If you feel like a pushover at work as if you set limits, but people ignore your requests, this episode is for you. We’re going to cover the top three workplace boundary mistakes you might be making right now, how they cause people to respect you less, and how to fix them.

We just passed Labor Day here in the US. September is kicking off. There’s that back to school energy in the air. I personally love this time of year because there’s so much promise. And in fact, September is often called the second new year because psychologically speaking, there is this fresh start effect with the changing of the season. We’re resetting our habits, our rhythms. There’s this natural opportunity to make the most of what’s left in the year.

And maybe for you, it means finally going for that role you’ve been eyeing for the past 18 months. Maybe it’s stepping up to take on that new client that you know, could put you on the radar of senior leadership.

Maybe it’s that you already know your company is going to be going through yet another restructure, and you want to be able to challenge the way things are being done without choking on that lump in your throat.

All of this is absolutely achievable, but none of it is possible if you keep getting in your own way. If you are psyching yourself out every time an opportunity arises, if your emotions get hijacked in the moment when there’s powerful people demanding things of you, or the stress ramps up.

This is something that’s always felt so backwards to me, and it’s a main reason why I got into this work that I do today.

We spend so much time on presentation skills, time management, leadership frameworks, because they feel concrete, they feel safe. Yet we spend almost zero energy tending to the stories happening between our ears.

Even though those mental gymnastics dictate so much of our success. They dictate how you interpret feedback, whether you speak up in that important meeting, if you advocate for the promotion you deserve, whether you take on that stretch assignment or you talk yourself out of it.

You recover quickly from a mistake or you let it set you back for weeks. Whether you set boundaries with your workload or you burn out trying to please everyone.

All the external leadership tactics in the world don’t matter. They won’t stick if you are working against yourself. You can perfect your communication style, but if you are second guessing every word you say, people will sense that uncertainty.

You can master every delegation framework, but if you can’t stop micromanaging because you’re terrified something will go wrong, your team will never trust you and you’ll run yourself into the ground.

I have seen this for over a decade now, that the people who consistently perform at the highest levels.

They have figured out that everything, their decision making presence, their ability to influence, it has to emanate from a place of internal stability. And they have developed the mental infrastructure to handle ambiguity, criticism, high stakes situations without their nervous system hijacking their judgment.

This is exactly why mastering your own insecurities is the biggest career unlock that there is. And that’s exactly what we help you do inside of Resilient. This is my highly acclaimed three month coaching program. It’s been running now for over five years. We have shown hundreds of professionals worldwide how to double their confidence in just 90 days.

Our clients never fail to amaze us. Just this last cohort that we wrapped up recently, we had someone get published in a journal in their industry. Someone get tapped to double their team size. We had some clients applying for promotions that they talked themselves out of for years because they had convinced themselves they weren’t ready yet.

All of that is what you see on the outside, though, the recognition, the compensation. But what you don’t see, what’s even more valuable is how they no longer feel like prisoners to their own minds and emotions. They’re not spending their weekends recovering from the rollercoaster of the last five work days.

They’re not lying awake at 2:00 AM replaying that conversation or meeting or beating themselves up for not handling something perfectly. They can sleep more soundly. When someone questions them, they don’t feel that old surge of, oh my gosh, I’m about to get in trouble. They don’t get that panic. They stay steady and clear.

They have stopped carrying other people’s emotions. So when their boss is stressed, they don’t absorb that anxiety and make it their own. When a colleague is frustrated, they can offer support without fixing it. That constant background hum of, am I doing enough? Am I good enough? What if they find, find out I don’t know what I’m doing.

That really quiets almost to a whisper. Some people will say, I don’t even know the last time I heard that inner critic. Their internal narrator isn’t constantly critiquing them, isn’t constantly predicting disaster. And just think about everything that opens up for you when you reclaim that mental, emotional and literal time bandwidth.

We’re opening the doors to Resilient on September 9th during my free training. That’s called High Performance Under High Pressure. This is the last time Resilient will be open this year, and it won’t be opening again until mid 2026. We have hundreds of people on the wait list and we tend to sell out. So joining that free training means you will be first in line to get a spot in the program before we open them to the public.

But even if you’re not interested and Resilient right now, you still need to RSVP for the training. This is one of our most popular events because you are going to discover six mental shifts elite leaders use to stay confident, calm, and in control, even in highly demanding roles. So if you have ever felt frustrated that you’re grinding harder, but you’re advancing more slowly, this is for you.

