How to access your own agency (Workplace Burnout Series: Part Three)

This is the third post in a series centered around burnout. In part one, I talked about preparing your body to physically handle the demands of leadership. In part two, I talked about the care and feeding of your brain. In part three, our focus is on increasing your ability to act independently and of your own agency and setting boundaries.

When I hit my own version of burnout, I was in a constant state of work mode. I would set the alarm for 4:00am, answer email until the last second possible, rush through the shower and get kids ready, take calls on my way into work, sit in meetings all day, rush home, feed the kids, put them to bed, get back on the computer until my eyes no longer worked, sleep for 4-6 hours (if I was lucky!) and start again the next day. Week after week. The only way out that I could see was leaving the company, because I saw the issue as “the way people work around here”. Yet, I did have co-workers who left work at work and still managed to succeed quite well. It wasn’t until I was complaining about it one day to a coworker and her response was unexpected, that I really started to see there was another side to all of this.

As I was ranting about how many meetings I had on my calendar, she said to me “then start declining them”. As my head exploded internally at the thought, I said “What? I can’t do that!” Her response was “why not?” I said “I could get fired!” She started firing questions at me “Do you have more critical things to do? Is the value you are able to provide in that meeting worth the salary they are paying you for that time? Are you questioning and evaluating each one as they come in or just accepting them?” 

I just sat there dumbfounded and said “Are you saying no to meetings? Even when it’s people above you requesting your presence?”

Her answer:  “Everyday.”

She took the time to follow up with people and ask questions. For her to attend, there needed to be an agenda and a valuable purpose for her presence, not just to be a high priced “fly on the wall”. 

This is a great example of a leader who exercises agency. Instead, so many of us are conditioned to believe that if we are asked to do something, we simply do it. We put the onus on others to determine whether our presence or input is necessary, but it’s always our own responsibility to determine where and when we are needed. When I finally opened my eyes, I realized that some of the leaders I looked up to most, who seemingly managed to “do it all”, were not burning the candle at both ends like I was. They had established boundaries around their work too. Things like:

• Repeating blocks of daily focus time and email management on their calendar that did not move under any circumstances.
• A system for scrutinizing meeting requests, saying “no” and asking for more information vs. assuming that everything was a necessity. 
• Clear hard stops and blocked days where they were simply not accessible.

Now when I started implementing some of these in my own work, people still tried to overbook or insist that I was needed in a meeting with no agenda and very unclear objectives. My brain wanted to think that this whole journey into boundaries just wasn’t going to work for me because somehow I was a special unicorn that didn’t get the freedom of choice. But none of that was true. What it taught me was that you can’t control how others will behave, you can only control how you choose to respond. Setting boundaries around your work is actually not about other people at all. They will still call you on vacation, schedule over blocks on your calendar, call you at night during dinner for something that could wait until the next day or even jokingly ask you if you are “taking a half day” as you rush out the door at 3:30pm to get your child to soccer while you frantically check email from your car in the parking lot. 

Boundaries are a guide for how YOU will behave, not them.

If someone schedules over your work block on your calendar, what criteria will you use for accepting it?

If someone calls you on vacation, will you pick up the phone?

If your email blows up and suddenly you have 500 unread emails in a matter of hours, how will you respond?

As I was completing my final months in corporate, I finally stepped into owning my decisions. I stopped doing email at all hours and instead used my early mornings for exercise, I scheduled blocks of time to simply clean out my inbox and didn’t accept meetings that interfered with them. I stopped taking calls at night when it interfered with family time and would let it go to voicemail. I said no to meetings where I didn’t believe my presence added value or asked someone else on the team to attend in order to give them exposure to other parts of the business, and I slowly started feeling like myself again. 

So the lesson here is remembering that you always have access to your agency and the ability to decide independently what you need to be doing in order to fulfill your goals at work. Don’t delegate that and let others decide for you. Set boundaries that enable your productivity instead of expecting others around you to suddenly behave differently so you can be successful. 

Struggling with burnout and wondering if you’ll ever feel like yourself again at work? I would love to coach you. Set up a free consultation here.