Last month I looked at managing work-life balance and suggested that managing boundaries and delegating could help in addressing this balance. So, this month I am going to look in more detail at managing boundaries (focusing on the right things) and delegating (not being dragged into the wrong things).
How well do you manage boundaries in your life?
These are a few examples of boundaries you may consciously have in place and that you may or may not be successful in holding yourself to.
If you don’t have sensible boundaries in place, then you aren’t really in control of what makes a call on your time and, as such, there is a risk that you will be overburdened and struggling to manage your work/life balance.
There are many reasons we don’t manage our boundaries as well as we perhaps should. For example:
Quite often when I work with clients on setting boundaries at work, I ask them to write down the top 10 activities that absorb their time. Then I ask them to put these in priority order, with 1 being their most important responsibility and 10 the least important. Then I ask them to write down approximately what percentage of the time they spend on each activity.
Once done, I ask them to reflect on what they have captured. There are always some activities that they identify they should not be doing and that they should delegate. There is usually also something they could do differently, so they spend less time on it (weekly 1-2-1s with all their direct reports and attending meetings because they have been invited rather than required are common).
By reviewing what is absorbing their time and reflecting on this, they can then start to identify boundaries they need to put in place (with the necessary action required to appropriately hand over etc.), to take back control of what they spend their time on.
This might sound a little self-centred; stopping doing things, delegating tasks etc., but if you are just picking everything up that comes your way, you are not using your skills and expertise to their best effect in a considered approach.
Once diary control has been wrestled back, it starts to become easier to manage boundaries such as leaving work at a reasonable time, having a decent break at lunchtime, etc.
All the smaller boundaries come to then protect the bigger boundaries.
If you want to read more on setting boundaries see the article I shared last month on the topic.
So how does delegation play into managing boundaries?
Delegation is a boundary in itself. If you delegate, but then pick the work back up yourself because you are not happy with the outcome, you are giving in and taking back work that you had identified can be better delivered by someone else.
Instead, respect the boundary, reflect on what the issue is, address it and try delegation again.
Delegating to your team and colleagues is a great way to develop their skills and experience and helps spread the workload, particularly if you are the funnel through which additional work requests pass.
As mentioned above, clients regularly say they are doing work that they should delegate, but they haven’t got around to it, or they tried before and they weren’t happy with the quality, or it took longer than it would have done had they done it themselves.
Exploring examples of when they have delegated well previously and when they have delegated unsuccessfully, as well as what the influencing factors were in the outcome achieved, is a great way to help a client identify how to set up delegation for success moving forward (see my shared article later this month on the four key factors to consider when delegating).
Thinking through how to set someone up for success in delegation is important.
Don’t just throw it over the fence and be surprised when it lands badly!
I hope that I have shone some light on how identifying appropriate boundaries for yourself and delegating appropriately to others can help you take back control of your day-to-day workload and, in so doing, help you tip the scales in your favour with regard to work-life balance.
As always if this blog has prompted any questions for you, please get in touch.
From the author:
As coaching is not an advice-giving service, these blogs are not written with the intention of proposing solutions to common leadership challenges. Instead, they are thought pieces with the aim of prompting the reader to think more deeply about the topic and reflect on whether it warrants further exploration, with or without a coach.
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