How do I keep my work relationships healthy?

Dear EQuipped Leaders,

Hi!!!! I’m very caffeinated and exclamation mark-y and excited today!

How are you? What are you feeling this August morning?

I just got the wonderful opportunity to train a lovely group of educators in Plano ISD on how to channel stress, and it was delightful. In addition to getting to interact with this warm community of teachers, I also got to present with my AEQ colleague Kristen Shumbera.

And Kristen and I did something that I thought was really brave: we shared about a real life boundary example from our own relationship.

This is a huge pattern break for me because while I know the importance of setting boundaries to keep a relationship healthy, it still makes me super duper uncomfortable. So to be able to say “no” to a colleague, have my “no” be accepted, and then for us to both share about it on stage in front of hundreds of teachers felt like a BIG step for me.

So here’s what happened:

Kristen and I were prepping for this training in Plano weeks before, so we were spending more time together. One morning as I was writing the blog, I got a text from Kristen asking if I had time to help her with something.

I froze. I stared at her text, and I immediately felt uncomfortable. I knew the honest answer: “No, I didn’t have time.”

But I like Kristen and I want her to like me. And we were building trust with each other as we prepared for this big presentation together, and I wanted the presentation to go well. And my first instinct was to lie. To say “sure” because I wanted our presentation to be successful, and I wanted our work relationship to be successful.

But I also thought about the content we were about to teach at this training. One of the key components to helping teachers build healthier more sustainable work relationships is teaching them to set boundaries. I knew if I said “yes” to Kristen when the real answer was “no”, that I would be inviting resentment into our relationship. I knew it was my job to answer honestly in order to preserve the health of our relationship. But I was also scared.

So I waited two hours (because doing the right thing is hard.) Then I took a deep breath and answered her text kindly and honestly. I gave her a kind “no.” Then I cringed and waited for the fall out.

However, the fall out never came. I invited her to get dinner the night before our presentation and she answered warmly and enthusiastically that she would love to spend that time with me. Then at dinner, I followed up with her. I wanted to check-in and see if we were still good now that I said no to her. And, of course, she didn’t think less at me at all for answering her honestly.

It was such a relief to me, and made me feel so much more trust with her. And it made me realize how often I have unconsciously harmed my work relationships by not being honest about how much I could handle. I have a distorted view of how compliant I have to be for a relationship to work. Turns out, in healthy relationships, you can be yourself and be honest (kindly) about what you can and cannot do.

The next day when we were presenting, we came to the slide below about setting boundaries at work. To my delight, Kristen used the example of me saying “no” to her as a positive example of me setting a boundary. I felt so much respect for her that she would not only accept my “no” but also praise me publicly for it. It was really healing for me.

It also occurred to me as Kristen and I were presenting, that there were really three of us on the stage: Kristen, me, and our relationship. Thanks to both of us, our relationship was healthy because we were showing up authentically with each other and being brave in our communication. I felt really proud to actually be practicing what we were teaching.

Where does this land for you?

How comfortable are you at setting boundaries with your work colleagues?
Like me, do you sometimes say “yes” when you really mean “no”? How have those pseudo “yes’s” impacted your relationships?