may want to consider assessing those within the workplace. So I think time boundaries
00:02:02
Speaker
is one. Any, do you want to do the next one or should I continue? You're doing a great job if you continue. Okay, I think emotional boundaries is a kind of more complex topic. I imagine that many of our questions will sort of centre around these, but these are boundaries that can relate to things like
00:02:22
Speaker
communication preferences or like styles and meetings and like how people generally like to be treated and to treat others. And do we think that is related to kind of interpersonal boundaries? You mean physical boundaries? Not necessarily. I mean, I can violate your emotional boundaries without physically touching you. Agreed. But you could also violate my emotional boundaries by physically touching me.
00:02:47
Speaker
Correct. And my physical boundaries. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. I definitely think a big part of interpersonal boundaries are emotional boundaries. Yes. Yes. And yeah, we've already covered physical boundaries, but that's more about like your actual physical things that you do or don't want to happen and that you're comfortable with. And I think like, you know, a very easy one to get your head around, but there's some people are really happy to hug a co-worker and other people are really happy not to hug a co-worker. I am definitely
00:03:17
Speaker
firmly in the not hugging camp. Interesting. And that has definitely caught me off guard. Mental boundaries is sort of your area. That's where you're really good at, which is like setting time to make sure that you do stuff outside of work, that you have time off, that you, you know, have other things around your work that can fit in around your work. It's the mental boundaries. Yeah, I mean, boundaries, from my perspective, are really rooted in how much I fucking love my free time.
00:03:48
Speaker
And that's not to say I don't enjoy work. I just want one thing to end so that I can do some other things. And I think that is probably the root to your boundaries, to my good boundaries. It's like, work is so great. Love it so much. But also like, I'm going to go to a pottery class because I love that more. Yeah. And I would say this is also the root to my bad boundaries is that I can never kind of mentally switch off from my
Personal Experiences with Boundaries
00:04:15
Speaker
job.
00:04:15
Speaker
and it's not that I don't enjoy my free time, it's that often in my free time I am slightly thinking about my work, so I find it hard to be fully present. I'm not as bad as I used to be, it's definitely been a journey. I would say as a household we are fairly crap at switching off from work, but you know we try and we continue to try because we both believe
00:04:42
Speaker
boundaries are important. And I certainly, I think we should caveat this by saying we're both childless. So in many ways, we have a relatively simple setup in terms of what, how our household functions. And I feel that getting your boundaries kind of straight before you enter that period is pretty
00:05:08
Speaker
important because then everything becomes a lot more complicated once you, if you decide to, once you have children in the vicinity. Yeah, really good clarification. And if you're a carer as well in any form, any form of carer, that really is a complex kind of life schedule which to manage work around. And I think that
00:05:37
Speaker
We don't have that personal lived experience, but certainly can empathise with, to be honest, how much more important boundaries would be if you had that much complexity in what you were dealing with outside of work. I always say I've always had good boundaries. I think I have been training myself really intensively.
00:06:02
Speaker
to have boundaries and put them in. I had, sorry, out of interest, why? So I think this spawns out of a period of burnout from doing my crisis response job where I did 90 hours of work a week. And it was during so much work and that was at the peak. It wasn't the whole time, but no one had boundaries with me. I didn't have boundaries with anyone. Like we had so much work to do and it was so stressful.
00:06:30
Speaker
And then when I came out of that period, I was like, oh my God, why am I living my life like this? That's really insane. And I think it came out of a really, really serious need to be able to switch off. And that has been something that I've really ruthlessly prioritized. And that doesn't mean that I don't care about my work, but I suppose if you think about like 100% of my thoughts,
00:06:56
Speaker
It's probably not that many, but 100% of my thoughts and what proportion of them in a given day are devoted to work, I'd say that, for me, the thoughts in my head are proportionate to the amount of time that I am at work. Not necessarily at the same time. I'd hope that they'd be overnight. But in terms of what I dedicate my thought to and worries or aspirations or whatever, it is proportionate to the amount that work
00:07:26
Speaker
is in my life. And I have loads of extracurricular activities that I do that also have a proportionate consumption of my thoughts. And it's really important to me that I devote a bit of time and care to them because I want to do a good job at them too. So for me, it's not really about work being everything and all consuming. It's about work being proportionate to me as a human being.
