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Boundaries That Stick: The Quiet Power Skill Every Executive Partner Needs
- Meg Steinschauer, MBA
- Nov 24
- 17 min read
I did not start my career with brilliant boundaries.
I started it with stamina, colour coded systems, a willingness to solve problems no one had even articulated yet, and a quiet belief that if I could absorb enough chaos for everyone else, then one day, the people around me would finally feel lighter.
What actually happened was that they did feel lighter. I did not.
The more capable I became, the more invisible my limits became. People learned quickly that I was the one they could lean on, the one who stayed late, the one who could fix the thing no one had the language for, the one who would “just sort it.”
In every high pressure organisation I have worked in, I have watched this same pattern repeat itself in different bodies. Mostly women. Mostly the operators. Mostly the quiet, steady problem solvers whose competence makes them the gravitational centre of their team.
This is how erosion happens. Not in big, dramatic, cinematic moments. In tiny, cumulative ones.
The late night message because someone else missed something.
The extra meeting you attend “so it stays on track.”
The emotional labour you hold because tension is too uncomfortable for those around you.
The decision you make alone at your dining table because the system has learned to rely on you more than it should.
You do not crash. You erode.
And erosion is far more dangerous, because it looks like you are still functioning. You are still functioning. You just aren’t functioning at a cost you can sustain.
When I talk about boundaries now, I am not talking about neat Instagram quotes. I am talking about what I had to learn as a survival skill. I am talking about what I watch hundreds of executive partners navigate quietly, privately, skilfully, and often painfully.
Boundaries, for us, are not about saying no. They are about not disappearing.
Why Boundaries Matter More in High Pressure Roles
Boundaries matter because without them, the very qualities that make you exceptional become the reasons you burn out. Your empathy becomes overextension. Your reliability becomes exploitation by accident. Your clarity becomes a tool for everyone else’s decision making except your own.
Most executive partners sit inside an unspoken paradox: you are essential to stability, but your own stability is rarely protected by the system you support.
To understand why boundaries matter, you have to understand the load you carry.
The operational load
The operational load is measurable. Meetings, deadlines, strategy decks, investor packs, late night reschedules, quiet crises disguised as “a quick question”. It is the visible part of your role, the bit people feel comfortable quantifying.
This alone would exhaust most people.
But operational load is almost never the heaviest load you carry.
The emotional load
This is the part that rarely makes job descriptions.
You absorb the frustration someone else would explode with.
You become the interpreter of tone.
You notice the tension others miss.
You absorb the mood of a stressed founder before they themselves realise they are spiralling.
Collins et al. (2024) write about this in the context of line managers, noting that “emotional availability without boundaries leads to gradual depletion of internal resources.” In our world, that depletion often goes unnoticed until the cracks appear in your sense of self.
There is a quote I return to often:
“It is not the weight of responsibility that breaks most people. It is carrying it alone.”
Executive partners carry more emotional responsibility than most leaders will ever understand.
The identity load
This is the most subtle layer and the hardest one to name.
You are often the person who holds the room steady.
The person whose calmness regulates everyone else.
The person who becomes the constant.
And here is the part that the research hints at but rarely articulates:
Identity without boundaries becomes service without self.
Majini and Bella (2023) describe this as “role–self fusion”, where the demands of the role slowly override the person’s own sense of needs and limits. Herbst et al. (2023) call it “boundary erosion through relational over-identification”.
I call it the point where you stop noticing where you end and the job begins.
When boundaries are missing, your identity becomes shaped by what everyone else needs from you. You become the role instead of the person doing the role. The cost is not just exhaustion. The cost is disconnection from your own clarity, your preferences, your voice.
As one senior leader once admitted to me, “I never realised how much I expected from you until I stopped to consider what it would feel like to carry me.”
Boundaries are the moment you stop carrying someone else’s world at the cost of your own.
What the Research Confirms
Let’s bring the academic work down to real life, the way you actually experience it.
