Build Without Burnout: Use Boundaries As Guardrails To Protect Your Business
Did you know that the biggest threat to a leader's performance is burnout?
Burnout ranks higher on a business's challenges than retention. More than 70% of the workforce are saying they’re burned out according to DDI’s Global Leadership Forecast for 2023 and 2025.
Burning out is not due to lack of ambition or skills. It’s contributed to not using boundaries as guard rails to best allocate ambition and sustain long term high performance towards building an enterprise.
Founders, executives, and ambitious professionals leading teams or scaling businesses who struggle with over-functioning, over-committing, or doing it all themselves these three keys are for you.
Stop seeing boundaries as selfish, Start seeing them as tools to scale
Boundaries are business tools. They allow high performers to protect their performance and use it in increments to bring results to your organization.
Boundaries in the workplace can be a cuss word and so can pushing back on leadership.
Corporate is a perception game. Looking like a team player can bring you more benefits than actually being a team player. Which is why I emphasize on knowing the rules of the game in my IG reel here.
There are the rules to the game that are public then the game within the game. That’s where I see individual’s boundaries get tricky and either disappear or clash with their team.
Those whose boundaries disappear
Resisting personal boundaries because of the guilt trips, the people pleasing needed to keep contracts coming in and the risk of losing the role of being the go to person trips up the progress of this type of high performer. This behavior contributes to the abundance of burnout and unrealistic performance expectations plaguing the workforce.
Those whose boundaries disappear
The high performers who instill boundaries look like they are not a team player and accept that risk to provide the results they committed to providing. They take on fuss and doubt from their team and have to lock in a destination to get through to the result. This resilience and example helps build leaders.
The good thing is that boundaries don’t need to be an either or situation. With strategy and creative problem solving it can be a BOTH AND scenario.
I’d like to invite you to reframe the way you see boundaries and to start using them as guardrails to support your performance. Yes, the side effects have the potential to disappoint your clients. To keep their support, I suggest communicating that your boundaries increase your ability to contribute to their bottomline. After all that’s probably why you were hired.
Pro Tip: Keep your negotiation skills sharp. Always prepare for a yes (see LinkedIn Post for a professional breakdown and this IG post on negotiating for a personal example)
As a high performer, the boundaries that you need to put in place should be proactive and consistent to set expectations for yourself and the growth you’re committed to as a team. I have been in corporate for 10 years and these 3 boundaries have helped me scale tech companies, manage 7 figure budgets and secure 8 Figure contracts.
Time blocks for strategic thinking: Being proactive takes time for you to come up with creative strategies and test them. Make sure you put time on your calendar and stick to it.
No-meeting zones for execution: Corporate people love meetings and check in. Don’t get carried away in their flow. Have regularly scheduled no meetings times to work on the stuff that’s talked about on the calls.
Decision rights (who owns what): I learned this when I worked on proposals with 30+ people. Before the work gets started we have a kick-off meeting to discuss expectations and roles are assigned and check in meetings were put in place for progress.
Micromanaging is a bottleneck to growth
You can’t scale what you micromanage. Growing and scaling requires a secure and thriving mindset. People who micromanage are narrow minded, insecure and too focused on control. Scaling requires the leaders trust in the systems and their people to do the job they were hired to do. When a leader micromanages that shows a lack of trust in themselves first and their team second.
Lack of boundaries and micromanaging is not a one time or one company issue. It’s a domino effect spreading across the workforce. There’s been a decline in a lack of quality leaders and (Source: Forbes). Some of the reasons for the decline are conflict resolution in professional relationships, disregard in trust and lack of succession planning.
To reverse this I urge leaders to start viewing boundaries as the containers to support your businesses mobility and succession of your people so you can step away from working in your business to working on it. Real growth in your business is when you are hitting your financial goals, building the people who are going to be the future leaders and relationship management.
Check out my workshop on The Art of Collaboration: Build Relationships that Last Beyond the Project. It walks you through my proven roadmap on relationship building that I use to secure 8 figure partnerships. See here.
Micromanaging removes the possibility of building up your team to do things in business that you don’t have to or don’t know how to do.
Build business people do to business
Building people while you build business is the essence of succession planning. This is how you invest in the life expectancy of your enterprise. The benefits of building people up is that you get to pour into people that you are passing the baton to and create a teamwork environment. This is where the adage of your team is as strong as the weakest link applies. If you are a strong leader then it shows in how your team operates.
As a leader you get to lead the charge on shaping the next generation of leaders. When you are a high performer you create high performers by them being in proximity to you.
Here are 3 boundaries that I have used to mentor 1000+ tech leaders across the globe:
Clear is kid, Unclear is unkind - Brene Brown: The rule of thumb is to provide clarity over being controlling. Managers' roles are to manage the systems their people act on, not controlling the people. So to build your people make sure you set outcomes to achieve results. Avoid hand holding by giving them minute-by-minute instructions or helicopter managing. You can provide your standard of procedures to assist.
Schedule time for mentorship: As a leader, developing your people is the job. It’s not extra work. Not investing time to do it puts your operations at risk and the longer you avoid it will start posing risks to your business. High turnover rates and burnt out team members is costly to your bottomline and culture.
Be clear about non-negotiables that model sustainability: This boundary sets the tone of expectations in performance and communication. For example if you are online answering messages at 11pm, so will your team. A few one-offs happen but it being the norm impacts your sustainability. Business is a marathon, not a sprint. Pro tip: If you do see your messages late at night, schedule them for business hours.
See my IG post on systems + boundaries here
The vision that you are building your enterprise with is going to require you to put up boundaries in place to guard your growth. The people you are leading need to see a sustainable way to lead and step up to grow an organization. Building the next generation of leaders requires guardrails. You get to decide how to build without burnout.
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