00:07:54
Speaker
so many interesting and useful principles there doesn't resonate but like wish it would for sure part of it being able to establish your boundaries has to be after you've had a kind of deep period of self-reflection and understanding what you think your boundaries should be and i think sometimes you don't know
00:08:20
Speaker
what your boundaries should be until you've crossed it. Until you've crossed it and you're like, no thanks. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And totally, you know, my bad boundaries, I would say have, I've had a number of periods of burnout, but only two that I would count as sort of really significant, one at the very start of my career and one, um, one a couple of years ago. And, um,
00:08:47
Speaker
Yeah, both of them have definitely instilled a sense that like having better boundaries is important. And I work with my coach a lot on boundaries and I tried, I have tried very hard or tried very hard in certain situations to pick jobs that I thought would help me have better boundaries. That has not worked for me in most cases, but I do feel like I'm on an upwards trajectory. You know, my boundaries aren't getting worse. And I think that is because of what
00:09:20
Speaker
I do, I do recognise the consequences of not having the boundaries. And I think that if we were to just summarise them, it is burnout and sometimes potentially worse than burnout. You know, if you think about not having physical or mental boundaries with your job, you know, that that could be some really complicated and very hard scenarios. But for me, the personal lived experience is burnout. And what are the steps? You said that you've made progress in this. So what are the
00:09:41
Speaker
you said, which is...
00:09:50
Speaker
steps that have worked for you in making that change. All of that stuff has come through like measuring and experimenting with like what makes me feel better and so far I would say what makes me feel better is not traveling a rush shower one work three day a week, I do
00:10:09
Speaker
try to exercise every day which has been an important physical boundary for me and like that's just very important for my mental health but putting the structures in place to do that around all different types of job of which I have had many that's given me the opportunity to kind of test and experiment things that do make me feel better and then be like oh it's really interesting that thing makes me feel good
00:10:35
Speaker
so um enough this kind of it's like a boundary discovery exercise right is that exactly yeah i would say discovering my boundaries trying things understanding the ones that are now like quite hard boundaries understanding the things that are more of a preference but that make me feel good so yeah and i know that i'm in like in some ways in a very privileged position to have had like so much like kind of flexibility in my job that
00:11:03
Speaker
I've been able to do this experimentation, but I do think for everyone you can do like little tests that help you understand what makes you feel better. Yeah, and I also love the idea of kind of logging it and seeing how you feel
Communicating Boundaries Effectively
00:11:20
Speaker
over time. I think that'd be really interesting.
00:11:23
Speaker
I listened to a really nice podcast a few years ago and I listened to it again because I knew we were going to talk about this topic because I think it's really brilliant. We'll put it in the show notes. It's the first episode of best friend therapy with Elizabeth Day and her best friend, Emma Reid Terrell. And Emma is very sophisticated about talking about boundaries and that they don't have to be fixed and permanent. They can change over time. And there's no contract between you and anyone else about where that boundary sits.
00:11:53
Speaker
And she also talks about boundaries being a door to all of those different types of concepts that we spoke about, mental, physical, emotional, and time. And if the door is open, people can walk through it freely. And putting a door there and closing the door lets people know about the access point and where they might need permission to go beyond the access point.
00:12:22
Speaker
I think there's a really interesting set of thoughts around this about what that means, and they talk about it a bit in the episode, but around what should be an implicit boundary and what should be an explicit boundary. And I have been very explicit with some of my boundaries at work, but I think also the big part about that work is trust and respect
00:12:51
Speaker
And I, for example, manage someone, I value her output, not her time spent. So I also release full control and respect her boundaries on however she wants to manage her time so that she can conduct her work in the way that she wants to. And it's not really important to me that she's online all the time or makes it to 5.30 or anything like that. And to be frank, I also can't be asked monitoring it.
00:13:22
Speaker
I guess, though, what do you think you would do if you were being managed by someone who did give a shit about monitoring those things? Like, how would you communicate your boundaries to that person if they had very different attitudes towards boundaries to you? Yeah, that's a really good question. I think if someone expected me to be in, I'd want to understand what the value of us being together would be.
