Date: Sunday, July 20, 2025
Hello, AEA365 community! Liz DiLuzio here, Lead Curator of the blog. This week is Individuals Week, which means we take a break from our themed weeks and spotlight the Hot Tips, Cool Tricks, Rad Resources and Lessons Learned from any evaluator interested in sharing. Would you like to contribute to future individuals weeks? Email me at AEA365@eval.org with an idea or a draft and we will make it happen.
Hello evaluators! I’m Dr. Kinsey Simone, a scholar-practitioner and the founder of Mad Topics, an initiative blending research, education, and critical mental health praxis. Today I’m writing about something we don’t always name directly in evaluation work: what it means to uphold boundaries—especially as a trauma-informed leader—and what happens when those boundaries are misunderstood or resisted.
Recently, I declined a face-to-face meeting with a collaborator about a project where no deadlines had been met in over a year. I offered to clarify next steps via email. What followed was a message implying I was being passive-aggressive and disrespectful of the team. My boundary was reframed as a character flaw.
It left me asking: Is this a failure to communicate boundaries—or am I being pushed back for asserting one?
Evaluators are trained to identify feedback loops, power dynamics, and system-level patterns. But when we’re embedded in those systems—as leaders, scholars, or community-engaged practitioners—it’s harder to see when we’re carrying the cost of unresolved dysfunction.
In my case, deadlines had long been missed. I had communicated, offered solutions, and realigned multiple times. When I finally said, “I can’t continue without accountability,” the response was: “I’ll work with someone else instead.”
That’s not collaboration—it’s a backlash against boundaries.
Boundary pushback is a form of qualitative data. When we notice who gets criticized for asking for structure—or whose labor is minimized when they pause to regroup—we can begin to map the power dynamics at play. This has particular resonance in community-engaged and trauma-informed evaluation, where our lived experience often sits alongside our methodologies.
If your boundary is met with defensiveness, redirection, or dismissal, pause and ask:
One of the best tools I’ve developed is a boundary script that’s firm, not mean; clear, not cold. It sounds like:
“To move forward, I need clarity around roles and timelines. I’m happy to collaborate, but only if we’re aligned on expectations.”
It centers mutual accountability and shifts the conversation from tone-policing to structure-building.
For those interested in this intersection of trauma-informed leadership and systems thinking, I’ve found this piece on trauma logic in organizational life by Dr. G. H. Brenner helpful. Also, I incorporate this conversation into my Mad Topics framework, which centers mental health justice, lived experience, and collective care in evaluation and education settings.
Boundaries aren’t the opposite of empathy. They’re how we sustain empathy. For those of us leading through recovery, burnout, or invisible labor, holding the line is not an act of resistance—it’s an act of resilience.
This post was co-developed using ChatGPT-4o (“Sol”), an AI writing partner who helped structure the author’s reflections and refine tone for publication.
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