I have seen many cybersecurity professionals end up with so much on their plate that they simply cannot manage it all. And when I look at how they got there the pattern is almost always the same. They said yes. And then yes again. And then yes again after that.
This is not a time management problem, it is a boundaries problem.
Here is something I genuinely believe about most cyber professionals: they are solution focused by nature. When someone brings them a problem their instinct is to engage with it, to turn it over and find a way through. Saying no feels like closing a door that they are professionally wired to keep open.
But here is the thing: it is not always on them to find the solution and there is not always the scope or the capacity to prioritise doing so even when they could. Saying no is not an admission of failure. Sometimes it is the most accurate and responsible thing you can say.
Setting boundaries is tricky and I want to be honest about why.
People don’t like boundaries. Not in a malicious way, just in a very human way. They are surprised by them, they don’t always know how to react. When a no comes after a long sequence of yesses it can feel to the other person like something has changed or gone wrong, even when what has actually happened is that you have finally started being honest about your capacity.
That first no is always the hardest one. Especially in a field where you are already carrying a reputation for being the team that slows things down.
What I have found, both through coaching and through working with cyber professionals, is that coaching skills genuinely help here, in a very practical way!
This is because coaching encourages you to ask questions before you accept a problem as your own. Who else could look at this? What have you already tried? What would a good outcome look like for you? These are not deflections, they are the kinds of questions that help the person in front of you think more clearly and often find their own way to a solution, or to arrive at something that works for both of you.
The goal is not to say no and close the door. It is to empower the person coming to you rather than simply absorbing their problem. That is a very different thing to being obstructive and it is a skill worth developing deliberately.
If you are someone who finds it hard to push back, who has somehow become the person everyone comes to for everything and is starting to feel the weight of that, it is worth asking yourself what has made saying yes feel safer than saying no.
The answer to that question is usually where the real work begins.
If you want to explore that I would love to help.
Book a free 30-minute consultation here and let’s get started.