Boundaries regulate your nervous system
Sefidgar et al. (2024) demonstrate that psychological detachment from work is not optional. Without it, cortisol stays elevated, sleep declines, and decision making suffers.
In human terms, this means:
you get snappier
you lose perspective
your internal clarity fogs
everything feels more personal
The body cannot recover when the mind has no off-switch.
Boundaries create the off-switch.
Boundaries protect your sense of control
Westover (2025) shows that a sense of control at work is one of the strongest predictors of fulfilment and resilience. When your boundaries blur, your control blurs. When your control blurs, your satisfaction drops sharply.
This is why executive partners often describe feeling “swallowed by the role.” It is not melodramatic. It is evidence based.
Boundaries prevent the slow leak of burnout
Herbst et al. (2023) describe burnout in emotionally heavy roles as “a leak, not an explosion.” It is not caused by one traumatic event. It is caused by the daily erosion of identity, rest, and psychological space.
This is exactly how boundary collapse feels: not like falling apart, but like fading.
There is a line from their paper that captures the nuance beautifully:
“Without boundaries, overcommitment becomes a default pattern rather than a conscious choice.”
That sentence could be written about every EA and CoS I have ever worked with.
And Most Importantly: Boundaries Protect Your Internal Authority
This is the part of the conversation that gets overlooked.
Your effectiveness does not come from working longer or taking on more. Your effectiveness comes from:
your judgment
your emotional steadiness
your perspective
your ability to see the system clearly
your ability to influence with calm strength
All of these require a regulated nervous system and a well defined sense of self.
The moment your boundaries disappear, your internal authority begins to fracture. You become someone who reacts instead of someone who leads.
Boundaries are the quiet, steady architecture behind your influence.
As I often tell clients and students:
“Your boundary is not the line where you stop being helpful. It is the line where you remain whole.”
Reflect with me...
Before you go any further, ask yourself:
Where in your current work are you operating from depletion rather than grounded clarity?
Give yourself an honest answer.
Not a tidy one.
A true one.
You do not need to fix it yet.
You only need to see it.
Why Boundaries Collapse (Even For Highly Competent People)
If boundaries were simply a matter of confidence or skill, the most capable people in the room would be the best at holding them. Yet in practice, the opposite is often true.
Boundaries collapse most easily for the people who are strong, steady, emotionally intelligent and deeply committed. The ones who understand the system, anticipate needs and genuinely care about the humans they support.
So as I write, I want you to know that this section is not about incompetence. It is about context, identity and relational gravity. It is about the forces that quietly pull your limits inward until one day, there is barely a line left to protect.
There are four core forces that erode boundaries for executive partners.
Each one is understandable.
Each one is solvable.
But they need to be named honestly first.
The Identity Trap: When Capability Becomes Obligation
For many EAs, Chiefs of Staff and strategic operators, the origin story of boundary erosion starts inside identity, not workload.
Most of us who choose this type of work share some variation of the following traits:
a high internal standard
a strong desire to be useful
an instinct to stabilise people and situations
a deep sense of responsibility
a belief that “if I can do it, I should do it”
These traits make you outstanding.
They also make you vulnerable.
There is a moment, often early in your career, where being reliable becomes being indispensable, and being indispensable becomes being unable to stop.
The research calls this role–self fusion, but in real life it looks more like this:
You start feeling guilty for not stepping in.
You start believing that disappointment equals failure.
You start thinking that protecting your capacity is selfish rather than strategic.
One client once said to me, “I am scared that if I set boundaries, people will see where I end and expect less of me.”
That sentence captures the heart of the identity trap. Boundaries feel like a threat to worth, not a support to wellbeing.
Relational Gravity: The Pull of Power and Proximity
Working closely with senior leaders creates psychological dynamics that are rarely spoken about.
When you sit beside someone who holds power, carries risk, makes high-stakes decisions and lives with intense pressure, something happens inside the relational field. You feel the spillover. You feel their urgency. You feel their tension.
