Setting Boundaries Well Starts With One Question: What is your YES!?
Do yourself and the people around you a favor, clarify what matters most and make peace that the rest just won't get done... by you.
It was 4pm and I still hadn’t had lunch and was feeling a sharp pain in my pelvic area.
Our business was facing the third consecutive quarter of missing revenue targets and I was facing my umpteenth bought of not taking care of myself.
I averaged 12 meetings a day and one day, I counted 17!?!! meetings.
I was constantly apologizing for being late — to my team, to my colleagues, to board members, and to my family.
And I still didn’t have enough time to eat, hydrate, or even go to the bathroom.
I was the f-ing CEO and yet, I felt no control — over my work, my schedule, or my life.
First, I had to remember I had agency and responsibility
I had a pattern of ceding control to those around me. As an empathetic leader, I was excellent at soliciting input and feedback and listening deeply to my team.
But I was also easily distracted by the emotions of those around me. If someone was having a difficult time, I would become focused on their needs instead of keeping my eye on the big picture and my top-level objectives. I confused my desire to be compassionate with how I focused my energy and my time.
It took me longer than it should have, but after a few weeks of feeling overwhelmed, I finally realized that I was the leader here.
I could and I needed to decide what was worth my time. I also needed to be OK with the fact that not everyone would like my decisions. That not everyone would like me.
It wasn’t my job to make everyone like me.
It was my job to set priorities for those around me. Not the other way around.
I didn’t have to be beholden to everyone. I had to clarify my priorities — my YES!
I had read a Michael Hyatt ebook years ago that talked about how to shave 10 hours off your work week. What stood out to me about the concepts was that for people like me, we didn’t need to do more — we needed to do less.
The question was how to figure out where we should spend our time. Hyatt recommended that we focus on what matters most to us and is necessary for us to be at our top level of performance.
It’s so much easier to say no when you organize your life around your YES! What is your YES!?
~ Kathy Wu Brady
Things like time with my family, time to exercise, time to eat well, and time to sleep were some of those basics that I had inadvertently deprioritized as I became distracted and unfocused.
This had to stop.
So I sat down and outlined my life nonnegotiables. Then I added what was essential at work and what only I could do.
I didn’t plan just for a day, and instead looked at various cycles of work: daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annually. It allowed me to think about my priorities through a lens of seasons where my activities shift based on needs.
Change your schedule, change your life
I reworked my entire calendar. I first slotted in the nonnegotiables and then added work priorities. I challenged my notions of how many recurring structures I needed and how I could be supported in my basic needs:
Did I really need to meet weekly with all of my direct reports?
Could I reduce some meetings from 1 hour to 45 min or even 30 min?
Were all of our meetings even necessary or productive?
Could I change what I asked people to share in advance so that I could have more flexibility on when I reviewed information?
Could I cancel more meetings that didn’t feel like a great use of time and be OK with people being disappointed?
Could I start my days earlier and end them earlier to better match my circadian rhythms?
Could I pre-order lunch to be ready when I needed it?
Could I get my groceries delivered every week?
After this review, I still had rather packed days, but now I could at least have a few breaks and had time for basic things like eat and taking a mini-break during the day.
Revisiting the 3D’s: Delete, Defer, Delegate
As I was actively choosing to do less, but more of the critical things that only I could do and that were critical to my healthy functioning, I revisited a concept that my prior boss had guided me toward — the 3D’s: delete, defer, delegate.
You can’t prioritize well if your list is never-ending.
You have to take things off of your plate. As someone who loves to do it all and has a significant ego, I have trouble letting go. But without letting go, you will limit what your organization can accomplish.
You will also always feel behind, insufficient, and guilt or shame that you didn’t make enough progress on your impossible list. It is much more beneficial to remove things from your list.
Here are the questions I ask to help me delete, defer, and delegate items:
Is this essential to our ability to achieve our goals? —> No = DELETE.
Does this need to be done right now? —> No = DELETE or DEFER.
Can someone else on the team do this work or significantly move this body of work forward other than me? —> Yes = DELEGATE.
Don’t worry if it takes you a few rounds to actually delete, defer, and delegate sufficiently. If this is not something you do often enough now, you need time to practice and build the muscles.
How will you know if you’ve 3D’ed enough of the items on your list?
You will know because you’ll feel that the remaining items are things that are:
Essential to achieving your goals
Need to be done now or in the immediate future
Can only be done by you
It won’t feel easy at first and you might find that early on, you’ve left too much on your list, but if you keep asking the questions above, you’ll find over time, you’ll get better and better at reducing your list.
Because a leader’s job comes with so many unknowns and surprises in your day-to-day and because your job requires complex and difficult decision-making, I guide clients to aim for 80% or less of their time to be scheduled.
Too often as leaders, we schedule 120% or more of our time. When an unplanned crisis inevitably happens, we don’t have any capacity to address it.
It’s no surprise that we feel overwhelmed.
You might not get to 80% initially or ever, but it’s a great target to aim for. When you have that type of give in your schedule, you will be ensuring that you have the space you need to be the strategic leader the organization needs.
Being OK with not being the hero
Many leaders are prone to be heroes. In a culture where we worship heroes, this is no surprise. But it’s one thing to be a fictional figure and another to do this in real life.
Our notion of being a hero means doing it all and doing it perfectly. This creates unnecessary pressure and unrealistic expectations.
In short, it’s setting you up to fail.
Understanding that you need to change your mindset is different from actually shifting it to a healthier place.
In the case of being a hero, I recommend that you work with a coach or therapist to help you grapple with what are likely very entrenched ways of thinking and being.
It took years to form your current view, and it might take years to unwind. Getting support and leveraging frameworks may help you accelerate the rewiring of your mind.
For me, I decided to redefine what hero means to me. Instead of feeling that I needed to be there for everyone, I clarified what was most important and what only I could do and narrowed the scope of my responsibilities to within that new sphere.
Importantly, I did this not only in my work life but in my personal life as well. It helped me feel at peace with where I dedicated my time and to also feel less guilt. Instead, I felt proud of what I was able to do and that I could do it more sustainably.
How you can prioritize your YES! and set better boundaries
The steps I outlined above can be boiled down into a few key actions:
Musts: Outline your nonnegotiables
Only You: List what is essential to your goals and only you can do
Your Cycles: Review your schedule from a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual lens
Question: Challenge all of your existing notions of what is necessary and needed
Rework your calendar seasonally to prioritize the Musts and Only You items and test out your Questions
Use the 3D’s: For the remainder, delete, defer, and delegate
Review how this is working for you weekly and monthly. Don’t be afraid to make adjustments once you give it enough time to learn what’s working and what isn’t. And most importantly, ask for input and feedback, but trust your instincts.
Remember, you have agency and are the leader.
I’d love to hear from you
Have you had a moment where your calendar and time was out-of-sync with your needs and priorities?
What did you do to take back control?
What is your YES!?
Thanks for joining me to practice and play our way to more impactful leadership and a more fulfilling life!
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Some excellent points here, Kathy. When I worked in banking, we had big push on meetings and how to run them properly. Several of the points you raised were covered, such as 1) do we really need the meeting and 2) could the meeting be shorter.
I was on the senior team, and we were all encouraged to say no to meetings that we thought we wouldn't get any great benefit from. It was hard to say no at first, but eventually we all became able to decline meetings where we weren't the main stakeholders. It saved a lot of time.
Also, your point around only doing tasks that only you could do is a great way to cut out all the busywork. It's much easier to read minutes or action points from a direct report, than sit through every meeting. Plus, running meetings and projects in your place is development for your team.