00:13:49
Speaker
Uh, and I, and you know, I think there are really valid reasons why someone might say, please can we all come into the office? Especially if you've got a big team at the moment, it's only me and, um, one of the person who I adore and we just go in because we love seeing each other. But I can understand from a team culture perspective, from a cross discipline working perspective, there's a lot of benefit of being in. If that, well, if that benefit wasn't immediately obvious and I was asked to go in, I would sort of be like, well, okay, we can, I'm happy to go in once, but.
00:14:18
Speaker
This is, I don't really feel like I need to ruin 20% of my working week for this particular reason. I would also say there have been instances, and I've spoken to a lot of women about this who are thinking about doing compressed hours around kind of helping them navigate that conversation with their line manager, especially where they are that person. The important bit is that you're getting your work done.
00:14:45
Speaker
And for anyone who wants to try something new, whether that's kind of shifting your hours because of the transport or an expectation that you have to save it later for a call and that may be pushing your boundaries or you want to go to your school pickup run or your childcare day changes or anything like that. I would just encourage the conversation in a way that says, let's just give this a try. Let's do this as a pilot.
00:15:13
Speaker
and you will let me know if there is any issue with my output based on this change. And in my experience, no one has ever flagged an issue. Yeah, and I guess we're talking about quite, for lack of a better term, quite corporate environments here, like not jobs where you have to be physically present to do your job. In which case, I think the boundaries are still really important.
00:15:41
Speaker
But they're different to the kind of corporate setup now, which we're working in, which is many people have some sort of hybrid working, some sort of flexibility. I think that that has introduced a lot of complexity when it comes to boundaries, because we all just did it by necessity in the pandemic. And no one had really ever thought through or
00:16:06
Speaker
many people have not thought through the boundaries between work and home and how they would exist if everyone was doing their job at home. But yeah, okay, so that's interesting. You'd say if you're coming from like different perspectives on boundaries to your line manager, maybe the way to sort of approach it is one to try and understand their boundary. So try and have a chat with them about, okay, you've got this perspective. That's not the one I share. Can I understand the reasons for your perspective?
00:16:35
Speaker
you get on the same page of like understanding each other's perspective. And then if there's like an adjustment to be made of the boundaries, you'd suggest trialing it as a pilot. So it doesn't feel like this big decision that you have to commit to. It doesn't have to feel like it's in a contract. It doesn't have to feel like it's a legal document. You are literally just making a tiny tweak and saying how it goes. And I think that feels much lower risk than a really formal route of saying like, I'm legally entitled to XYZ.
00:17:04
Speaker
I'm saying that that card should never be played, but I don't think it's, that feels like quite a combative way to approach what I don't really feel is that controversial conversation. Someone else will feel it was a controversial conversation, but it's not the first card you play in that sequencing. I would also add, I find this unrelatable, but I know that lots of people really love going to the office because it helps them with that work home boundary. So my husband,
00:17:33
Speaker
elects to go in five days a week because he feels more productive. He leaves work at work. Yeah, I love that. I love that for him. I love that for him. And I see that a lot with people I work with as well, which is much less corporate that they like. They like to be in the office. They like to, you know, have the structure in their day, the routine in their week. That's important for them. I would say I sort of semi-identify with that. Like I like to start my week in the office. It gets me off to a
00:18:01
Speaker
good start you're a monday officer i'm a monday officer i like to like you know feel it there i am i like to do all my line management on a monday if i can like really just hit that first day of the week with the kind of intensity that i feel is is productive and then um and then i'm more flexible around it i certainly
00:18:23
Speaker
I'm at the border of an introvert and extrovert, and I would say that I do like to work on my own at home, especially if there's a lot I need to get done. I find the work environment can be a bit distracting from that perspective, but yeah, okay. So when it came to understanding your own fairly good boundaries now, how did you navigate understanding what was important to you?
00:18:51
Speaker
Really good question. I think as I was saying earlier, that period of burnout makes you go through a kind of big period of self-reflection of like, that's not how I want to spend my life.
Balancing Work and Personal Life
00:19:04
Speaker
How do I want to spend my life?
