Your Roles and Your Rules: How to Set Boundaries for Work and Life
When you know your roles, you know your rules.
When you know your rules, you know your boundaries.
There are three levels when it comes to defining your work-related boundaries: the job description level; the professional ethics level; and the level of your personal values and roles.
Your Rules: The Job Description Level
Your job description is generally the most well defined of these three levels; however, even this is usually poorly defined.
What are your deliverables? What are your job responsibilities? What are the agreed-upon expectations between you and your colleagues; you and your manager; you and your clients or customers; you and other stakeholders?
Note that these are your job responsibilities, as you understand them.
Most jobs have unwritten expectations; and most jobs can be done well, by — for example — an introvert or an extrovert. No two people will live into their job responsibilities in exactly the same way, no two companies will formulate exactly the same expectations even with jobs with the same titles.
Also keep in mind that other people, even people who work closely with you, have little understanding of what it is that you actually need to do, in order to do your job.
It is not other people’s job to understand your job.
It is your job to understand your work and how it impacts your time, your energy, and your personal commitments.
It is also your job to communicate your boundaries clearly and respectfully to others.
Bear in mind with complex jobs, that it can take a long time to truly understand your work: I know a couple of ordained pastors who are also trained as secular licensed therapists. Both told me it took them years to sort out the finer distinctions between these two jobs which both involve counseling and accompanying people through crises.
It is hard work to truly understand a complex job. Be patient and kind with yourself as you learn what is yours, and what is not yours, to do.
What are you responsible for accomplishing at work?
And what do you need, in order to deliver? Example: I need to block at least four hours a week to write a sermon. Usually I can do it in less time, but I need to reserve those hours each week. You can’t force creativity; and sometimes the Muse dawdles.
What we want to do here is distinguish between what only you can do; what you and others can do; and what is — quite literally — not your job.
What are the things that ONLY YOU can do? What’s in your wheelhouse?
What are the things that, if you left your job, would mean that your workplace would have to find someone else with those skills? What makes you hard to replace? How would your workplace be disrupted, what would fall apart or not get done, if you were suddenly gone?
What are the things you do, that others can also do — what can you cross-cover for, what can be delegated to others without much disruption in your workplace’s functioning?
Finally: what is definitely not your job? When do people say, “Well really, [people in your profession] should…” — and you know they literally do not understand the context of your work? (And remember, it’s not other people’s job to understand your job: it’s your job to understand it, and to communicate graciously what you do, and what you do not do.)
Write down a list of at least three things you’re now doing, the deliverables you’re delivering, at work.
Also, list two or three things that people THINK is true about your job, that is a misunderstanding*. What do people repeatedly get wrong about your job?
Go through that list and sort the items into these categories:
ONLY I can do this
Others can also do this
Definitely not my job
This exercise sharpens your focus about how you add value to your workplace; and what is, and is not, a good use of your time.
What is your job?
What is not your job?
Write it down for yourself. Make a list.
Look at it when you plan your work.
In my case, it is my job to write and deliver a sermon each Sunday. When I plan my week, I make sure I first block out on my calendar the hours I need for writing a sermon. I have to deliver at least one each week (two if there is a funeral); it is one of those things that ONLY I am responsible for; and I need to reserve a solid half day each week to be able to do this.
That’s a boundary.
Your Rules: The Professional Ethics Level
What are the rules of your profession’s game?
Some professions have formal, written ethics codes, and enforce them.
Lawyers can be disbarred, priests can be defrocked, soldiers can be dishonorably discharged, doctors can lose their licenses to practice medicine.
If you belong to a professional association that has a statement of ethics, print it out so you can reread it.
Write down how you practice your profession. If you swore an oath to do what you do, print it out so you can reread it when it’s unclear how to handle something.
You might already have a straightforward ethics-related mantra that you use to help you cut through the fog.
A medical person in my family must sort out which actions to take when lots of interests collide between the patient, the patient’s family members, other caregivers, and multiple bureaucracies.