I’m going to be sharing specific changes top performers we have worked with at Google, Amazon, Microsoft, more, changes they have made to step into lead multimillion dollar budgets and bigger teams without that soul crushing fear that they can’t handle it.

There’s six toxic beliefs that are keeping you stuck in the cycle of self-doubt and exhaustion. And I wanna give you the exact mental shifts you need to make to go from feeling like your inner life is out of control at work, to using it as a source of influence and composure.

All of this brings me to my topic for today, which is top three workplace boundary mistakes and how to fix them.

So like I mentioned, labor Day was just here, and yes, it’s the unofficial last hurrah of the summer, but it’s also a time to think about the whole picture of your work life.

So many of us get caught up in the day-to-day cycle of meetings, deadlines, putting out fires. We rarely step back to reflect on this, to really look at how we relate to our work, what place it plays in our lives and our psyches. What making a contribution means to us and how we best do that.

I know exactly what you might say in response to that though, because when I was doing research for my second book Managing Up, I had conversations with dozens of readers and I asked them that very question. And it was so interesting because I thought for sure I would hear things about people wanting more authority, respect more accolades, and yes, there was some of that, but it was secondary.

People saw all of that as a byproduct of having that inner stability. I talked about a moment ago.

What they really wanted, most of all, was more calm and peace in how they related to other people at work. 

They wanted to be able to address that underperforming team member without rehearsing it for three days beforehand and then walk away feeling like that was a good conversation. Not that they had been too harsh or not clear enough. They wanna have a conversation with that defensive colleague without needing a nap afterwards because it was so taxing.

They want to push back on unrealistic timelines without their voice shaking or their mind going blank when they are challenged. They wanna work with strong-willed stakeholders without either becoming a doormat or getting into a power struggle that leaves them reeling for days.

The value of this kind of peace of mind is immeasurable. When you’re not constantly managing your own emotional reactions to normal workplace dynamics, you have so much more mental space for work that actually matters. And when your professional relationships feel stable and manageable, there’s a ripple effect into the entire rest of your life.

So I just want you to think about how much of your cognitive capacity is currently being consumed by emotional labor that has nothing to do with your actual job.

You are interpreting tones. You’re managing fears about upcoming conversations. You’re recovering from interactions that triggered your insecurities. You’re trying to predict and prevent any potential upset or conflict.

That is all processing power you are currently wasting. What we don’t often realize is that we have so much more control over this than we think. You teach people how to treat you. The emotional interpretation you have towards something or someone dictates how you respond and then how the other person responds to you.

Your energy, your tone, your body language, your follow through, all of these communicate what you will and won’t accept often without you even saying anything.

So this is why focusing on the dynamics we’ve been talking about is so crucial. Every interaction you have is essentially a signal about what’s acceptable. When you respond to a last minute request with frantic urgency, you’re teaching that person that this is how they can expect you to handle their emergencies.

When you apologize profusely for asking a clarifying question, you are communicating that your input is somehow an imposition. 

When you accept interruptions without addressing them. You are training people that your voice isn’t a priority and it’s totally fine to just railroad over you.

These patterns become reinforced over time. People learn what works with you, what gets them the response they want, what you’ll tolerate, how far they can push you. And often what we think we’re communicating and what we’re actually communicating are two completely different things.

So the mistakes I’m going to share with you next are ones I see all of the time, and they may be ones you are falling into if you feel like you’re still trying to protect your time and energy, but you’re not being heard or you feel like you’re still being taken advantage of.

Mistake number one, you’re setting boundaries instead of expectations. What I mean is that you are not proactively sharing what you need and how you work best. Instead, you’re probably playing defense. You’re waiting until something goes wrong, until you feel violated or angry, or resentful or wronged, and then you’re trying to set a boundary reactively.

By that point, you are already on your back foot. You are already defending yourself instead of leading the conversation and eliminating the need for a boundary or any tension in the relationship in the first place.

A boundary is essentially what happens when expectations aren’t clear in the first place. You’re responding to a problem that’s already occurred, but an expectation on the other hand, is upfront communication about how you operate, what you need to be successful, and how others can best work with you.

When you focus primarily on boundaries, you’re constantly in that reactive mode.