00:19:05
Speaker
you will know this I'm really right because I've recommended it to you a thousand times with a book called Design Your Life by... I started it now and finished it, there we go. We'll put it in the show notes. We'll put it in the show notes. We'll put it in the show notes. We'll put it in the show notes. We'll put it in the show notes. We'll put it in the show notes. We'll put it in the show notes. We'll put it in the show notes. We'll put it in the show notes. We'll put it in the show notes. We'll put it in the show notes. We'll put it in the show notes. We'll put it in the show notes. We'll put it in the show notes. We'll put it in the show notes. We'll put it in the show notes. We'll put it in the show notes. We'll put it in the show notes. We'll put it in the show notes. We'll put it in the show notes. We'll put it in
00:19:28
Speaker
those concepts to me are really important like what do you do not because it's work or you get paid just because you love it um example this podcast this podcast hashtag unsponsored
00:19:43
Speaker
But, you know, I do lots of things with girl-guiding. You've just got so many strings for your baby. You do loads of things because you enjoy them. And I just love them. I don't get paid for them. I just really enjoy them. And so I want to make sure that I have space for that in my life. And it took a period of long reflection to be able to
00:20:01
Speaker
work out what these things were and what lights me on fire and what I enjoy and you know getting creativity outside of work I think it's also really important that work isn't the main thing that you focus on because when things go wrong and they always go wrong at some point you will feel like your life is falling apart whereas if I'm having a rough period if I'm having a rough period at work but I'm like you know what I'm just gonna go make some pompoms with 10 year olds to see things
00:20:29
Speaker
Yeah, that's nice. That's a nice outcome. And you can feel good and productive and really enjoy other things that can flourish whilst you're feeling a bit down about work and still feel resilient through the process. So that's what I would say. And then I think more generally, an important part of boundaries is understanding that everything that you say yes to
00:20:58
Speaker
that you don't really want to do means that you're not prioritising something that you do want to do because you have a fixed amount of time. And if I'm spending four hours a week doing this thing that I don't really want to do, that's four hours a week that I could be doing something I love and it could be productive or it could just be having a lion or reading a book or getting my nails done or having a nap. Yeah.
00:21:25
Speaker
I am so bad at this. Like, I say yes to fucking everything, to be honest. And what really gets my heartstrings? What do I say yes to all the time? Every woman who asks me for coffee and career advice, of which there are some, I think just purely because of the sector I work in, quite specific, but like,
00:21:48
Speaker
I pretty much try and fit all of those in and that's because I want to help people. I want to like do my bit to help other women. I care a lot about women. It's actually very hard to fit in all of those requests though and they do have an opportunity cost. So what I would say is, you know, this podcast is a form of you sharing your advice one to many. Yeah. There are ways when you could
00:22:13
Speaker
make sure that those calls are 15 minutes, not like an hour of coffee in person, or carve out like two hours a week that's dedicated to that only. And if you can't speak to someone that day, they could fit into your schedule in three weeks time. And that will feel like really awkward to say that, and it might feel ungenerous to you. But if that is what you are able to, and that is the access point of your door to your boundary,
00:22:42
Speaker
People can choose whether they wanna meet it there or not. Yeah, look at you teaching me, teaching me. Okay, what are some other kind of boundary establishing tips that you could give people? I don't know if this is a tip, it's more of a comment. And sometimes establishing a boundary can feel really,
00:23:11
Speaker
awkward and very uncomfortable. I'm sure if you've told someone I'm not a hugger. Yeah, no, like, yeah, yeah. And I think it's okay that it's awkward. And I think just power through in any awkward situation, you're only carrying as much shame as you kind of allow yourself to feel about it. And preach inspirational quote. And
00:23:41
Speaker
If you're just like, this is gonna be really awkward, but I don't hug, and then just move on, then it's fine. It also gets easier to practice boundaries over time, so much easier. And again, it's a bit like a muscle you can flex. And you just, I think you get used to saying no. And I think one of the really big tips that I learned actually from my husband, he's so good at boundaries, it's unreal. Whenever there is something that he doesn't wanna do, at least doesn't actually.
00:24:11
Speaker
He just says, no, he literally does not do it. He has no sense of like internal obligation or like guilt. And so I put in for, for my kind of personal strategy. Um, uh, it was a particular personal strategy map exercise by a lady called Kit Jackson. It's really interesting, but I put in my personal strategy map. If it's not a fuck yes, it's a hell no and without guilt.
