Setting boundaries at work is crucial for maintaining your well-being, productivity, and work-life balance. However, knowing that a boundary is needed and effectively communicating it are two different challenges. In this post, we'll explore a simple, yet powerful framework on how to set boundaries at work, ensuring that you can protect your time and energy while maintaining positive relationships with colleagues and clients.
The Importance of Setting Boundaries at Work
Boundaries are essential for preventing burnout and ensuring that your work environment supports your personal and professional goals. A boundary is not about controlling others but about advocating for your needs in a way that allows you to thrive. When properly communicated, boundaries help you maintain control over your work life without sacrificing quality or relationships.
The Simple Framework for How To Set Boundaries at Work
When it comes to setting boundaries at work, there are two key steps:
Communicate What Doesn’t Work
Offer a Solution
This straightforward approach ensures that your boundary is clear and actionable, making it easier for others to understand and respect.
Example Scenarios
Here’s how this framework can be applied in various work situations:
1. Handling Disrespectful Communication:
Imagine a client or colleague is speaking to you in an aggressive manner. Instead of reacting emotionally or issuing an ultimatum, you might say: "I don’t appreciate being spoken to that way. I’m going to step away for a few minutes, but I invite you to circle back when we can discuss this more calmly." In this example, you’ve communicated what doesn’t work (being spoken to disrespectfully) and offered a solution (re-engaging when emotions have cooled).
2. Managing Availability:
Suppose a colleague schedules a meeting during a time you’ve blocked off for personal reasons. Instead of simply declining the invitation, you might say: "I would appreciate if you could check my availability before sending a calendar invite. This will help ensure that I can attend and contribute effectively." By doing so, you’re protecting your personal time while also demonstrating your commitment to being a productive team member.
3. Addressing Workload Overload:
If you’re asked to take on more work than you can handle, risking the quality of your output, you could communicate your boundary by saying: "In order to maintain the quality of my work, I need to focus on my current tasks before taking on new ones. Let’s discuss how we can manage this project." This approach helps you manage your workload without compromising the quality of your work or your well-being.
Why Offering a Solution is Effective
While you don’t always have to offer a solution when setting a boundary, doing so can significantly increase the likelihood that your boundary will be respected. Offering a solution shows that you’re not just focused on your own needs but are also considering how to keep the work moving forward in a way that benefits everyone.
Next Steps in How To Set Boundaries At Work
Learning how to set boundaries at work is a skill that can drastically improve your work-life balance and reduce stress. By communicating clearly and offering solutions, you can enforce boundaries in a way that is both assertive and cooperative. Remember, boundaries are about taking care of yourself so you can perform at your best.
If you’re struggling with setting boundaries at work or need more strategies to manage stress and prevent burnout, consider reaching out for support. With the right tactics, you can create a work environment that supports your success and well-being.
Ready to reclaim control of your life? Subscribe to my newsletter and join a community of ambitious women in accounting, law, and consulting. Learn practical strategies to set boundaries that empower you to thrive professionally and personally—guilt-free.
What You’ll Learn From This Episode:
The importance of setting boundaries at work to prevent burnout.
A simple framework for communicating boundaries effectively.
How to handle disrespectful communication in a professional setting.
Strategies for managing workload and availability through boundaries.
Why offering solutions can enhance the effectiveness of your boundaries.
Watch The Full Episode:
Full Episode Transcript:
EPISODE 20: THE SECRET TO COMMUNICATING A BOUNDARY
Hi, everybody. Welcome. Hi there, everyone. We are getting started. We are officially live. Another episode of Billable Hour Burnout coming your way. Let's get right into it, shall we? Now, today is the second episode of our Boundaries series, but it's our 20th episode, so celebrating that mini milestone. But let's just get right into the meat and potatoes of today's conversation. Now, we're talking about boundaries.
And I know that so many of us can feel deep down in our bones when a boundary is needed, but do you ever wonder how to communicate a boundary? Now, in today's episode, I'm going to give you a very simple framework for you to set that up. But first, let me welcome you to the show. This is Billable Hour Burnout. If you need helpful tactical advice that actually helps you get the career of your dreams without the success or overwhelm, you are in the right place. If you want to finally enjoy the life that you spent decades building, you are in the right place. If you are finding yourself here today. It means you're ready to experience more work-life balance, more ease, more confidence, and you're ready to make it happen without having to quit your job or burn down your life.