Someone does something that doesn’t work for you, so you have to correct it. Someone makes an assumption about your availability, so you have to clarify. Someone treats you in a way that feels disrespectful, so you have to address it after the fact.

Lemme tell you a story to really drive this home because this very thing happened to one of our resilient graduates, and I’ll call her Janet. So she worked at a policy think tank where there were constantly different work groups coming together for projects. And Janet’s team was assigned to work with her colleague, Ryan’s team on a multi-year research project. And their final deliverable was going to be this huge report that they would publish online. All of this started out fine. They had kickoff meetings. The team members started to have regular touch bases for the research side of it. Everyone seemed like they were on the same page about the goals. But a few months in Janet’s team started complaining to her saying that they felt like Ryan’s team was asking them to do things that they felt were out of scope, that they were demanding responses and timeframes that seemed unreasonable, and frankly, they felt were disrespectful.

So Janet was understandably frustrated. She was annoyed at Ryan, and she even told me she worried that it was becoming this toxic workplace environment. She was also disappointed in herself that her team was so stressed out and that this collaboration had gone sideways, even though it started out so well.

When we unpack the situation on our coaching calls, the disconnect was crystal clear to us. Janet was now in a position of having to set boundaries because she had not set expectations from the beginning. She was trying to course correct a dynamic that had already been established, which is much harder than shaping the dynamic from the start.

If you are hearing this and you are thinking, oh my God, I am in exactly a situation like Janet’s, please hear this.

It is never too late to reset expectations. You can always step back. You can have a conversation about how to work together better going forward. And to do that, a few questions I want you to think about right now.

What assumptions are people making about your availability, your response time, your role in a project or your working style that you never actually confirmed or clarified? What are the unspoken rules operating in your team, your department that you’ve just gone along with, even though they don’t actually work for you?

When you are feeling overwhelmed or stretched thin, what early warning signs show up that you could learn to recognize and take action on sooner?

That brings us to mistake number two. You’re trying to control other people’s behavior instead of managing your own actions.

A true boundary is an action that is fully within your control that you will take to protect your time, energy, or wellbeing. It’s not a demand or request for someone else to change their behavior. It’s a statement about what you will or won’t do in response to certain situations. So this difference. It’s subtle, but it is very crucial. This is the difference between saying, I don’t tolerate that tone versus don’t speak to me that way.

The first is a boundary. It’s about your response and what you will do if the behavior continues. The second is trying to control how the other person communicates. Now, not all boundary violations are going to be that dramatic or serious. There are countless run of the mill situations where we fall into this trap without even realizing it.

As a mid or senior level person, you probably do this all the time. You might say you can’t submit reports that late when. What you really mean is I won’t accommodate last minute report submissions. You might say, you need to give me more notice for meetings when you really mean I won’t be able to attend meetings scheduled with less than 24 hours notice.

The difference here is that one is trying to control the other person’s behavior. The other one is clearly communicating the consequence of their choices and what you will do in response.

If you are guilty of making this mistake, do not blame yourself. When you’re in a position where you have to set a boundary, you’re already feeling emotionally activated. You’re peeved overwhelmed, you’re feeling wronged. And in that state it’s completely natural to feel like the other person, whether it’s your colleague, your boss, your direct report, like that person is doing something to you. It feels personal. It feels like they are the problem, and that needs to be fixed.

But when we frame it that way, we’re actually giving all of our agency and power away. When we focus on what the other person needs to do differently, we’re making our wellbeing dependent on their choices. We’re essentially saying that we can only feel comfortable or successful if they change their behavior. 

That puts you in a very vulnerable position because it should go without saying you have no control over what other people choose to do. I wish that we did.

So right now, I want you to identify one recurring situation at work that you’re dealing with, where you feel like someone keeps pressing your buttons. Instead of thinking about how the other person should change, I want you to ask yourself, what action could I take that’s completely within my control?

Maybe it’s declining those meetings when they don’t have agendas. Maybe it’s requiring project briefs before you commit to something. Maybe it’s establishing specific windows when you’re available for urgent requests.

Also, notice your language this week. When you’re communicating about something that’s not working for you, do you hear yourself saying You need to do X or you can’t do Y? Or do you hear yourself saying, I will do X, I won’t be able to do Y.

Speaking of the language we use to set boundaries, that brings us to mistake number three, which is over-emphasizing what we can’t or won’t do. Not setting enough affirmative boundaries.

