How to set boundaries with your team without starting from scratch

The biggest problem we don’t have boundaries, of course, is that people keep taking. Because we haven’t set up a dynamic where they know what they can or can’t ask you or come to you for. And this doesn’t mean you start drawing a hard line, you say, hey, get out of here, you know, don’t ask me anything. But you start to create a clear delineation between the things that you’re going to be involved in and the things that you really want your team members to own.

Welcome to the Managing Made Simple podcast, where you get a masterclass in managing your team with ease in 15 minutes or less. I’m Lia Garvin, your host and team operations consultant. Through this show and my programs with small businesses and corporate teams, I condense a decade of experience driving team operations in some of the most influential companies in tech into strategies to save you time, money, and most of all, stress. Doesn’t matter if you’re a business owner who realized that running a team isn’t as easy as you thought it would be.

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Grab the tracker at leahgarvin.com slash action tracker and get ready to take a sigh of relief knowing that you don’t have to figure this out alone. Welcome back to the show. Who out there listening, be honest, feels like they could set a little bit better boundaries with your team? I mean, whether you are a team leader in a large company and you feel like, gosh, I’m problem solving a lot more than I should be, or I’m kind of spelling things out more than necessary, or you’re a business owner, entrepreneur, and you are in it and people come to you for every single question, every single thing, when their dog is sick, when they are stressed about a friend thing, personal, professional, and it feels like it’s just too much.

Now, this is something I have been hearing a lot lately from managers, both in the corporate world and business owners, because I think right now, in a moment where folks are feeling kind of a heightened state of stress and overwhelm, really because of all that’s going on in the world, well, our teams kind of go to us as their manager to be that support system. And maybe we are okay with that for a little while, or we don’t really know what to do, so we start taking stuff on.

Maybe we started with a really small team, we got very close, we’ve grown, and actually we’re realizing our relationship to our team members and to the work has to change. Maybe we started with a team that was very junior and they needed a lot of hand-holding, and then we’ve reached a point where we’re like, fly out of the nest, let’s do this, and they’re not quite getting it. There are a number of reasons why we get in a situation where we feel like, ugh, I’m in too deep.

And I want to reassure you right now that it’s not something that’s unfixable. It can feel really, really like, well, this is what I set up, how do I change this dynamic? I’m in it, I’m stuck. It can feel like that, especially when you’re finding you have really no time for yourself and to be really growing the business, working on the strategy, kind of leveling up as a leader yourself. Because how do you have time when you have to be in every meeting, answer every question, you’re getting texted or emailed or slacked or whatever by your team members every five seconds?

But there is hope. And first I want to say what the problem with all of this is, besides what you already know, which is like, you can’t even take a breath of fresh air because you’re so inundated with things. The biggest problem, we don’t have boundaries, of course, is that people keep taking. Because we haven’t set up a dynamic where they know what they can or can’t ask you or come to you for. And this doesn’t mean you start drawing a hard line, you say, hey, get out of here, don’t ask me anything.

But you start to create a clear delineation between the things that you’re going to be involved in and the things that you really want your team members to own. And so that starts by you figuring out yourself and asking the questions of what are my superpowers and strengths? Where am I really in my zone of genius? What are the things that I need to be doing to be growing the team, be growing the business, to be really driving the strategy here, to be elevating myself?

You want to figure out what you actually want, because sometimes we get stuck in the weeds because we haven’t really figured that out. And so we’re just ping-ponging from one thing to the next or playing whack-a-mole with problems or putting out fires, whatever analogy you want to use. So the first thing to do is to really figure out where am I best situated? And then that also might look at delegating or offloading or hiring someone to help take on some of the work.

I think there’s a lot of things that we can do with delegating things to our team members that are actually really high leverage tasks, things that you were owning that you could hand off and someone can really step into their power as a leader in their team, which is going to help you create a stronger bench of leaders and really level you out of things that you don’t really have to be responsible for. Now, if we’ve had a situation where we had a junior team and we really grew people from kind of entry level or really new at the skill all the way up the chain, this is a moment where you really want to empower folks that, hey, you’ve got this.

