Your Actions Speak Louder Than Words
How leaders accidentally create burnout cultures while preaching work-life balance
Welcome to The Evolving Leader's Guide. Each week, I share one mindset, framework, or toolkit designed to help you become a more effective leader—so you can lead with confidence, inspire your team, and build a career you're proud of.
THIS WEEK'S TOOL: The Team Boundary Agreement Framework – A step-by-step process for creating explicit boundary agreements within your team, built on leadership modeling and reciprocity principles.
Leaders, we need to talk.
You've introduced 'Focus Fridays.' You've encouraged the lunch break walks. You've even told your team to "make sure you take vacation."
And yet burnout spreads through your organization like a virus.
The culprit isn't your team's inability to set boundaries. It's your inability to model them.
When the VP who preaches work-life balance sends Slack messages at 11pm, it doesn't matter what your culture deck says. Your real culture is what you do, not what you say.
Let me share what happened with my client Denise, operations director at a rapidly scaling fintech company.
Denise was genuinely concerned when her team's quarterly pulse survey showed dangerously high burnout scores. She'd always prided herself on promoting work-life balance - she even implemented "Recharge Fridays" where meetings were discouraged.
But something wasn't adding up.
Denise worked unconventional hours because of family commitments, often sending emails at midnight when she had quiet time. She regularly took on extra projects herself to "protect her team from overload." She championed "no-meeting Wednesdays" but made exceptions for herself scheduling "cross-functional alignments" – and soon noticed her team's calendars filling with their own "essential external syncs."
All well-intentioned actions. All completely undermining the balance she genuinely wanted for her team.
During our coaching sessions, Denise was puzzled by the disconnect. "I don't understand," she told me. "I've been telling everyone how important balance is. I even block time off on their calendars for deep work."
When I asked to see her sent items folder and calendar, the picture became clearer. Her well-intentioned efforts were being undermined by her own contradictory behaviors.
This disconnect between what leaders say and what they do reflects a misalignment between stated values and practiced behaviors, leading to cognitive dissonance within the organization."
And your team always, always believes what you do over what you say.
Leaders Don't Set Boundaries. They Set Culture.
Research consistently shows that when managers actively model healthy boundaries, their teams experience higher psychological safety, greater job satisfaction, and reduced burnout.
The inverse is equally true: when leaders blur or break boundaries, their teams internalize this as the real standard, creating a culture of chronic stress and overwork. (U.S. Surgeon General | APA “2024 Work in America” | HBR Manager and Burnout 2023 Study )
Why Your Boundary Behaviors Matter
Let's talk about why this has such a profound impact:
First, your team prioritizes what you do over what you say to determine what's actually "safe." You hold enormous power over their careers—their projects, performance reviews, compensation, and advancement all flow through you. They're constantly scanning for signals about what truly matters to you, not what you claim matters. Your late-night emails speak volumes louder than your wellness workshops.
Second, your team models your behavior because they want your job. Forget "dress for the job you want"—in tech, it's "emulate the workaholic whose role you want." Your high-performers are watching you as the blueprint for success. When you respond to Slack at 11pm, they internalize that as a requirement for advancement. They're not ignoring boundaries; they're following the unwritten promotion criteria you're demonstrating.
Third, boundary violations from leaders create permission structures. When you respond to emails at 11pm, you're not just working late - you're implicitly authorizing everyone on the thread to do the same. Each boundary you cross opens a door that your team now feels permitted to walk through. Your after-hours work isn't just personal dedication; it's a silent command that reshapes everyone's relationship with their time and attention.
Where Your Boundary Influence Shows Up
Your boundary habits aren't just personal choices. They're culture-creating mechanisms that show up in three critical areas:
1. Time boundaries: When do you send messages? Schedule meetings? Take real time off? Your patterns tell your team what's actually expected.
2. Communication norms: How quickly do you respond? What channels do you use? These behaviors set the standard for responsiveness.
3. Capacity transparency: How openly do you discuss workload limits? Do you admit when you're at capacity or perpetuate the myth of infinite availability?
In every case, your actions speak louder than your words.
The Reciprocity Ring Effect
Adam Grant's research on "reciprocity rings" offers a powerful tool for building psychological safety and spreading healthy boundary behaviors.
Reciprocity rings are structured group exercises where team members openly express areas where they need support or have reached their limits. Grant's studies, detailed in his book Give and Take, show that this practice effectively creates a culture where seeking help becomes normal and safe rather than stigmatized. When leaders actively participate—authentically sharing their own limits and asking for support—they model vulnerability and trust, significantly enhancing the team’s comfort in setting boundaries and openly communicating capacity.
Grant's research found that teams using this approach demonstrates improvement in collaboration, trust and psychological safety scores.
Denise applied this concept with her operations team, creating a modified reciprocity ring focused specifically on boundaries. She went first: "I'm a night owl because of my family schedule, but I'll be using scheduled sends for all after-hours emails. And I'm blocking Tuesday afternoons for deep work - please consider me unavailable then unless it's truly urgent."
She also acknowledged her past contribution to the problem: "I've been taking on too many projects to 'protect' you, but that's sending the wrong message about our capacity. From now on, I'll be transparent about our team's bandwidth limitations with senior leadership."
The effect was immediate. Team members began voluntarily establishing and communicating their own boundaries. The logistics coordinator blocked mornings for focused vendor management. The finance specialist created clear SLAs for request turnarounds instead of dropping everything for each new demand.
Nobody had to mandate these boundaries. The leader simply had to model them.
The Boundary Modeling Matrix
Through my work with dozens of leadership teams, I've developed a simple framework for leaders to diagnose and improve their boundary-modeling behaviors:
Most leaders discover they're reinforcing in some areas and undermining in others, creating mixed signals that confuse their teams.
The key isn't perfection – it's consistency and transparency.
The Team Boundary Agreement
Once leaders align their behaviors, the next step is creating explicit team agreements around boundaries.
Denise’s operations team took this approach after their initial success with individual boundary-setting:
Step 1: Individual Reflection - Each team member documented their ideal working patterns, essential focus times, and biggest boundary challenges.
Step 2: Small Group Discussion - In pairs, team members shared their needs and found surprising commonalities despite different roles and work styles.
Step 3: Whole Team Agreement - The full team created a shared agreement covering:
Core collaboration hours (10am-3pm)
Channel-specific response expectations (Slack within 3 hours during workday, email within 24 hours)
Focus time protection protocols
Meeting scheduling guidelines (48-hour notice for non-emergencies)
After-hours communication norms (use scheduled sends for non-urgent items)
Step 4: Quarterly Review - The team committed to revisiting their agreement after each quarterly pulse survey.
The key? Denise participated as an equal member, respecting the same boundaries she asked of her team.
Three months later, burnout scores had decreased by 38%, while the team was still able to accomplish all of their quarterly goals. Most tellingly, several team members admitted they had been quietly job hunting internally, but had decided to stay.
The transformation didn't require additional headcount or reduced workloads. It simply required intentional boundary modeling from leadership.
Coach's Challenge
This week, I challenge you to complete the Boundary Behavior Audit:
Track every work communication you send for three days (time, channel, content)
Note which messages/actions contradict the boundary culture you want to create
Identify three specific behavior changes you'll make immediately
Share these changes transparently with your team
Ask for feedback after two weeks on what impact they're noticing
Remember: Your team doesn't need your permission to set boundaries. They need your example.
When you model healthy boundaries, you create the psychological safety for others to do the same. And that's when true culture change begins – not with another workshop, but with your next action.
What boundary modeling challenges are you facing as a leader? Reply to this email and let me know—I read every response