“Boundaries are basically about providing structure, and structure is essential in building anything that thrives.” – Henry Cloud

I’ll be the first to admit that setting and keeping boundaries are two distinct skills that might take practice to use well. Unfortunately, both are skills that I have struggled with in my 20, and counting, years in business.

The harsh reality I had to learn first is that if you don’t first set boundaries, you will have no boundaries to worry about keeping. Without boundaries, some time might pass before you realize that setting boundaries will benefit you as a person, a professional, and a business owner or organizational leader.

I say this as a means of reflection, because I am still fine-tuning which boundaries I want to establish as firm and which are loose guidelines.

I learned about the importance of setting boundaries the hard way early in my years in business, when I was too focused on pleasing clients because I did not want to disappoint them in any way. My desire to please the clients was driven by the goal of renewing contracts. This was a good goal for building a sustainable business, but a shifting focus given that leaders change in Development departments and overall organizations, influencing contract renewal decisions more than a particular interaction.

Ultimately, my colleague, and now dear friend, Bethany Planton, GPC, RSM, RPO of bmp consulting, by demonstrating firm boundaries in her consulting work, caused me to ask a lot of questions of her and of myself. For as long as I have known her, she has had very firm working hours for consulting, and she also follows very clear boundaries about not checking email or doing work when scheduled for time off from her business. I asked her lots of questions about how her boundaries worked for time away and working hours, because I could envision many reasons for exceptions to the boundaries, given the way I once approached them.

Boundaries are, of course, needed for far more than working hours and unplugging when taking time off. Boundaries are needed related to conversations and discourse within a team. Boundaries are needed related to the speed of answering emails or team chat messages during the workday and in non-working hours.

My intention wasn’t so much that I wanted to exactly follow Bethany’s boundaries, but rather that I admired and wanted to emulate setting boundaries that closely aligned with my own “why” for owning and running DH Leonard Consulting. To do so, I needed to return to thinking about my “why” (so of course, I reread Start with Why by Simon Sinek); and I needed to think about the values that I wanted to support for myself as a business owner, and also for my team, which was starting to grow. So I set some additional boundaries as tests and have been revisiting and modifying them as needed in the years since.

Along the way, I did realize that I had been good at one boundary for years as I operated the business…that I would not miss school events, volunteer opportunities, dance showcases, or the like for our family in favor of work. That boundary has evolved as our family has grown older, but it has always been a non-negotiable for me.

A few of my other favorites that have proven to be useful for a long period of time:

• No late-night application submissions (I define anything after 6:30 p.m. ET as “late night,” but especially anything after 8 p.m. ET), and never weekends or holidays
• Honoring the auto-responder on my email when it says I am away, by not responding to emails, even if I happen to read some—because if I don’t honor the OOO message, my example sets the stage for my team to not honor their own
• Not taking one-time large government projects for brand-new clients unless they were working with us on pre-planning before the application opened

What boundaries have you found are helpful for you in your work now, or over a longer period of time? I’d love to hear! Let me know in the comments below or reach out on LinkedIn to let me know.