If you want to improve your ability to set boundaries at work, you should try a “resentment audit.”
Melody Wilding, an executive coach and author of “Managing Up: How to Get What You Need from the People in Charge, told Business Insider that feeling resentment in the workplace is a “good emotional signal that you’ve let something go on for too long.”
A resentment audit is figuring out what areas you feel you’re carrying all the burden, Wilding said. Your emotions can be a good indicator in these situations, she said.
“It’s like being the consummate gold-star student in the group project in school who’s the only one carrying everybody else’s weight,” she said. “That is a good sign that you need to reset some of those dynamics.”
Starting is the hardest part
Setting that first boundary, though, can be tricky, especially in a time of layoffs and restructurings.
Wilding has had clients who told her they thought they were doing the right thing by working overtime and handling dozens of projects outside their job requirements — only to be told at their performance review they were struggling to balance all their commitments.
One client described themselves as “the spray foam” filling in “all the cracks for everyone else” around them.
“We may think we’re doing the right thing, but in actuality it can create this perception that we don’t know how to manage our time, that we are not leadership material,” Wilding said. “And that’s the ultimate punch in the gut.”
Rather than moving up, people get stuck because so many others in the company are overly dependent on them, she said. “Of course it leads to more resentment, it leads to burnout, exhaustion, and it becomes this vicious cycle.”
Do it for your future self
The feeling of someone pushing back on our boundaries also runs along the same pathways in the brain as physical pain, Wilding said.
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“If you are someone who has been overly accommodating for a long time, it’s going to feel really uncomfortable to put up boundaries. You’re going to feel guilty, you’re going to feel as if I’m doing something bad.”
That’s just your brain tricking you, in Wilding’s view. When sitting in this discomfort, she recommends asking yourself what your future self will thank you for.
“Three months from now, I’m going to be really happy I didn’t commit to this three-day retreat with my team, even if I feel a bit bad in the moment,” she said.
Boundaries lie on a spectrum. Some are rigid, like a fence or a wall with no holes in it — “nothing can get in, but nothing can get out either,” Wilding said.
On the opposite end are very porous boundaries that have huge gaps allowing anything to get in and out.
“Healthy boundaries are right in the middle where we have certain non-negotiables or limits that we want to stand firm on,” Wilding said. “But you’re willing to be responsive to the moment, to the person, to the situation, and the circumstances of that request.”
You’re not being too accommodating or too uncompromising, and “striking that sort of Goldilocks right in the middle,” she said.
Boundaries can boost productivity
A good first boundary to put in place can be to protect your focus time, Wilding said, “instead of just yet another meeting or yet another check-in.”
“You can be more specific with your status updates on Slack or Teams to give people an expectation of what you’re doing and when you’ll be back,” she said. “Say, ‘I’m heads down in the budget until 2 p.m. and will respond to messages after that’.”
Frame it in terms of what’s in it for them, Wilding added, rather than asking permission.
“Going forward, I will be blocking out two hours each week on Friday in order to work on this project that I know is important to our Q3 goals,” Wilding suggested. “Set them in the affirmative, so basically say what you can do, versus what you won’t do.”
There’s a good business case for a culture where boundaries are celebrated, because when people are focused on the right things, that leads to higher quality output, Wilding said. People aren’t burning out or going on medical leave so much.
“You’re going to get higher productivity out of them, and they’re more likely to stay longer, they’re more likely to talk positively about the company,” Wilding said. “It creates this virtuous cycle rather than a vicious cycle.”
