365: Boundaries as Leadership Development: How to Build a Career Without Burnout

365: Boundaries as Leadership Development: How to Build a Sustainable Career Without Burnout

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Over the years as I have continued to coach graduate students, something interesting has happened. A lot of the students that I began working with in their programs are no longer students, because they finished their degrees. They are now working professionals and have transitioned into faculty roles, leadership roles in organizations, staff roles, and a wide range of other positions.

Because of that shift, my work with them has also evolved. Our conversations are focusing more on areas of career and leadership development. We are talking about how they're navigating new responsibilities, how they're managing teams, how to make better decisions, and another thing that has come up is the topic that brought them to my work in the first place, which is the question of how do I make my work more sustainable?[00:01:00]

So these are individuals that clearly have sense of purpose, clearly love what they do clearly want to give back, but they wanna do it in ways where they don't burn themselves out or harm themselves in the process. So this is where the question of how do I pursue sustainable leadership comes up? And tied to that a subtopic within it is boundaries. So when I think about boundaries, the first thing that comes to mind is this quote from Prentis Hemphill, I rarely remember quotes, but this one I will likely never forget, and it goes like this: "Boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously."

I know that I've recorded an episode on the topic of boundary setting before, and I probably brought up this quote back then. I just love it so much because it [00:02:00] reminds me that boundaries help us to remain connected to others, to be in relationship with others, doing the work that matters to us, but also to show up in ways that allow us to be more human and to do work more intentionally.

So today I thought I would bring up the topic of boundaries in relationship to leadership. And when I think about leadership, we often imagine people who are responsible for managing others who are very busy, probably say yes to a lot of responsibilities. They're stepping up, they're volunteering, they're taking initiative, and that's great because those are the qualities that got them to where they are today, but I hate to be the bearer of bad news. Those same qualities that got you into the role are not the ones that are gonna allow you to grow within it. And so you're gonna need a new set of skills, and that's where sustainable leadership comes in. That's where the question [00:03:00] of how to set better boundaries comes in, especially boundaries around your time, your energy, your attention, and your capacity.

And so that's what we're gonna be talking about today. Please listen in. And also, one of the other things I wanna mention is that even if you're not in a leadership role per se, this still applies to you. So please listen in and let's talk about it.

Welcome to the award-winning Grad School Femtoring Podcast. The place where first generation BIPOC students and professionals can listen in on inclusive grad school stories and gain practical tools for sustainable success. This is Doctora Yvette Martinez-Vu, a certified coach, consultant, author, and speaker.

I will be serving as your femtor, providing you [00:04:00] with insider knowledge to help you thrive in grad school and beyond.

Welcome back everyone to another episode of the Grad School Femtoring podcast.

This is your host, Doctora Yvette, and today, yes, we are talking about leadership development and boundaries, and how to build a sustainable career without burning out. I thought I would start with really defining these terms because I want us to be clear on what we mean by both boundaries and leadership as well as leadership development.

So first we're starting with boundaries. According to the American Psychological Association or the APA a boundary is quote, a psychological demarcation that protects the integrity of an individual or a group, or that helps a person or group set realistic [00:05:00] limits on participation in a relationship or activity, end quote. Boundaries allow you to communicate what you are available for, what you prefer to do, in terms of how you work and how you communicate, and what conditions allow you to do your best work. In professional environments, boundaries can be really helpful in that they create clarity.

You're helping your colleagues understand how to best work with you. They need to understand expectations, priorities, availability, and so on. And strong boundaries often strengthen your collaboration. I know you might be thinking, I don't wanna seem like I'm a difficult person. No, quite the opposite because as you are clear about your boundaries, people have a clearer sense of how to engage and work with you.

Now I wanna talk about leadership and leadership development. Leadership as defined by the Center for Creative Leadership [00:06:00] refers to a social process that enables individuals to work together to achieve results that they would never achieve working alone.

Leadership development is that intentional effort of building leadership capacity for the collective. It goes from thinking about yourself as an individual to thinking about yourself for the greater good, for a collective. This includes learning how to make thoughtful decisions, how to communicate effectively, how to manage responsibilities, how to support teams and groups, and how to build systems that allow people to do their best work.