This happened to someone who came into Resilient. He was a senior director at a tech company, and he was honestly a little shaken after getting some performance review feedback where he was told he was beginning to be seen as uncollaborative.

So here he thought he was being very upfront about his parameters. He was managing his team’s capacity very responsibly. But all other people heard was, no, we can’t do that. That won’t happen. It was all negative. He had fallen into the trap of focusing so heavily on what he couldn’t accommodate, that he was developing this reputation as someone who always found reasons why things wouldn’t work.

He was starting to be seen as a blocker. His colleagues were beginning to avoid him when they needed someone who could come together with a solution or they were brainstorming new things because they didn’t wanna have his pushback.

This is what can happen when we set too many negative boundaries. You can be labeled as difficult, the naysayer, someone who’s not a team player.

Even when your boundaries are completely reasonable and necessary, the way you communicate them can undermine your reputation and influence if you are not careful.

So the two second swap, I want you to try focus on what you will do, not what you won’t do. Instead of saying, I can’t stay late to finish this, you say, I can give this another hour today before I leave.

Instead of saying, I won’t be responding to emails while I’m on vacation, you say, Sarah will be your point of contact while I’m out. Instead of saying, I don’t have time for this, this week, you say, I’ll revisit this next week. It sounds so simple, but it taps into something really powerful, which is that the human brain is wired to dislike loss more than it loves to gain something.

So this is called loss aversion. So when you tell your manager, your client, your colleague, I can’t meet at that time, you’re unintentionally highlighting what they’re losing, what they can’t have or get. But when you say, I’m available at. Two or 4:00 PM what works better for you? You’re keeping the focus on what is possible, how they can get what they want.

You’re positioning yourself as someone who finds a way to make things work, not as someone who creates obstacles.

All right. Let’s review the top three workplace boundary mistakes and how to fix them.

Mistake number one. You’re setting boundaries instead of expectations, rather than waiting until a problem arises and then having to defend yourself, proactively communicate how you work best, what you need to be successful, how others can collaborate with you. Set the framework from the beginning instead of having to do damage control leader.

Mistake number two, you’re trying to control other people’s behavior instead of managing your own actions. True boundaries are about what you will do in certain situations, not demands for other people to change. Focus on your response and actions, not trying to control theirs.

Mistake number three, you’re overemphasizing what you can’t or won’t do, instead of setting affirmative boundaries. When you constantly lead with limitations and restrictions, you risk being labeled as difficult. So instead, focus on what you will do, what you can accommodate, how you can find a solution that works best for everyone.

So come on over to LinkedIn, Instagram, let me know which of these mistakes resonated with you the most, and more importantly, what you are going to do next. 

Your very next action should be to RSVP for the live training I’m hosting on September 9th. It’s called High Performance Under High Pressure, and you can do that at melodywilding.com/highperformance, or the link is also in the show notes. Because if you’re a mid or senior level professional who wants more for yourself, more impact, influence, meaningful work, you cannot possibly scale yourself and expand your capacity.

If these sorts of reactive patterns are weighing you down, you probably have big visions for your career. You wanna lead transformational projects. You wanna shape strategy, you wanna mentor the next generation of leaders. You want to be known for your thinking, your ability to drive results. Right now, I am willing to bet that the internal obstacles, the people pleasing, perfectionism, fear of disappointing others.

Those limitations are keeping you playing small, and I know you feel that. I know you feel trapped by your own ceiling. The executives who rise to the highest levels aren’t the ones who have zero sensitivities or challenges. They are the ones who have learned to manage their own internal world so skillfully that they can focus their full attention on the external impact they want to create.

They have stopped letting their nervous system and insecurities run their career decisions. We are standing on the edge of the rest of this year, and you know exactly what happens from this point on. Everything speeds up. We have Q4 planning. We have budget battles, year end reviews, new projects, because we need to hit our end of year financial goals.

So I want you to ask yourself, are you prepared to rise to that challenge or will it be another year of you feeling burned out by November because you feel like you can’t keep up the pace while everyone else seems fine? So remember to grab your spot for that free training on September 9th, high performance under high pressure during that event.

We’ll also be opening the doors for the final cohort of resilient this year. I am so excited to see you there. That’s all for today. Bye for now. I’ll catch you in the next episode.