I'm Lauren Baptiste, your CPA big four auditor and regulatory tax consultant turned life coach, and you're listening to Billable Hour Burnout. On the show, I'm sharing simple tactics and mindset strategies specifically catered to the modern woman in accounting, consulting, and law. You ready? Let's go. Welcome to another episode. 20 episodes. I am so excited for this mini milestone. This is just the beginning, everybody. Now, you may have noticed, chip chop, I have cut my hair. So that's my biggest news that's been going on. I've had family here. I've had friends around. I've been moving and grooving. I've been swimming. I've been enjoying the summer. I've been taking much-needed downtime. I've been creating and reflecting.
And I find the summer just based on this work that I'm in now, is that this is the perfect time to ideate and create because the fall is when things pick up. This is when everybody's back in their rhythm, this is when it gets darker and colder and stressful. And I want to be here to support when you are like, I need help. I need a minute. So this is what I'm doing. This is what I've been doing. And so now that my hair is chopped, I'm playing with new styles. So let me know what you think. It is different. This is probably the shortest I've ever been in a very long time, if not ever. But I'm enjoying it. I'm enjoying what it brings. And it's nice to not do all my hair up. I'm seeing thumbs up, so that's fun on Instagram.
Now, before we go into today's client success story, I wanted to do it a little differently today. I wanted to give you numbers, because there are some of you out there that hear these weekly testimonials, and you're like, oh, that's all well and good, but I want you to see the numbers. Well, maybe just listen from wherever you're hearing this, but I want you to hear these numbers, because in the last couple of weeks, I've had a few clients who've graduated, and I'm seeing the success. They're seeing the success, and I want you to see the success. So I have three clients who have graduated, and I'm going to walk you through the differences in their numbers of where they started and where they ended. Now, for me, with every client I work with, I measure on four different components.
Stress management, time management, work-life balance, and confidence. Okay. Stress management, time management, work-life balance, confidence. My first client, we worked together for six months. And so before stress management was at a 4.5. Assuming ten is high, ten is mastery. After she was at nine, that was a 4.5. She doubled in her stress management skills. She got really good at stress management. Time management went from 7.5 to 8.75. That increased 1.25%. Work-life balance went from five to 9.5. That's a 4.5% or that's a 4.5 increase. Amazing confidence. 5.5 to 8.9. Every marker this client, in six months, increased. I love that. I love numbers like this. Okay, let's go into the second. Client also worked together for six months. Stress management started at 3.5, ended at 8.5. In six months, that's a five-point increase.
Time management started a three, ended at 7.5. That's a 4.5 increase. Work-life balance went from four to seven. Three-point increase. Confidence went from a two to 8.5. That's a 6.5 increase. That is major. That's like a 400%, 500% increase or something like that. I'm doing quick math, but you can see that these clients are coming to me feeling like they're challenged by stress management, time management, work-life balance, and confidence. And by working together, they've risen. Now, the last client I wanted to share, we've been working. We worked together for about five years. She's seen some stuff in those five years, and what's been really interesting is to see how much she has grown. She started with 3.5 at stress management and ended at eight. So it was a 4.5 point increase. Time management went from six to 8.5.
That's a 2.5 increase. Work-life balance went from a two to a ten. That's an eight-point increase. That is incredible confidence. She said she didn't want it. She was like, I can't give a number, but I can feel a difference in my confidence. Who used to be the woman who focused on my false ego, my title, my salary, my prestige, and now it's focused on my real ego, of what makes me happy, what fulfills me, what drives me. So she's like, I can't put a number on it, but I'm like a different woman. So I'm celebrating all these three clients on all their major successes, their major changes from before and after, and how in working with a coach, you can get to where you want to go no matter what. Right? And I help you get there and make it fun.
So I love sharing those numbers. Maybe as you're hearing those, you can just feel the difference of increases. No one went down. Everybody increased by at least one point on every piece. So this is just amazing. So I wanted to share that with you. It's a different way to feel into the data. I know there's some number crunchers out there. As a. As a former, well, I'm still a CPA, but as an accountant who doesn't practice it as much anymore, I know how we like numbers. So I want to share that with you. But let's go into today boundaries. Now, just to recap last week, a boundary. It's a particular course of action that you take to take care of yourself when a particular set of circumstances arises.
