I’m a huge reader. It’s my main hobby and I crush books. Of the 129 books I read last year, this one had the biggest lasting impact on me. It completely changed how I think about boundary setting and I thought, “This would be so helpful for Medical Affairs folks!” Set Boundaries, Find Peace by Nedra Glover Tawwab will help you improve your strategic thinking skills.

This book teaches how to build better relationships and set expectations through boundary setting. Whether you are an MSL with a difficult KOL or a Medical Affairs lead juggling multiple projects with different internal stakeholders, this book will help you build skills to be better at your job in general. If we take this one step further, it is also gold for enabling you to be more strategic and focus on high-impact activities because these skills require strong boundaries around your time. This book has a lot of great advice for improving your strategic thinking!

How Setting Boundaries Around Your Time Helps Improve Your Strategic Thinking

Setting strong boundaries in relationships and around your time is key to boosting strategic thinking skills. We are pulled in a million different directions and often face a lot of “urgent” tasks that take up all of our time. It is so easy to get caught up in firefighting mode and let being strategic slip to the wayside. Without strong boundaries around how you work with others and your time it will be difficult to focus on high-impact needle-moving activities. That’s why improving your boundary setting muscle will help you be more strategic.

Simple 2-Step Process To Implement Boundaries

The author recommends a 2 step process to implement boundaries:

1. Communicate your needs and expectations
2. Uphold your boundaries

Here’s an example: You have started implementing time blocks on your calendar to focus on strategic activities, such as territory planning, or to prepare a report to demonstrate your/the team’s impact. A colleague ignores this and schedules a meeting during this time. Uphold your boundary by declining this meeting and suggesting a new time.

Check out the book for more practical ways to implement boundaries. Being strategic requires protecting your time and using it wisely to work on high-impact activities. Guard this time like a precious diamond. Use boundary setting to put it before everything else and watch your impact start to soar!

Conclusion: To Be A Strategic Thinker Boundaries Are Key

The suggestions in Set Boundaries, Find Peace help protect your time so you can focus on strategic activities. They will also give you tools to build better relationships with all your stakeholders by creating your own clear boundaries and respecting theirs.

Are you also a big reader? PLEASE share your book recommendations with me!