And one thing that I wanna reiterate, like I mentioned earlier, is that leadership development doesn't require a formal leadership title. You don't need to be a manager. You don't need to be a director, a supervisor, a PI to begin working on your leadership skills. Grad students are [00:07:00] leaders. They're engaging in leadership development when they're organizing research teams, when they're collaborating with their peers.

Staff members are leaders and they're engaging in leadership development when they guide projects or mentor colleagues. Even if you're an early career professional or even a student, every time that you're advocating for your needs and the needs of others, thoughtfully, you are engaging in leadership development. Leadership and leadership development, and strengthening those skills tied to that begins long before you get an official leadership title. And it begins through the everyday practices that shape how you work, how you communicate, and how you support others. Boundaries are one of those everyday practices.

So let's talk about why boundaries are such an important leadership skill. First, boundaries support your focus. [00:08:00] I know this from experience. You need time for deep work. You need time to plan. You need time to think through and make difficult decisions. If your schedule becomes crowded with never ending meetings and interruptions, then that space for deep work and for reflection is gone.

I learned this from experience, and I learned this the hard way, because I remember that I once used to think that any open time slot on my calendar meant that it was available for other people. I didn't recognize that I could give myself permission to block out time for the work that I needed to do, or simply for rest and recovery.

And so I want you to recognize that setting a boundary to support your focus is important.

If you're looking for a workshop that helps your team work sustainably while still achieving meaningful goals, I'd love to support you. I offer [00:09:00] interactive workshops on sustainable productivity, executive functioning and leadership development designed for nonprofit teams, higher education staff, and mission driven organizations.

These sessions focus on practical systems that help people manage their workload, protect their energy, and build leadership practices that center their long-term goals and impact. Participants leave with tools that can apply immediately. That include strategies for goal setting, focus, prioritization, and collaborative work cultures that support wellbeing and accountability.

Organizations often bring me in when their teams are navigating burnout, rapid growth or leadership transitions, and want a thoughtful, values aligned approach to productivity. If you'd like to explore bringing a workshop to your team, visit gradschoolfemtoring.com/speaking to learn more or schedule a call with me at the link in the show [00:10:00] notes.

Next boundaries support your energy management. Energy management is really important for my work, because I work with a lot of individuals who might have the same 24 hours in a day as someone else, but they don't have the same level of energy as people around them. You need to be more aware of your emotional and cognitive energy, and how much of that is something that is required for your leadership.

When you feel like you're constantly stretched thin, if you are working beyond your capacity, then a lot of other skills are going to be impacted. It's gonna make it harder for you to make decisions. It's gonna be harder for you to communicate. Even your creativity will suffer, and that's also important for leadership development. So you need to find ways to protect your energy so that you can be present, so that you can be engaged, so that you can actively listen when you are engaging and work with [00:11:00] others.

So again, boundaries can help you support your energy management.

Third boundaries help you to create healthier team cultures, and I do hesitate with using the phrase healthy, because of healthism, and I much prefer to use the word wellbeing. But in this case, I know that a lot of folks reference this phrase healthy team cultures, and so that's why I'm using it, but by that I mean modeling more balanced or sustainable work practices; signaling to others how you do work that is sustainable. This reminds me of how a lot of times other people are watching you and they're learning from you. So if you're mentoring someone, they're learning from how available you are, how often you reply back, are you saying yes to everything?

If you're responding to emails at all hours, those that work with you might take that as an [00:12:00] assumption of how they also need to be in relationship with you. If you don't set those boundaries, they might not know to what extent they can respect your time. So boundaries can help you with just promoting, again, a healthier team culture or a team culture that really cares and promotes everyone's wellbeing.

The last thing I wanna say about boundaries, is that boundaries support long-term impact. And this is the whole point of the work, isn't it? We're doing work around leadership and leadership development. We're doing work around developing our careers, and work that is purposeful because we want to have an impact.

That is why I became an entrepreneur. I left higher ed several years ago because I wanted to have a greater impact. And I'm sure that you too want to have a greater long-term impact. And so how does that [00:13:00] work? If you are able to do this work for an extended period of time, because you reinforce boundaries that allow you to do good work without overextending yourself, without burning yourself out, that is gonna open up room for long-term impact.