So it's the actions that you take to protect yourself, to advocate for yourself, to get to where you want to go. It's never about the boss. It's never about the tough colleague. It's never about the client. It's never about them. It's about you. And so when we talked about boundaries last week, we understood on a deeper level why we don't set them really because we were never properly taught them. But what we're going to make sure as we go through today is that we're setting you up for success by how to create them, how to start advocating for yourself in a boundary sense. So you're here because you want the secret and I'm going to give it to you. And it's really simple. When we have a boundary, we need to do two things.
We need to communicate what doesn't work and we need to offer a solution. Now, do we have to offer a solution? No, you actually don't have to offer a solution. When you put up a boundary, however, it does make it much more likely to be enforced. Now, there are some boundaries where the boundaries I'm talking about specifically are in a work scenario, and you can likely use them in personal, but every scenario might not apply in this, right? Because we like to think like, what's going to work in a lot of scenarios, but not everyone. So, for example, like the one that's coming to my head right now, it's like if somebody is, maybe you're at a bar and somebody approaches you and says, do you want to dance? And you don't, you could just say, no.
You don't have to give a solution of like, oh, go dance with this other person. You can say, no, thanks. Right? Notice how the boundary can also just be really clear. No. Like, you don't also have to put the person down. You don't have to be angry. You don't have to be rude. You can be clear, concise and compassionate. Someone comes up to you and says, do you want to dance? You say, no, thank you. But that doesn't always work. In a work scenario. We can't always just say no. We can't say no all the time. We need to figure out how do we hold that boundary. So we're going to communicate what doesn't work and we're going to offer a solution. So let me give you an example. Because we've said boundaries are not mandates, demands, ultimatums, idle threats.
They are opportunities for a win. That's how I like to think about it. A boundary is a win for you, and it can be a win for them whether they see it that way or not. But you are saying, hey, when this boundary is actually enforced, it helps me be a better colleague. It helps me be a better parent. It helps me be a better version of myself. So let's start with client scenario. Client is frustrated with maybe something being not done the way exactly they expect it. So they bark at you, they get frustrated. Maybe I hear some clients come to me and they say that their clients even scream at them. Right. That's just what it is. Not to say we love that or that we approve of that.
But some clients kept heated and we then decide in that moment, I need to put up a boundary. So what's not a boundary is saying, don't talk to me that way. Right. It's just like kind of forcing in the middle of a client conversation and a heated client that's not going to do well for you or for business or your company. And so we have to be really mindful instead of saying, don't talk to me that way. Right. That won't work. But an ultimatum in that situation would say, if you talk to me that way, I'm going to walk out and leave. Now, ultimatums also can create more heat, more confrontation. But here's a boundary that could work. I don't appreciate being spoken to that way.
I'm going to step away for a few minutes, but I invite you to circle back when you can discuss more calmly. What we're doing in that moment is we're addressing what doesn't work, and then we are addressing the solution. So I don't appreciate, like, I'm not going to be spoken to that way. So I don't appreciate being spoken to. I'm going to step away and I invite you to circle back when you're ready to discuss in a calm manner. Right. All right, good. Boundary. So that's using, based on what we discussed last week, that falls in the communication bucket. Let's go through another one. Availability. This one comes up a lot when I speak to clients. So this is one of the ten areas where a boundary is needed. So availability. Definitely need boundaries around our availability.
So, for example, a client, let's not even say a client, your colleague puts a calendar invite on your calendar even though they see a block. So you are unavailable, presumably, and you're needed for this meeting. And the block was actually maybe for you to do something personal for yourself, to go to the gym, to go for a walk, to go to your kid's baseball game. So what's not a boundary is you can't send me calendar invites. Right. Like, that's not realistic. Right. We need a team to be able to work together to send each other invites. So that doesn't quite work. An ultimatum's not going to work here. Either you must check if I'm available before sending me invites, or I'm just not going to accept. I'm going to cancel every time.
So if we say, like, okay, well, if you must do that, or I'm going to not come. So that's an ultimatum. That can be pretty strong. That's not always received very well. So here's what we can say in an actual boundary. I would appreciate if you could check my availability before sending me a calendar invite. This will help ensure that I can attend and contribute effectively. So notice you're saying, can you please check my availability? That way, if I needed, I can attend and contribute. This is where we're bringing up. This doesn't work. And here's a solution instead. The secret works. The secret works. So let's keep trying it. I have more scenarios. I can go on and on, and I'm probably not going to go through all of them today.
