Drawing Boundaries: How One Coaching Tool Helped a New Leader Find Her Way

When Nadia stepped into her new leadership role, she thought she was ready.

She had the experience. She had the trust of her team. And she’d finally earned the title after years of quietly going above and beyond.

But within weeks, something didn’t feel right.

She was exhausted. Her calendar was overflowing. And even though she was technically succeeding, she felt like she was barely keeping her head above water.

In a coaching session, we explored her stress not by diving into metrics or performance reviews—but by picking up a pen and sketching three simple circles.

This is the story of how a tool called the Traffic Light helped Nadia get clear about what she needed as a leader, what was draining her energy, and what it was time to let go of.

From Capable to Overwhelmed

Nadia is a chemical engineer working in a high-pressure environment. When she got promoted to team lead, she felt proud—but also deeply aware of the weight of responsibility. Overnight, her role shifted from peer to supervisor. She didn’t want to let anyone down.

So she said yes. To everything.

More meetings. More oversight. More late-night emails. More emotional buffering between upper management and her team.

By the time we met for our coaching session, she described herself as “foggy, scattered, and constantly on edge.”

She wasn’t failing. But she wasn’t leading in a way that felt sustainable—or like herself.

The Traffic Light: A Simple, Visual Coaching Tool

I introduced Nadia to the Traffic Light tool because it offers something many high-achieving professionals crave when they’re stressed: structure.

The tool is built around three colour-coded categories:

• Green: What supports your goals. Actions or habits that move you forward.
• Yellow: Things to approach with caution. Sometimes helpful, sometimes draining.
• Red: What’s no longer serving you. Habits or mindsets to avoid or release.

Together, we sketched three stacked circles—green on top, yellow in the middle, red at the bottom—and began filling them in, one insight at a time.

This wasn’t about performance. It wasn’t about managing time. It was about making her inner experience visible.

Green Light: Finding Her Strengths

When we began with the green light, Nadia was hesitant. Like many new leaders, she had been focusing on what wasn’t working. But slowly, she named what helped her feel confident and aligned.

She felt grounded after one-on-one conversations with team members. She appreciated having 15 minutes of quiet before a meeting. Taking a midday walk gave her clarity. And when she took a moment to journal at the end of the day, it helped her let go of the noise.

These weren’t massive leadership tactics—they were simple actions. But drawing them out helped her see something crucial:

She already had tools that worked. She just wasn’t giving herself permission to use them consistently.

Yellow Light: Patterns to Watch

The yellow circle became a space for nuance. Nadia described behaviours that weren’t harmful on their own, but that could easily spiral if unchecked.

She noticed that she was always available—even when it interrupted her deep focus. She often over-prepared to feel more in control. She jumped in to fix things instead of coaching her team through them. And when she felt uncertain, she defaulted to perfectionism.

We wrote each one down, not as a judgment, but as a signal to pause. Seeing them on paper made them easier to name—and eventually easier to shift.

Red Light: What She Was Ready to Release

By the time we reached the red light, Nadia was quiet. She tapped her pen against the paper and finally said, “I push through even when I’m completely exhausted.”

That statement opened the door to more honesty. She admitted to replaying meetings in her head at night, criticizing herself for every hesitation. She avoided sharing how difficult things felt, afraid she would seem ungrateful for the promotion she had wanted so badly. And she said yes to every request from upper management, fearing that saying no would make her look incapable.

These weren’t just habits. They were old survival patterns from years of needing to prove herself.

And they were no longer helping.

Why Drawing Helped More Than Talking

There’s a reason we used a drawing instead of a checklist.

When the brain is in a stressed state—especially under pressure to perform or prove—it often gets stuck in analysis and overthinking. Visual tools like the Traffic Light create a non-linear, intuitive space to process complex feelings.

By mapping her experiences into colours and shapes, Nadia wasn’t just thinking her way through her role. She was feeling her way into clarity.

This approach also made the session feel less like “fixing a problem” and more like making choices. Nadia wasn’t broken. She was in transition. The drawing gave her space to see that clearly.

Anchoring Change

At the end of the session, I asked Nadia which part of the drawing she wanted to return to first. She pointed to the green light.

“I’m going to take a real lunch break tomorrow,” she said. “Not in front of my computer. Just twenty minutes to reset.”

It wasn’t a grand gesture. It was a small act of leadership for herself.

We also talked about where she might keep the drawing visible—somewhere she could glance at it when her week started to feel overwhelming. She chose the inside cover of her meeting notebook.

Drawing Your Own Boundaries

You don’t need to be in crisis to benefit from this kind of visual tool. The Traffic Light can be used anytime you feel pulled in too many directions, or unsure how to move forward.

It’s especially powerful for professionals who are in transition—whether that’s a promotion, a return to work, or a shift in identity. And for women in STEM, who often face layered expectations and invisible emotional loads, drawing things out can be a grounding, clarifying act.

Nadia’s story reminds us that clarity doesn’t have to be complicated.
Sometimes it begins with a pen, three circles, and permission to choose differently.

Want to try it yourself?

You can watch the full coaching session with Nadia here ⬇️

Or sign up for the 5-Day Creative Reset Challenge for more reflective tools like this one.