He frames the problem with this core question: “What’s in the best medical interest of the patient?”
Boom. Clarity.
It is his role to advocate for the best medical options for the patient. He’s the medical guy. That’s his job.
The other stuff is for family members, social workers, medical billing and health care insurers, and hospital administrators to wrangle out.
All professions have codes of conduct. However, many professions pass them along informally.
If you didn’t swear an actual oath, what WOULD be in your oath of office as a software engineer, a community manager, a jeweler, a tech writer, a pub owner?
Think about the people in your field that you admire, and the people who taught you your skills. Complex jobs have apprenticeships, sometimes called internships, and sometimes simply pairing newer folks with more established people in the field. In an apprenticeship, you learn not only a skill set, but the norms and values that go with that line of work.
Who are your mentors? Who are the people in your field that you look up to, and aspire to be like? What have you learned from them about how to do your work in a professional way, with excellence and integrity?
Who do you admire, and why do you admire them? What are the professional norms and the ethical standards they operate under?
It’s sometimes easier to see what your unspoken, internalized professional standards are, when you see people violate them.
What if you were away from your job for three months, and the person assigned to cover for you turned out to be an absolute disaster?
You come back to chaos and conflict left in this person’s wake.
What did they do — and what did they neglect to do — to create a mess that you’d have to clean up?
What would you have to do, to re-establish trust, integrity, and good order, with your colleagues, your clients, your customers, your managers, your communities, your direct reports, the general public?
Any actions that you’d need to take in order to establish trust and integrity in a broken situation, are your to-do list for living out your professional ethics at work.
Write those actions down.
Make a map for yourself to consult when conflicts of interest arise.
You can get started by writing down three “yeses” — three things you will always strive to do; and three “noes” — three things you will never do.
Make it clear.
If you think of more — write them down, too.
Writing down the professional ethics you practice in your work, will help you say “yes” and “no,” and to set boundaries.
Here’s one of mine from my blogs and newsletters: I promise people who subscribe to my newsletters, that I will not share or sell their email addresses.
And: I will not do that.
Firm boundary. Hard no.
Your Rules: The Personal Commitments Level
What are your other important life commitments and roles, apart from work?
I read** about a man who had exceptional professional skills who was being pressured by his new client to come in to work on a Saturday.
He said, “Oh, I’m terribly sorry, I can’t do that. Saturday is the day I dedicate to my family; I’m not available on Saturdays.”
Then the client said, “Fine, we’ll make it Sunday.”
And the man replied, “Oh, but I’m not available on Sundays, either; that’s the day I dedicate to God.”
They met on Monday.
Write down a list of your other important roles in life that you are committed to putting your time and life energy into, that are NOT your job title.
They could be roles like: Aunt, Son, Sister, Friend; Citizen; Writer; Woodworker; Advocate; Human Being Deserving of Self-Care.
Write down three boundaries you set, in relation to your work life, that allows you to live into those roles.
These could be things like:
“In the mornings, I pay myself first.” That is, before you start your paid work for the day, you get outside for a walk, or perhaps you do some journaling.
“If my nieces and nephews are coming to town, I schedule time off to be with them.”
“I do not take my work laptop with me on vacation.”
When you know your roles, you know your rules.
Write down your rules.
When your rules are written down, outside of your head, you can re-read your rules in times of internal or external conflict.
This gives you the courage to live by them.
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Notes
Regarding writing up your own boundaries, you might also check out writer Annie Mueller’s “No I Will Not” page.
* A pastor friend, who was being pushed to take on a time-consuming non-work-related project during the week, was told in all sincerity: “But you only work for an hour on Sundays, what do you mean, you don’t have the time?”
** The story stayed in my mind, but I can’t recall where I read it — I’ll be glad to share the source if I find it again.
References
‘No I Will Not’ (no date) annie mueller. Available at: https://anniemueller.com/no-i-will-not/ (Accessed: 17 February 2023).