Short coaching monologue by communication coach Raele Altano offering scripted responses and boundary-setting language to use when coworkers repeatedly rely on you or add extra work. Provides three concrete script options to buy time, set priorities, and escalate to a supervisor while maintaining collaboration.
This one is for my corporate girls here's what to say when you have a co worker who's continuously leaning on you for support or adding more work to your plate and it's just getting to be too much. If they're reaching out to you sporadically on slack or catching you off guard in person, you can say, can you summarize this in an email to me? I'll take a look by such and such date and get back to you. Option 2 I don't have the bandwidth to tackle this right now, but I'm happy to help out later today or a little later this week. Option 3 this technically isn't in my scope of work, so let's set up time to talk and see how you can get the support you need. I think it would be helpful to have our supervisor involved in the conversation too. Would you feel comfortable with that? These responses buy you time. They indicate where your priorities are, and they provide the opportunity for escalation if necessary, all while continuing to demonstrate collaboration and support. It's one thing to be helpful, it's another to be someone's constant go to. So I hope these help you advocate for yourself. If this is an area you're struggling with. Bye.