Take action. Be a leader. And setting up really clear expectations around, you know, I want you to drive this project or interface with the client in this way or start managing people. And this is why we have built you up to this point. And if someone comes back to you and says, well, I don’t want to do more. I don’t want to manage people. I don’t want to deal with the clients. It’s saying, well, you know, this is the expectation of that job in framing it.

It’s not a favor. OK, this is their job and the job has evolved and the needs of the team or the needs of the company or the needs of the business, they’ve evolved and you need your team to evolve with you. And I’ve had a lot of questions lately of, well, I’m trying to offload. My team says, no, thanks. I don’t want that. And that’s a bigger conversation around what does this business or company need? And we need people to be taking on these roles.

And I’m here to support you. And I’m here to create the conditions for you to be successful, whether it’s coaching or mentorship, if you’re becoming a manager and you’re kind of uneasy about that, or whether it’s more resources or budget or, you know, clarity or, you know, changing timelines, if it’s if it’s taking on a bigger project and you and you need a little bit more support there. But it’s not it’s not really a negotiation. Right.

Because this is what the team and the business needs. So you can have a very empathetic point of view while being very candid on, hey, we’re looking at the next six months of the year. We’re looking ahead at 2025. And this is the roles that we’re going to need to really hit these goals. And I believe in you so much that you’re going to be there right here helping us crush those goals. And this is going to require your job to shift a little bit.

Do you want some hands-on support for all of the topics I talk about on this show? Like a team expert who has worked within tech giants like Apple and Google, as well as small businesses on hand to help you delegate and get out of the weeds, handle tough conversations with team members, plan your hiring strategy and get your teams to help bring in more revenue? Then it’s time to sign up for my Team Whisperer Consulting Sprint.

For 90 days, you have me in your back pocket to help you navigate any and every issue happening on your team. DM me the word sprint on Instagram or email me at hello at leahgarvin.com and let’s build your unstoppable team. And when possible, I mean, for the love of God, please pay people more when you’re adding responsibilities and talk to them about what that looks like. Is there a promotion in the path? Is there a title change?

Hey, you’re taking on more and here’s what that looks like. Or I need you to take on more for a fixed amount of time to cover something. And here’s the way that that will create, open up new opportunities or give you more visibility, right? There’s got to be something in it for them. But the problem, we don’t have boundaries with our team members when they come to us for everything. They’re doing that again and again because it’s making their job easier.

Let’s be honest, right? We wouldn’t do that if we came to our manager or leader over and over and they never responded, they never helped us, we wouldn’t keep doing it. So we’re feeding this dependency that they have. And I often say it’s in your full right just to be candid and transparent and say, hey, I realized I’ve been in the weeds. I’ve been kind of always available and responsive and it’s because I love this team and I love this business and I love all of you.

And I’m realizing I’m not able to help all of you grow and get this company to where it needs to be when I’m always in the details. And so here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to go in and I’m going to And so here’s what I’m going to be doing. I’m going to create a transition. I’m going to hire a manager. I’m going to hire an ops director to oversee all the team members. And you can still come to me for these things.

But that person’s going to be your go-to instead of me. And I want you to really embrace that role and help that person be successful. Because where I’m really needed at this point in the business or at this point with the team is to be looking up and out. That I’m finding more opportunities to grow the business, more opportunities to highlight all of your work so that you can be promoted and paid even better. Right? So you’re explaining when you’re setting that boundary of why the shift.

It’s not because you don’t feel like it anymore or because you burned out. You don’t really want to paint that picture like, ah, it’s too much. You want to say, hey, I’m realizing a shift is really needed at this stage. And when you frame it in that way, you know, more often than not, I see our teams, our teams embrace that and they say, oh yeah, like, of course. Okay. I think I’ve mentioned the story. I was working with an engineering team and the engineering manager said, well, I’m in so many meetings.

I’m inundated. I’m, I can’t even take any time to help grow the team because I’m in every single meeting. And I said, well, you know, is there an opportunity to have some of your team members lead some of these meetings you’re in? He said, no, they asked me to be there. They want me to be there. There’s a lot of hard conversations and, and sometimes they’re being asked to do more work and they don’t want to feel like, you know, they don’t have air cover or support in the meeting.