00:24:39
Speaker
So I think that last bit is really important that you don't, you just don't, if you feel guilty about it, you've not really released the boundary. And that's really hard, but that's what I'm working on this year. But Tom's way of saying no to things is brilliant because it basically involves very few words. And I think this is really important when you're setting a boundary. Cause normally I think, ask me five years ago, if I said, Annie, I'm coming over and bringing a bottle of champagne.
00:25:09
Speaker
and i want to have two hours of career advice if i were you in that scenario five years ago and i just didn't fucking want someone in my house yeah i would have been like i would either have said yes or i would have said oh babe i'm so sorry tonight's just really not a good night because
00:25:31
Speaker
Like I've got my period and like Susan's got diarrhea and, and like, I'm going to have a work call at nine PM and I'm so sorry. And when can I next see you? When Tom says he doesn't want to do something, he just says, I'm afraid I can't. So good. That's it. And like I would just encourage anyone who is setting a boundary and feels like they're apologizing or justifying it.
00:26:01
Speaker
to just strip out all of that explanation because you don't have to explain the boundary. You're just saying, it doesn't really work for me. And I am trying to be better at not apologizing for it. So work in progress. Yeah, it's interesting. I'm gonna make a statement now that might be untrue. I think that I can say that no friend that has ever imposed a boundary on me have I ever been annoyed with. Like I have never been annoyed at someone saying,
00:26:31
Speaker
I just can't tonight. I've never found that annoying. And I know that that's not true for all friends, but then I would find myself questioning, are they really your friend? If you have to like explain to them or make these excuses, or you can't just say the words like, I'm sorry, I can't, or not even I'm sorry. I'm tired, I can't, or I don't want to today, whatever. Like, I feel like if any of my best friends text me that I would be like, cool.
00:26:59
Speaker
I'd be like, yeah, you to you now you'll have a council plan. I'm going to also write in bed. Like, yeah, exactly. But, um, but it is interesting. Do you think, I mean, how practical is that is Tom's thing in, in the workplace. I see people over justify delivering bad news or delivering a boundary all the time. Okay. Actually just think saying less.
00:27:29
Speaker
land so much better in a work context um like hi can we meet this afternoon i might have a free slot you might even be able to see a free slot in my diary but i might also be doing like two hours of deep work i don't want to chop and change so i'll just say i'm afraid that doesn't work for me as tomorrow don't you say anything else a few a few things that i might build on what you've just said
00:28:00
Speaker
I find it very impressive when people are able to articulate their boundaries to me as their manager. I love it when I manage someone new and they say, I like to do yoga between X and X and therefore that means that this hour needs to be blocked out. I'm just like, great, you're looking after yourself and I don't have to worry about that. So Tick, thank you for being an adult enough to say like, number one, is this okay? Number two, like,
00:28:26
Speaker
I'm sort of going to do it whether or not it's okay. So I'm informing you why this is important to me. And I'm letting you know that like, that's what I need to be successful and happy and productive. And like, even if I couldn't accommodate it, even if that was my scheduled one-to-one time that I had in my diary for her or them, I would totally change it just because that person has had the like foresight to say, I actually need this to be happy. It's a big thing for me. Is that okay? And it's like that you being happy and productive is basically my entire job.
00:28:57
Speaker
So cool, you are mature enough to know how to do that. I think I found having boundaries very hard in a corporate environment because I did, I found that people just took my diary space and they just put meetings in and in a way that I found actually just quite affronting and aggressive. But I definitely did like take to blocking out like hours. Definitely. And I think that worked really well for me. Like do not block here, do not book over. I think lots of people have that in there.
00:29:27
Speaker
calendars and I wouldn't book over someone's do not book me slot without asking them. And then that gives them the opportunity to say, is this a real emergency? You're knocking at the boundary door. Exactly. Knocking at the boundary door. Yeah. So I think that's a really good way to create mental boundaries is to use things like your calendar to do them. And then as you say,
00:29:54
Speaker
it's then up to you if in certain situations you allow people to cross that boundary because you can or because you also think it's important but I certainly think calendar blocking is a very useful like work tip for boundaries. I totally agree and I would say that I'm really clear on like the circumstances in which I will allow my boundaries with work to be flexed if someone else report and that's basically like is someone having some sort of like
00:30:22
Speaker
the long crisis. And I'm not talking about like, I can't, I can't work out how to do this thing. It's more like, is someone is someone on their deathbed, or like having a full breakdown? Or if it's a senior person who needs some counsel, and it's important that I feed into that counsel. Those are basically the two circumstances in which I would sort of comfortably flex my boundary without question, because obviously that gray area is around that.
