After-hours Slack messages teach a lesson

It's well after clock-out time, and you're answering a Slack message you probably could have answered tomorrow. You just felt the buzz or already have the habit in place, and your thumb moved before your brain caught up. We’ve all been there, but do you want to keep going in that direction?

Last issue, we talked about accountability: closing the gap between what you say you'll do and what you actually do. But accountability has a strong prerequisite that almost nobody names out loud.

You can't hold people accountable for something you never made clear in the first place. (That includes yourself!)

That's what boundaries actually are. A boundary is a decision you made in advance so you don't have to remake it every time you're tired, tempted, or being tested. It’s a hard line that you (and everyone around you) knows well.

Your team is watching what you tolerate, not what you say. If you answer emails at midnight, you've taught your team that midnight is a normal time to expect a response. If you say yes to every ask that lands on your desk, you've taught people that your time is available on demand. You didn't write a policy into a document nobody is going to read. This is a pattern, and patterns are what people actually see and follow.

Leaders who struggle most with accountability are often the ones who never set the boundary that would have made accountability possible.

Let me say that again. Boundaries make accountability possible.

You can't ask someone to respect a deadline you routinely blow past yourself. You can't expect your team to protect focus time if your calendar is a shared free-for-all. The boundary comes first, and the accountability is what happens once the boundary is based in reality and practiced well.

Tom Petty knew something about this. "I Won't Back Down" isn't a song about picking fights. It's a song about knowing what you're standing on and refusing to be moved off it, calmly, repeatedly, without needing to explain yourself every single time. 

That's the tone we're going for this week. Settled and not defensive.

Pick one boundary you've been meaning to set and set it, out loud, to the person who needs to hear it. Maybe it's telling your team you won't be answering messages after 7 p.m. Maybe it's telling your boss you need two hours of protected focus time before your calendar swallows it whole during the day. Maybe it's finally saying no to the meeting that doesn't need you in it.

Simply (1) pick one, (2) state it plainly, and (3) don't apologize for it three times. (Okay, you can apologize for it once, the first time, but don’t apologize for it in the future ever again!)

On your side,
Lauran Arledge
Founder, Bold Font

P.S. If boundaries are the thing standing between you and the leader you actually want to be, Leader as Coach is built for exactly this kind of work. Cohorts are filling for the next session.