And I said, it’s still an opportunity to ask your team members to step up and to set the expectations they need to set up, I should say, not even just ask. And when you do that, when you offload something like that, a meeting where there’s maybe some difficult folks in there and, and your team members are feeling uneasy, have a conversation to set them up for success. Say, hey, I know this is kind of some of the stuff that comes up in the meeting.

Um, if there’s a difficult stakeholder, you know, we can, we’ll prep for how to handle that meeting for any new work. You can always say, Hey, you know, thanks for sharing the work that’s being proposed. We’ll come back to you with an estimate about when we can get that done. You don’t have to agree to anything in the meeting, right? You’re sharing with your team members, how you handle these difficult situations, and then you let them fly.

And you check in with them after say, how did it go? What do we need to adjust? But you don’t just say, okay, cool. I’ll just continue going to this meeting forever because they’d have no ability to step up when you’re doing that. So again, it is about figuring out really where you’re best situated and then resetting those expectations of the team members and looking across your team and thinking, Hey, who can I put into key roles to offload some of this?

What are some of the things that I need to hire for? And how can I really redirect some of the things that were coming to me that I just kind of gotten a rhythm doing so that I can create more space. And again, when there’s more space, this is this beautiful area where your team members start to step up or you start to see, Hey, is this the team that I need to get me to the next level?

Is this the team that we need to get us to this next milestone? Sometimes it’s not. Sometimes there’s a few folks there and a few that really, they really aren’t. And they really needed you to be stepping in there and kind of holding hand, holding everything. And then that’s a different conversation of, okay, how do we elevate everyone to the, to where they need to be for the next thing? Or is it, is it a fact that, Hey, not everyone is going to be the right fit for the next phase.

And then that becomes more of a performance management conversation. But first we have to create space to even think about that because when we’re, when we’re spread so thin and we can’t even like, you know, go to bed without responding to 50 million emails, then we don’t even have the, you know, the, the, the mind space to even think about what’s the next plan. So first things first, figure out where you want to be situated. Next, find a few pockets to start letting go, set expectations.

So your team members are set up for success, frame the conversation, and you are doing this for them so that you can grow the business, grow the team, grow the visibility and, and, and continue to support them in their, in their, you know, career aspirations and everything that they want. And then start to make those simple shifts and the simple shifts. They’re not always that easy to figure out what they are, but they are easy to make and they’re easy to implement.

And that’s where I come in. So we look across your team. We look across, well, where are the biggest bottlenecks? Where are you being pulled in where you don’t really need to be? And what are the new lightweight systems or tools or processes or communication norms that we can implement that will get you out of the weeds? And your team’s really leaning into that ownership mindset that helps grow your team and grow your business. So if you need support with that, I am here.

This is my favorite thing to do to really help free you from that overwhelm of like, ah, I have no space. I have, I have no ability to do what I really need to do. Because when we make that shift, I assure you team members will step up. They will do better. And your job will get easier. So if you want support here, reach out, hello at LeahGarver.com, message me on LinkedIn, whatever’s the easiest way to get in touch.

And the boundary setting, this activity is going to be something you kind of got to do again and again. Okay. It’s not a one and done, especially if you find yourself in a tendency to jump right in when things are needed. So it’s something to think about these questions. Where am I best situated for this stage of my business? How do I delegate and offload? How do I reset the expectation of teams? This is something that you are going to be thinking about over time.

So you really want to build this muscle. All right. But I believe in you. I know you can do it. And I know what is going to free you from that overwhelm, from feeling so bogged down, stuck in the weeds and give you that time back to actually grow your business and propel it to the next level. See you next time. That’s all I have for today. Thank you so much for tuning in to the Managing Made Simple podcast, where my goal is to demystify the job of people management so that together we can make the workplace somewhere everyone can thrive.

With that said, let’s spread the word. If you love this episode, please pass it along to someone who might benefit from it. See you next time.