00:30:56
Speaker
Okay, so as with Niles' episode, we canvassed for some views and questions on this topic and they were all really thoughtful and really good. I'm going to find some questions to you this time. God forbid. Right, so first question, what can employers or managers do to ensure their teams achieve healthy work-life balance while still encouraging high performance?
High Performance and Work-Life Balance
00:31:23
Speaker
Can you have both? Yes, you definitely can have both.
00:31:26
Speaker
Um, otherwise, fuck me, what would be the point? Do you know what I mean? Um, I think number one is role modeling. I think that's really important. Um, role modeling, what you want to see from your team. So actually being quite explicit about your own boundaries that you might have set between your personal life and your, um, work. I think another is like starting off any manager, managing relationship by understanding, you know, what is the setup?
00:31:56
Speaker
that they like, what are the boundaries that they have and if they don't know them really encouraging and saying like can you please think about these in month one of being somewhere so that actually they are made explicit really quite upfront and then I think reflecting on whether you're achieving them regularly as part of like one-to-ones and development goals like I definitely think that you should always have a personal development goal that sits outside of your job and work and then
00:32:25
Speaker
checking on that like as much as you check on the like milestone progress of the kind of professional objectives I think is really important. You can't force people to make progress in their life outside of work but you can make it as equally important to their like overall performance as the work progression themselves itself even. So yeah those are some ways and I think
00:32:55
Speaker
You know, you can set up a working environment where it is okay to like run your own time and have like more control over your time. And, you know, we've talked about confidence and boundaries so far. And I think one of the things that links those two things is a feeling of control. And there's a lot of research like how control needs like better kind of mental health outcomes and stuff. And I think trying to set up an organization where people do have a degree of control over their time and they can, you know,
00:33:23
Speaker
choose which meetings to attend, choose when not to be able to communicate that kind of thing without any shame or fear of retribution. I think those are all really important things. And this sounds like a sort of laundry list of like how to meet a fifth manager. Like these things are really, really hard to do, especially in organizational level. They're really, really hard to do. But I think they start with like a willingness to do it from the top. And yeah, I would definitely say that
00:33:52
Speaker
they're probably not as hard as, as it might seem when you just list them in a long, long list, but it is so much to do with like the whole leaderships collective to want to build an organization that works in that way. Yeah. I would also just add to that that I think the premise of the question was like basically a sort of like, can you have all with performance and work-life balance? And I would say, I think I've spent a lot of time
00:34:21
Speaker
with senior leaders and some of the best ones I've encountered are all people who have like an incredible outside work life. That might be like they've just decided to learn piano to the highest grade. I would never do that. That sounds really hard, but that's an example. You know, people who go cycling all Saturdays or like have such an active and beautiful parenting life. Yeah.
00:34:45
Speaker
and are really passionate about their children and talk about all the beautiful things that they do together. Every really successful senior person I know is rounded and in order to be rounded you probably have to have had boundaries in there to get to that stage. I think if you have any level of coaching to any level of seniority
00:35:07
Speaker
a big part of most coaching journeys will be establishing boundaries between your work and your life because of what you just said, which is like successful people have a balance. They may not be able to like totally switch off, but they have fulfilling other parts of their life that mean that work isn't this all encompassing beast. And yeah, every great leader I know, it's the same. They have good boundaries.
00:35:36
Speaker
normally have a weird hobby. It's like great. So into your weird hobby, like show me your, your like project Instagram. Yeah. You're like those followers. I'm really into it. Yeah. Um, okay. Next question. This is about boundaries. Hi baby girl season. This next question is about boundaries with self. So how, how do you balance going that extra mile upskilling and challenging yourself while maintaining perspective that there is more to life than work?
00:36:07
Speaker
I feel like this is a question about ambition versus balance. Yeah. I mean, I'm not, um, I'm in the always be optimizing kind of camp here. So I would, I would say that what I can, what I can say with confidence is like, if you really want to put effort into improving something, another,
00:36:33
Speaker
part of your life will have to give that effort in cost. It's the same thing you were saying earlier. There's an opportunity cost to like your actions and how you spend your time. Like if you want to become a marathon runner in your free time outside of work, that's great. You should do it. Like sometimes you'll have to get in late for work cause your long run took longer than you thought or whatever. You have to give that time. You might be able to spend less time with your friends in the weekend because you're doing your long runs because you're training.