And because you are competent and relationally attuned, you naturally lean in.
You regulate their mood.
You anticipate their stress.
You soften the environment around them.
You absorb the emotional load they often cannot hold alone.
This is relational gravity.
It pulls you closer, not because anyone is malicious, but because you lower the emotional cost of leadership.
I have worked with founders who did not realise how much they relied on me until they paused long enough to see it. One said plainly, “I depend on you in ways I never intended. You make my pressure feel lighter.”
That is the heart of the issue. Your presence makes their world easier. Without boundaries, that ease consumes you.
Organisational Drift: Systems That Expand Into Any Space You Leave Open
Organisations behave like water. They expand to fill whatever container they are poured into.
If your boundaries are unclear or inconsistent, the system responds accordingly:
tasks you once helped with become yours
one-off favours become expectations
emotional support becomes part of your invisible labour
urgency becomes a default state
No one decides this consciously.
It is simply how systems adapt.
Collins et al. (2024) describe this as “unintentional dependency”. When one person consistently carries more than their share of relational or operational weight, the system reorganises around that imbalance.
This is why you cannot wait for the organisation to “notice” you are overwhelmed. It will not notice until you break. Not because it is uncaring, but because systems normalise whatever keeps them functioning.
Boundaries are how you interrupt the drift.
As I often say,
“What you absorb silently becomes the new standard.”
The Competence Paradox: The Better You Are, The Harder It Becomes
Here is the most uncomfortable truth of all.
Your competence is the reason your boundaries collapse.
High performers attract more demands.
High emotional intelligence attracts more emotional labour.
High reliability attracts more responsibility.
High insight attracts more expectation.
Competence expands your workload unless boundaries restrict the expansion.
People trust you.
People rely on you.
People default to you because you make their lives easier.
And the paradox is this:
The more you give, the more people expect.
The more you stretch, the less they see you stretching.
The more you absorb, the more invisible your absorption becomes.
This is why so many executive partners say things like:
“I do so much, but no one sees it.”
“I am drowning, but from the outside I look calm.”
“I trained everyone to expect me to fix it.”
“I don’t know how to step back without breaking everything.”
This is not a personal failing.
It is a structural consequence of being exceptional in environments with weak boundaries.
The Cognitive and Psychological Cost of Boundary Collapse
Once boundaries begin to erode, something deeper happens behind the scenes. Not in your calendar. Not in your emails. Inside your cognitive system.
People often talk about boundaries as if they are emotional tools. They are not. Boundaries are cognitive protectors. They are the architecture your brain relies on to think clearly, regulate accurately and make high-quality decisions.
Without boundaries, three predictable psychological shifts occur. They are subtle at first. Then they accumulate. And once they accumulate, they fundamentally alter how you operate.
Let’s name them with clarity.
Cognitive Overload: When Your Brain Stops Processing Cleanly
Executive partners carry unusually high context-switching demands. You move from strategic thinking to emotional containment to operational prioritising in minutes. This constant shifting drains working memory - the mental space you need to think well.
Without boundaries, your cognitive system never resets between demands. Sefidgar et al. (2024) describe this as “continuous cognitive activation,” the state where your mind operates in low-level vigilance all day, even long after work ends.
The consequences are predictable:
your tolerance drops
your decision speed declines
your attention narrows
you lose the ability to zoom out
you become more prone to mistakes
This is not personal weakness. It is the biology of a brain under constant demand.
Boundaries regulate cognitive load. They tell your brain where work ends so it can clear the mental slate.
Emotional Saturation: When Regulation Fails From Exhaustion, Not Emotion
People assume emotional burnout comes from “too many feelings.” It doesn’t.
It comes from sustained regulation without recovery.
Every time you stabilise someone else, calm a tense room, soften your tone, adjust your language or absorb someone’s frustration, your emotional system spends currency. Without boundaries, that currency is never replenished.