You can dm me if you want more of them, but these come up very often and I want to make sure you are equipped with, how do I think about this? What's one way I can go into it? So let's talk about workload management, right? You're at capacity, you're already working way beyond your billable hour allocation, and all of a sudden your boss reaches out and says, hey, I need you to put in a few hours on this one project, okay? We can't say you can't give me more work. Like, you just can't, right? An ultimatum here would say, if you give me more work, I'm going to quit. If you give me more work, I'm going to quit. So that is an ultimatum, right? If somebody's like, okay, if you give me one more thing, I'm out the door.
That's not going to work out so well. So let's talk through the actual boundary. So in order to maintain quality in my product of work, I need to focus on my current workload before taking on any new tasks. Let's discuss how we can manage this project. So we're not saying in this situation, like, let me make sure that I can compromise myself or let me work on the weekends, or let me figure out, we're saying, like, let's discuss collectively, like, we're not asking for, we're not asking really for permission here. We're saying this is a quality risk, right? This is something that comes up in the profession, all of them, this is an ethic. This comes up in ethics and law. This comes up also in like, the ethics section, even in accounting, right. We talk about these, we get CLEs for these.
We talk about the importance of risk management. And if quality is not there, if quality starts to get sacrificed, then that's a problem, right? That's not just a problem for you and the work paper. It's a problem for the client and the outcome. It's a problem for risk and making mistakes. It's a problem for maybe getting sued or penalties. So we need to be really thoughtful of, if we're getting more work than we can carry, we need to communicate that. We need to have a boundary and say, in order to maintain quality, I need to focus on my current workload before bringing on a new task or client. Let's discuss how we can manage this. When you have a conversation, they may say the client you're working on isn't as important. That can wait till next week or in two weeks, right?
So you triage and you change the plan. You may say, okay, like, let's get in another resource. Let's get more help to support us through that project. There are ways to talk to do it, but if they just keep piling work on you and then you just explode and say, like, I'm going to quit. I'm going to blow, that's not going to be a win boundary. That's actually going to be lose. It's going to create confrontation, and it's also going to make it so that you don't show up the way that you probably want to. It's kind of coming more reactive instead of proactive. This is the, this is it. This is the secret. So I can go on and on.
There are so many examples we can think about, from vacation PTO to project ownership to the other ten areas that we discussed in episode 19 when we talked about the ten areas where boundaries are needed. But I really want you to take this one thing home. If you want to start to enforce boundaries, we need to think about, yes, it is for me, but if we want to get it actually done, the best way we can do it is be clear about what's not working and offer a solution about what could work. When you do this, what you're doing is opening up channels of communication. You're being really clear of what you can and can't do, and then you're holding yourself. Once it's out there, then you enforce it. So instead, if we give an ultimatum.
Like if you give me one more thing, I'm going to quit. Well, likely you're going to get one more thing. So are you walking out that door? And some people do, right? There's that rage quitting that's been happening a lot. But I just want you to be thinking about there are ways to have healthy boundaries. There are ways to have boundaries that aren't a lose. Truly, if you think about it and work on mindset, there's ways that it can be a win. All right, so this is today's episode. Thank you so much for joining and coming for my 20th one. Are you on my newsletter? If not, I highly encourage that you sign up. DM me whether you're on Instagram or LinkedIn or YouTube. As you're hearing this, send me a message and drop your email.
You will be added onto my weekly newsletter where you will get more tips, more tricks, more mindset techniques to help you manage the stressors of the everyday workload and work life. On the newsletter, everyone who joins you are always the first to know about new trainings, new workshops, new speaking events, new podcast drops, new opportunities, new programs. You're going to want to be on there because that is where all the good stuff happens. So if you are also just listening somewhere that isn't where you can't DM me, go to akaloawellness.com/newsletter. That's akaloawellness.com/newsletter. All right, everybody, thank you so much for listening to today's episode. If you liked it, if you're practicing a boundary, have put the hashtag in there, say replay. If you're listening on the replay, let me know what you think. Let me know what you're enjoying.
I'm going to continue this a little bit longer. Boundaries is one of those things that are essential in order to breakthrough burnout in order to prevent future burnout. So keep with me. Join me next week as we continue this conversation. Find me on Instagram at the Lauren Baptiste, find me on LinkedIn at Lauren Baptiste, Facebook at laurenbaptistecoaching and acheloawellness.com on my website. Thank you so much for listening. If you want more information about me, Acheloa Wellness or my program Freedom, visit acheloawellness.com. Thanks for joining. I'll see you next week. Bye.
