Setting Professional Standards and Boundaries

Professional standards are strong guidelines for how you
treat yourself within your business or career. They can
include a code of ethics, guarantees, how many hours you
work, etc. Professional boundaries are about how you want
your clients to treat you within your business. They can
include requesting to be paid on time, honesty, how to
cancel appointments, how often they can contact you, etc. As
each of us evolve, it is common to"raise" our standards and
boundaries.

Professional standards and boundaries create a professional
atmosphere around your businesses. Sometimes they help you
attract a higher caliber of clients. Other times they
reflect that your time and effort are now worth more than
they previously were. Whatever reason you have for creating
standards and boundaries, make sure that you can stand by
them.

Your new or updated standards and boundaries may - and will
- annoy people. You may lose clients. Any time you set a new
"rule," someone is bound to be annoyed - and they'll let you
know, too! You are bound to hear things like "X" does that
for free, I'm only asking for 15 minutes of your time, guess
you don't want clients, among a variety of other things
you'd prefer not to listen to.

Learning to not take things personally may be difficult,
however, it's a very necessary part of evolving. One of the
other big lessons of setting boundaries - whether business
or personal - is that you don't owe anyone an explanation on
the changes you're making. We humans seem to think that when
we say "no" we have to explain ourselves. Yet, when we say
"yes" we never explain ourselves! When someone asks you why
you've made a business change, it's OK to give a simple
answer like "it's a business decision" or "it's best for me
this way."

Professional standards and boundaries help our businesses
most often by adding a new level of consistency and
structure. Michael Gerber, in his book "The E-myth
Revisited" says, "The business development process is not
static. It's not something you do and then are done with.
It's something you do all the time."

This month, take a look at your Professional Standards and
Boundaries and raise them to the next level. If you'd like
to view sample business standards or boundaries,
visit www.coachmaria.com/articles/professionalstandards.html