🎒 Microlesson

🪞 Reflect

Does your organization or team have a culture that rewards overworking? Do any of your team members struggle with burnout?

💡 Concept

As explained in last week’s microlesson, setting your personal boundaries is crucial for maintaining a healthy work-life balance, especially when you work remotely. However, it’s just as important for your team to set universal boundaries that protect the entire team’s well-being.

Your team can accomplish this by working together to create a boundaries agreement, a documented understanding of expectations for team members with regard to issues such as scheduling and meeting norms. As an example, let’s say that the members of your team feel pressure to respond immediately to all messages, regardless of content or urgency.

Steps

1. Define the boundaries that are needed.

Sample Discussion Details:

• Not every message needs an immediate response.

• We need to have time for uninterrupted work.

• It’s not efficient or effective to break focus for every message received, regardless of urgency.

2. Determine the obstacles that the team faces when setting these boundaries.

Sample Discussion Details:

• We want to prove that we're working.

• We don't want others to think negatively of us.

3. Outline the actions that team members should take to establish these boundaries.

Sample Discussion Details:

• Follow the communication charter for the default response speed for a given message topic..

• Give an expected response time frame when sending a request.

• Don't follow up until the time frame has expired.

4. Identify the point person responsible for taking action.

Sample Discussion Details:

• In this example, each individual needs to hold this boundary.

5. Suggest resolutions for when a boundary is stretched.

Sample Discussion Details:

• Refer to the organization communication charter.

When building an agreement with your team, make sure to address issues and situations that are relevant to both co-located and remote team members. In addition to preventing overworking and burnout, a boundaries agreement that takes into account the experiences of all employees helps foster a healthy, positive, and location-inclusive work culture.

In next week’s microlesson, you’ll learn about boundaries scripts, which are frameworks to help you to respond firmly and professionally to situations when your boundaries are being stretched.

🎬 Take Action

Here are some actions you can take to set and protect your and your team’s boundaries:

• Write down examples of where boundaries are needed in your team.

• Introduce the concept of a boundaries agreement with your supervisor and colleagues by sharing this microlesson.

• Create a boundaries agreement with your team.

📄 Additional Resources

Create a Boundaries Agreement with this Mural Template (make a copy to use for yourself)

Setting Boundaries at Work for Remote-Friendly Teams

✅ Check In

🧠 Keep Learning

Learn more about how to help your team establish and maintain effective boundaries in our Leadplaceless course.

🎁 Learn with your team!

Refer our weekly microlessons to your team members to learn as a group! Just follow the instructions in the section below to get started.