Herbst et al. (2023) found that emotional demand without clear limits leads to “regulatory fatigue”, a state where the nervous system stops regulating cleanly, even when the person appears calm externally.
This is the point where you:
feel flat rather than steady
feel irritated rather than grounded
feel indecisive rather than discerning
feel overwhelmed by small things that never used to touch you
Regulation fails not because you are emotional. It fails because you are exhausted.
Boundaries create emotional rotation. They give your nervous system a pause between demands.
Performance Drift: When You Are Still Delivering, But Less Like Yourself
This is the most invisible consequence of boundary collapse.
From the outside, you look exactly the same.
Tasks get done.
Meetings run smoothly.
People trust you.
But internally, something shifts:
your internal clarity softens
your ability to influence becomes reactive
your strategic thinking becomes narrower
your voice becomes quieter
your sense of conviction becomes diluted
Westover (2025) refers to this as “perceived autonomy decline,” where people feel less control, even if their output remains high. The drop in control leads to a drop in confidence and a drop in strategic presence.
In lived experience, it feels like drifting away from your centre.
Not dramatically.
Quietly.
The tragedy is that most people only realise they have drifted once they return to themselves again, usually after rest, distance or a breaking point.
Boundaries prevent the drift. They keep you aligned with who you are, not who the role pressures you to become.
Evidence-Based Strategies That Work in High-Pressure Roles
By the time most executive partners arrive at boundary work, they are not looking for slogans. They are looking for structure. Something that acknowledges the reality of their role, honours the complexity of their relationships and strengthens their judgment rather than reducing it to a checklist.
What the research makes clear, and what lived experience confirms, is that sustainable boundaries come from systems, not from sudden bravery. They come from clarity, alignment and repeated micro-behaviours that reshape how you operate, how others experience you and how the organisation learns to work with you.
The strategies below are not surface-level hacks. They are mechanisms that change the way your work functions.
Anchor Boundaries in Values, Not Frustration
Many people set boundaries reactively: after a bad week, a stressful month or a final straw moment. Those boundaries rarely stick because they are defensive, not intentional. They are designed to stop pain, not to support identity.
The research is clear: boundaries rooted in values are more consistent, more respected and more sustainable (Majini and Bella, 2023; Herbst et al., 2023).
For executive partners, the real work begins with questions like:
What do I stand for in my role?
What kind of operator do I want to be?
What does integrity look like in how I use my time, energy and attention?
Where does excellence require limits, not expansion?
This is not a theoretical exercise. Values-based boundaries help you act with conviction, not guilt. They stop boundaries from feeling like rejection and reframes them as alignment.
Boundaries rooted in values sound like clarity, not conflict.
Redraw Your Capacity Map Using Honest Data
Boundary rebuilding requires confronting the truth about your capacity, not what you wish it were, not what others assume it is, but what it actually is.
Capacity mapping is a cognitive and strategic exercise, not an emotional one.
It involves:
calculating the real bandwidth required for your core responsibilities
identifying predictable drains that steal attention
mapping non-negotiable focus windows
recognising cognitive peaks and troughs
removing the “phantom capacity” created by over-functioning
In high-pressure roles, invisible work often takes more space than visible work. When you map capacity honestly, it becomes clear that your boundary problem is often a bandwidth problem. Capacity mapping gives you the data to back your boundaries with truth, not apology.
Clarity becomes the evidence. Boundaries become the outcome.
Reset Psychological Contracts, Not Just Behaviours
Setting boundaries without resetting expectations is like renovating one room in a house with structural cracks.
The psychological contract - the unspoken agreement about how you work, what you carry and what people can count on you for - must be re-drawn.
This is not a dramatic confrontation.
It is strategic, gradual and grounded.
Resetting psychological contracts often includes:
naming what you own and what you support
clarifying turnaround times
defining true urgency vs avoidable urgency
realigning communication norms
establishing your “conditions for good work”
Andersen et al. (2025) emphasise that when leaders understand emotional and operational load, their support helps boundaries stabilise.
