Friends,
I’ve taught communications skills for a long time –to folks across sectors, roles, identities. How to handle conflict, ways to call our colleagues in, ways to call folks out, giving feedback, how to apologize, how to do repair, etc.
Recently, my colleague Jessica and I have added something new, a module on boundaries. We’ve always addressed boundaries implicitly in our work, but they’ve become a necessary explicit workplace skill that folks need to be taught.
With so much uncertainty impacting every aspect of our lives, having good, strong, clearly articulated boundaries is one of the things we have at our disposal to keep us afloat –particularly in workplaces that are demanding more while giving folks less.
They are not optional but essential for our survival.
At its most basic a boundary is a clear acknowledgement of what you will or will not do in order to protect your time, energy, values, or wellbeing. An expression of what is and isn’t okay for you emotionally, physically, mentally, spiritually, or energetically.
Boundaries are not about controlling other people. It’s about clarifying what you will do in response to certain behaviors or conditions.
In teaching boundaries one thing that’s become clear is how often folks mistake a need for a boundary.
A need is something you require for your well-being, whether that is physical, emotional, spiritual, or psychological. Needs are about what nourishes you. Needs are requests that others may or may not honor, whereas boundaries are enforceable because they focus on what you will do, not on controlling others.
A boundary is the limit or action you set to protect what you need. Boundaries may or may not be communicated out loud. Sometimes it’s something you set just for yourself.
Some examples:
Need: “I need uninterrupted time to finish this grant proposal.”
Boundary: “I won’t respond to Slack messages and will decline meeting invites between 3-5pm next week so I can protect deep-work time.”
Need: “I need clearer direction on top line priorities so I can better plan my team’s 2026 roadmap.”
Boundary: “Until I get clarity from senior leaders my team can’t take on any more requests.”
Something else I see is folks conflating the setting of a boundary with initiating conflict.
It’s normal to feel nervous about setting boundaries because they interrupt patterns of overwork and inequity that already exist.
For many folks with marginalized identities, our needs have often been dismissed, minimized, or politicized, and many times framed as “too much,” “needy,” or “angry.”
When you set and hold a boundary, you disrupt systems that expect unlimited labor -physical, emotional, intellectual. They are a way we create safety for ourselves in a world trying to destroy us. We get to decide where we invest our time and talents and how we will care for ourselves and our communities.
The absence of boundaries isn’t just personal, they can be cultural and systemic. Many of us have been socialized or forced to prioritize others’ comfort, survival, and needs above our own. We all pay a deep price for carrying everything and everyone.
We have all seen the impacts in ourselves and in our friends, family, and colleagues.
The impacts often include:
- Chronic exhaustion and burnout
- Resentment or disconnection
- Emotional numbing or over-functioning
Does any of that feel familiar? If they do I invite y’all to take a moment with these reflection questions:
- What do I need right now that I’ve been ignoring or downplaying?
- What boundary would protect that need?
- How might my boundaries be an act of love, for myself and for my people?
I want y’all to celebrate where you have set boundaries, I want us to double down respecting our needs and boundaries into this next year.
I want us to see them as political acts, acts of care that protect our energy, our quality of work, and our relationships.
Let’s get free!
