Welcome back to the Look and Sound of Leadership, an ongoing series of

executive coaching tips designed to help you be perceived in the workplace the

way you want to be perceived. I'm Tom Henschel,

your executive coach, and today we're talking about boundaries. Jesse looked awful. His color was gray. The sacks under his eyes were bulging.

He dropped into a chair in our meeting room. We sat in silence a long time. He wasn't suffering.

He was puzzling. Finally, as if arguing with himself, he said,

But I have to. I waited. He shifted his gaze

to me and said, I have to start setting some boundaries.

Since the beginning of our coaching,

Jesse and I had been talking about setting boundaries.

First, we focused on his fear of saying no.

Jesse saw the consequences.

He took on work, he should have delegated.

He agreed to meetings he didn't have time for.

He accepted budgets and deadlines that weren't to his advantage,

so his team was often disappointed with him.

And those inabilities to say no at work

made life at home very unhappy. Not surprisingly

there too Jesse saw himself as inept at saying no.

Jesse and I imagined saying no. We imagined saying no to his boss, which made him physically

queasy. We imagined saying no to a colleague or a direct report or his family or anyone and when we

imagine these situations Jesse was often speechless. Just thinking about saying no made him lose

...