For executive partners, resetting the contract gives people a new way to work with you, without relying on the version of you that eroded.
People cannot honour boundaries they cannot see. Resetting expectations shows them how to succeed with you.
Replace Over-Functioning with Anchored Influence
One of the most powerful boundary strategies in demanding roles is shifting from being the solution to shaping the solution.
This is a behavioural pivot supported by Collins et al. (2024), who found that reducing over-functioning protects identity clarity and distributes responsibility more evenly.
Anchored influence looks like:
redirecting work with firmness and warmth
asking clarifying questions that return ownership to others
guiding decisions without absorbing the emotional load
using structure instead of stretch
choosing presence over proximity
This strategy prevents you from becoming the organisational shock absorber and reinstates your role as a strategic partner, not a silent rescuer.
Influence grows when over-functioning stops.
Build Boundaries Through Process Design, Not Personal Will
High-pressure environments will always override individual boundaries unless the system around you supports them.
This is where boundary work becomes operational, not emotional.
Examples include:
creating routing rules for requests
establishing briefing windows
designing intake processes for decisions
curating meeting hygiene
using templates and frameworks that reduce ad hoc work
implementing communications norms
This aligns with the work–nonwork research of Sefidgar et al. (2024), who found that structured implementation intentions outperform self-discipline in boundary maintenance.
Systems succeed where self-control fails.Design your environment to protect you.
Practise Micro-Boundaries Until They Become Muscle Memory
The most respected boundaries are the smallest ones.
Micro-boundaries include:
pausing before agreeing
not answering messages outside your chosen window
protecting one focus block each day
finishing one task before jumping to the next
stepping away from emotionally charged situations before responding
They are barely visible to others, but deeply stabilising to your nervous system.
Micro-boundaries are how you retrain your brain out of over-functioning and into intentional action.
They also create what Herbst et al. (2023) call “evidence loops”, small pieces of proof that reinforce your sense of agency.
Big boundaries are held up by the small ones no one sees.
Reassess Monthly: Boundary Systems Need Maintenance, Not Perfection
Boundaries degrade without maintenance.
Roles shift.
Business seasons change.
Executives move into new phases of growth.
Demands reorganise.
You evolve.
A monthly boundary review prevents drift and keeps your system grounded. This review is pragmatic, not emotional:
What is working?
What is slipping?
What feels too tight?
What no longer fits the season?
What needs re-communicating?
What needs removing entirely?
This is the integration phase of boundary work, the part that transforms new habits into new identity.
Consistency beats intensity every time.
Boundaries As Leadership, Not Limitation
By this point in your career, you already know that boundary work is not a motivational exercise. It is not a matter of saying no more often or practising firm sentences in the mirror. It is far more foundational than that.
Boundaries are the invisible infrastructure behind sustainable leadership. They are the quiet architecture that protects your clarity, your capability and your humanity in roles that demand all three.
Everything explored in this piece leads to one truth:
Boundaries work because they correct the imbalance between what your role asks of you and what your mind and body can safely give.
They succeed because they align with human design, not against it.
They work because:
your nervous system cannot operate in constant vigilance
your brain cannot make high quality decisions without recovery
your judgement erodes when your internal authority fractures
your influence weakens when your identity is swallowed by usefulness
your performance drifts when your values and behaviour separate
your sense of control declines when your limits blur
your leadership presence dissolves when you abandon yourself
This is not theoretical. It is biological and psychological. This is why the strategies in the previous section matter. They do not rely on willpower. They rely on design.
They reshape how you work, how you relate, how you think and how you hold yourself inside systems that would otherwise consume you.
In high pressure environments, boundaries do not restrict you.
They restore you.
They return the version of you that your work actually needs.
The version with perspective, discernment, steadiness and intention.
That is leadership.
Not the loud, performative kind, but the grounded, internal kind that executive partners are known for. The kind that holds a room through presence, not effort.
If you take nothing else from this piece, take this:
Your boundaries are not the points where you withdraw. They are the points where you remain whole.