00:37:04
Speaker
there is always an opportunity cost. And I think that, you know, the kind of always be optimizing, always be striving for something, always be pushing yourself mindset is only really fulfilling if you know what the goal is. And I think that like a lot of people optimize without knowing what they're trying to achieve. And that can lead to a really exhausting
00:37:31
Speaker
like state of being and I would I would say if you know what you're optimising for and you know the goal then you have to establish what in your life is willing to give to give to flex and like make space for that goal to be achieved and I think that sort of flies in the face of like can women have it all you know can people have it all I'm not sure I believe that people
00:37:58
Speaker
can have it all, but I think you can have all the things you put your mind to. You just, there's a temporal element of like, you won't be able to have everything all at once. You know, it's a sequencing. It's a sequencing. And there's just prioritization within your life. Like when you want to do certain things, you probably can't do all the things you want to do in your life at once. And I think what I have definitely seen is like people sort of wanting to do a life overhaul, but they want to do everything all at one time, get better at their job.
00:38:27
Speaker
learn a new skill, get thinner, get fitter, like all of this stuff. And it's like, maybe those things for you to enjoy it need to come in like a sequential order. Because otherwise, you know, if you're doing all of that productive stuff, you may never see your friend or your dog, talk to your mum. Like, you know, I think there's just a lot of, there's a lot of boundaries that need to happen to make something really big, a really big improvement somewhere else. And you just have to know what your
00:38:56
Speaker
what you're optimising for. And unfortunately, I have definitely met a lot of women that feel like they're always optimising, but they don't actually know what they're optimising towards. Yeah, like being better is not a specific enough goal for you to know how much you should be prioritising that.
Conclusion and Listener Engagement
00:39:18
Speaker
As a people pleaser, sometimes I feel when I set boundaries, I have to essentially apologise for it later.
00:39:25
Speaker
by being overly amenable, making me feel like I come across with really varied energy. How do I work on showing up authentically and standing my ground when setting deadlines and boundaries? I could have a very strong reaction to some of the things in that. But I think as we've discussed, not apologizing for your boundaries is probably a good place to start.
00:39:55
Speaker
You know, you sound like, well, most people pleases I know work really, really hard and get a lot done in their people pleasing way of life. And therefore, I would definitely encourage you to think through when you apologise for anything. But certainly, you know, I think
00:40:17
Speaker
through setting a boundary at the outset, you should try and feel confident that that is now done. The boundary is set and you don't need to apologize for it after the fact. No one will be expecting that. If you're gonna get any challenge to your boundaries, you will get it upfront. You won't get it at the end of the project. People won't be focusing on that. They'll be focusing on the output of the work, which is probably very good. So yeah, I would just, if I were you, be trying to think
00:40:47
Speaker
Should I be apologizing at all for any of anything I'm doing? But like, yeah, don't apologize for boundaries that you've already done the work to set because you've done that hard thing up front of saying this is what I need to do. And they've said that's fine by giving you the work, by giving you permission. And you're probably doing that work and you certainly don't then need to say sorry for it. I think you then also don't need to compensate for it. No. Or feel like you need to go the extra mile or
00:41:16
Speaker
I think we, I am sort of a recovering people pleaser. And, you know, you don't have to turn up on that meeting with like a grin plastered all over your face and like bring a, bring a plate of croissants because you feel bad that you couldn't do. You weren't able to do what the maximum you could have done if you wanted to was, you know, you have nothing to feel guilty about and nothing to feel shame for.
00:41:43
Speaker
in just setting your boundary delivery against it. You could turn up a bad mood if you want. Like, who cares? You turn up however you want to turn up, but I don't think you need to bend over backwards because you've set a boundary. That doesn't feel like A flows to B. I agree. Amen. Amen. Right, so that's it. That's it. That's it on boundaries. That's it on boundaries. Thanks for listening, everyone. Please like and subscribe wherever you have listened to this.
00:42:37
Speaker
and congratulations on making it to the end.