“When we fail to set boundaries and hold people accountable, we feel used and mistreated.” – Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection

I have high standards and expectations. They absolutely apply to myself and also to those that I work with, whether in a paid or volunteer capacity. (Also, of note, they apply to  those in my personal life, whether my spouse, children, extended family, or friends.) But having high standards and being able to set boundaries (let alone keep boundaries) are very different issues.

Early in my years in business, I didn’t operate in a way that held the entire first part of Brené Brown’s statement as a truth for me. I was semi-willing to hold people accountable, but because I had not often set clear boundaries, how could they know what my expectations were? This situation was true in my professional life, both with clients and with subcontractors. Yes, both had scopes of work and overall contracts setting the highest level of boundaries and therefore accountability, but lots of room still existed for setting and honoring additional day-o day boundaries in both of those relationships.

Before I had learned how to set these that were right for me, I would occasionally feel that my boundaries were being pushed. But the reality was, if I had never established any boundaries, I did not have the right to feel that a boundary had been pushed. I eventually came to see that if you don’t set boundaries for yourself, you have the right to enforce nothing.

One of my favorite structures that taught me to set boundaries for myself and for my team and supported me in keeping them was  a Team Working Agreement. One of my favorite plays in my book, Playbook for Changemakers, creating a Team Working Agreement facilitates team dialogue and structure and is often used in Agile teams to make boundaries visible to all team members, therefore creating team accountability around keeping and maintaining the boundaries. For example, although I always had good intentions of not checking email while away on vacation, as my team grew to be a team of employees instead of a team of subcontractors, the “Don’t respond to emails when OOO time is scheduled” became one of the team “rules” in the Agreement. Having that boundary in place for the whole team helped me keep it for myself, because I didn’t want to disrespect other team members’ boundaries. That motivation helped me feel more comfortable also keeping individual boundaries that were not linked to team accountability.

My ability to keep boundaries is still very much a work in progress, so I’d love to hear what you have found helpful for keeping boundaries in your own professional (or personal) settings. Let me know in the comments below or reach out and message me on LinkedIn.