Whole enough to lead.
Whole enough to think clearly.
Whole enough to influence with integrity.
Whole enough to be yourself inside a role that will take everything you allow it to.
This work is not easy.
It is not quick.
It is not a straight line.
But it is the work that protects the parts of you that make you exceptional in the first place.
And that is worth building a system around.
If you recognise yourself anywhere in this piece, please know this.
You are not failing.
You are not “too soft” or “too available” or “too responsible.”
You are human in a role that relies heavily on your humanity.
Boundaries are not there to harden you. They are there to keep you intact so your clarity, your influence and your leadership stay aligned with who you are and who you are becoming.
If this resonated, and you want to explore the practical tools, scripts and deeper behavioural work behind these ideas, the replay of Boundaries That Stick is available to rent inside Connected Assistants.
I hope it gives you space to breathe, space to reflect and space to rebuild the parts of you that once held everything together. You deserve that much, at the very least.
Meg ✌️
♻️ If this resonated with you, share it with someone who needs to read it today.
P.S. Want to Go Deeper on Boundaries that Stick?
If this resonated with you and you are ready to explore your leadership more intentionally, I have included some powerful readings below. These are the books and papers that shaped parts of my thinking as I wrote this piece, and they are well worth your time.
Whether you are reflecting on your own style, sharpening your influence or stepping more fully into strategic leadership, these resources will give you insight, language and depth to support your growth.
📃 Westover, J. (2025). Setting Better Boundaries at Work: Practical Strategies for Maintaining Work-Life Balance in Challenging Times. Human Capital Leadership Review. https://doi.org/10.70175/hclreview.2020.20.4.6
📃 Westover, J. (2025). Make Your Workday Work for Your Mental Health. Human Capital Leadership Review. https://doi.org/10.70175/hclreview.2020.19.2.4
📃 Majini, K., & Bella, J. (2023). CREATING BOUNDARIES TO MAINTAINING A HEALTHY WORK-LIFE BALANCE. International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research in Arts, Science and Technology. https://doi.org/10.61778/z0n81p57
📃 Herbst, R., Sump, C., & Riddle, S. (2023). Staying in bounds: A framework for setting workplace boundaries to promote physician wellness.. Journal of hospital medicine. https://doi.org/10.1002/jhm.13102
📃 Sefidgar, Y., Jörke, M., Suh, J., Saha, K., Iqbal, S., Ramos, G., & Czerwinski, M. (2024). Improving Work-Nonwork Balance with Data-Driven Implementation Intention and Mental Contrasting. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 8, 1 - 29. https://doi.org/10.1145/3637351
📃 Andersen, L., Pihl-Thingvad, J., & Andersen, D. (2025). How Superiors Support Employees to Manage Emotional Demands: A Qualitative Study. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 22. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph22050670
📃 Collins, A., Ashman, I., & Crozier, S. (2024). Managing boundaries: exploring the experiences of line-managers who provide mental health support in the workplace. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 35, 3800 - 3825. https://doi.org/10.1080/09585192.2024.2429128
P.P.S. Why Do I Even Have the Nerve to Write This?
Fair question.
I am someone who has spent years working alongside remarkable executives, navigating chaos, translating vision into structure and figuring things out, sometimes beautifully and sometimes the very hard way. I have had the privilege of being the steady right hand to leaders who move fast, take risks and expect a lot. That environment has shaped me more than any classroom ever could.
I also happen to have an MBA, and I am studying psychology because people fascinate me. How we work. Why we disconnect. What actually holds us together when the pressure rises.
But really, none of that is the point.
I am here because I have lived the erosion and rebuilt from it. I have seen the cost of carrying too much and the relief that arrives when you finally stop disappearing inside your own competence.
So I share what I have learned in case it helps someone else. Take what is useful. Leave the rest. And remember this one truth that professionals like you often forget:
You are probably doing far better than you give yourself credit for.
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