3 Steps for Mastering Boundaries at Work

Set and manage boundaries for your professional success and well-being.

Reviewed by Davia Sills

Key points

• Boundaries build healthy relationships and are essential for self-care as an individual and as a leader.
• It is vital to consistently establish, control, and verbalize your boundaries.
• Effective leadership requires boundary skills to facilitate team, organization, and leader well-being.

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 requires in her situation.

3 Steps for Mastering Boundaries at Work

It is important that we know how to set, communicate, and manage our boundaries as part of exercising agency and choice.

1. Setting: What boundaries do you need or want to put into place? Start by identifying what you need, then move on to what you would like.

Recognize what you are comfortable and uncomfortable with in terms of work hours, communication, and workload. My Gen Z client was constantly bombarded with emails, texts, and interruptions, but she recognized that she needs to have quiet thinking time in her day in order to focus on the creative and strategic work requiring her attention. Practically speaking, this would mean not answering emails and calls or tending to people during certain hours of the day.

2. Communicating: How, when, and with whom will you communicate your boundaries?

Once you know your limits, explicitly communicate them to your colleagues and superiors. Be direct and specific about your needs and expectations, ensuring there is no ambiguity in your language. For my client, this meant communicating her boundaries to her boss and her direct reports.

My client decided to meet with her boss and explain that in order to carry out the work required, each day she needed to carve out some “thinking time” when she wouldn’t be interrupted. She also assured her boss that she would review her communications as a priority once she had finished her thinking time.

With her staff, she decided to share this boundary during one of their weekly meetings, when she explained that several of her responsibilities required deep reflection that she simply could not achieve with regular and multi-channel interruptions. She informed staff that she would not be available during this hour and that she would follow up after this designated time.

3. Managing: What, if anything, needs to be managed or negotiated?

Just because we state a boundary, it doesn’t mean it will be acted upon or actioned immediately. In fact, there will be different reactions, ranging from pushback, testing, ignoring, questioning, defensiveness, silence, avoidance and ghosting through to acceptance. We often fall into the trap of thinking that stating something means it should immediately go into effect. In reality, that is usually not how it happens.

For some boundaries, stating them might be the beginning of a conversation and even a negotiation. My client initially presented her boundary as two hours of offline time per day, which, for her boss, was “too much” during their peak season. The boundary statement opened up a discussion, which resulted in a win-win outcome for both parties.

Tip: Be Consistent.

Consistently uphold the boundaries you have set. This means asserting your limits, even when it’s challenging, or when others may not respect them. Consistency helps to establish these boundaries as a norm within your workplace.

For my client, this step proved the most difficult. This meant turning off all mobile notifications, putting her phone away, and having to remind staff that she was not available when they “popped in.”

Boundaries and Leadership

Clear boundaries are essential for effective leadership, enabling leaders to delegate clearly and avoid ambiguity. When boundaries are unstated or vague, it can lead to confusion and unrealistic expectations within a team. Establishing clear boundaries fosters accountability among team members as they understand the leader’s expectations and the repercussions of boundary violations.

Leaders who set clear boundaries empower their teams to take responsibility for their tasks. Through proper delegation and refraining from micromanagement, leaders cultivate trust and foster autonomy among team members. Boundaries play a crucial role in defining expectations for both leaders and their teams, promoting a harmonious and productive work environment.

Boundaries also help leaders to manage their energy, focus, and time. Setting availability boundaries helps to create and protect time for key strategic activities like innovation and strategic reflection. Clear limits on work hours, communication, and availability promote health and well-being and are an important part of your self-care.

Boundary setting is also essential for modeling healthy behavior to your direct reports and teams. For example, my Gen Z client was able to establish a precedent for others to manage their availability and workloads. Boundaries clarify expectations and open lines of communication.

Remember—it is up to you to establish, communicate, and manage your boundaries. Practicing this is vital for creating a healthy and productive work environment in which you can enhance your interpersonal relationships, live and model healthy practices, and improve your and your team’s performance.