And I wanna mention this too, because if you are first gen, if you are non-traditional, if you have multiple responsibilities, if you have multiple hats that you play in your career and in your life, you have so much going on and it makes it hard for you to reinforce these boundaries. You might be the first one in your family to reach this level in your career.

And so you feel more pressure than others to prove your worth. You might be having to take on additional time and energy for the emotional labor in your workplace. Maybe you're the mentor, the femtoring, the one translating cultural expectations. Maybe you're [00:14:00] supporting colleagues of similar backgrounds. Maybe you're supporting folks in your community, so there's so much that you might have going on at any given time, and I want you to recognize that impacts your ability to do good work long term.

So I wanna transition to talking about a little bit more about how to set these boundaries around protecting your focus, your energy, promoting a better work culture or team culture or group culture, and also how to support the long-term impact of your work.

The first type of boundary that I highly recommend is a boundary around your time. So time boundaries. They protect the hours that you need for that deep work that I mentioned earlier for learning, for reflecting for rest, and this could look like scheduling blocks of uninterrupted work time, limiting the number of meetings you have in a day, protecting evenings for family or [00:15:00] personal time.

Or even building in more buffer time between your commitments. One question that you could ask yourself around this boundary is, where in my week would clear time boundaries support me and my leadership capacity? Another type of boundary that's super duper important is communication boundaries. That's how you clarify for people how they can engage with you.

This includes how they message you, any requests they send, any conversations they have. This could look like setting expectations around email, response times, scheduling office hours for meetings, organizing requests through structured systems rather than informal channels. And I do this a lot with my clients.

I let them know you can communicate with me in two channels. Through our voice memo app and through email and that's it. Anything outside of that is not considered official form of communication as I keep things in particular [00:16:00] channels so that it's easier for me to navigate that. This allows you to still be responsive without feeling the need of being available 24/7.

Another question that you could ask yourself around communication boundaries is, what communication practices would allow me to remain responsive while still protecting my focus?

And a third type of boundary, is energy boundary. Energy boundaries refer to recognizing that different tasks require different levels of cognitive and emotional effort. Some people might need to schedule complex work, writing time and analytical work during times of day when their focus is the strongest. And if you wanna learn more about this, I talk all about it in the ABC Method of Productivity episode. It's episode 144, and it's a popular one. In fact, a client recently told me that she shared it with her [00:17:00] brother and that he's been scheduling his work around his best focus times. That's one strategy that can work, check it out. But in general, I want you to just think about the amount of cognitive and emotional energy that something requires, and ask yourself how you can shift your workflow to support that. So this means, thinking about any activities that drain your energy, and then thinking about how you can change the way that you get work done so that you can work with your capacity.

For neurodivergent professionals in particular, supportive systems can also make boundary setting much easier. And so some other helpful practices around these like energy boundaries are having visual task boards, having your workflow written down, scheduling those focus work blocks, creating templates for recurring emails so you don't have to keep thinking so hard every time [00:18:00] you respond, giving yourself transition time between meetings, tracking responsibilities in one system. I know that's one way that I manage my energy the most, is by setting up systems to protect it.

And before we wrap up today's episode, I want to remind you that leadership develops through practice, and it grows through small adjustments that you make over time, and that boundaries can help you with that.

Boundaries are not a bad thing. They're not something to feel bad about, to feel guilty about. They're not a limitation. They are a strength. They are a tool that is going to allow your leadership to flourish in sustainable ways. And if you like this episode and you want specific scripts for setting boundaries, specifically related to grad school, check out episode 174.

And if you want me to record a new episode on scripts for setting boundaries in the [00:19:00] workplace, let me know. I'm happy to do that too. I can add it to my queue, but I need to hear from you for that to happen. All right. Thank you for listening. Please share this with a friend or colleague who could benefit from it.

And as always, I'll talk to you all next time.

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The third way to support my show is by joining my email newsletter where I share key takeaways and additional resources. Thanks again for listening, and until next [00:20:00] time.