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By:

Rahul Kulkarni

30 March 2025 at 3:32:54 pm

The Boundary Collapse

When kindness becomes micromanagement It started with a simple leave request.   “Hey, can I take Friday off? Need a personal day,” Meera messaged Rohit. Rohit replied instantly:   “Of course. All good. Just stay reachable if anything urgent comes up.”   He meant it as reassurance. But the team didn’t hear reassurance. They heard a rule.   By noon, two things had shifted inside The Workshop:   Meera felt guilty for even asking. Everyone else quietly updated their mental handbook: Leave is...

The Boundary Collapse

When kindness becomes micromanagement It started with a simple leave request.   “Hey, can I take Friday off? Need a personal day,” Meera messaged Rohit. Rohit replied instantly:   “Of course. All good. Just stay reachable if anything urgent comes up.”   He meant it as reassurance. But the team didn’t hear reassurance. They heard a rule.   By noon, two things had shifted inside The Workshop:   Meera felt guilty for even asking. Everyone else quietly updated their mental handbook: Leave is allowed… but not really. This is boundary collapse… when a leader’s good intentions unintentionally blur the limits that protect autonomy and rest. When care quietly turns into control Founders rarely intend to micromanage.   What looks like control from the outside often starts as care from the inside. “Let me help before something breaks.” “Let me stay involved so we don’t lose time.” “Loop me in… I don’t want you stressed.” Supportive tone.   Good intentions.   But one invisible truth defines workplace psychology: When power says “optional,” it never feels optional.
So when a client requested a revision, Rohit gently pinged:   “If you’re free, could you take a look?” Of course she logged in.   Of course she handled it.   And by Monday, the cultural shift was complete: Leave = location change, not a boundary.   A founder’s instinct had quietly become a system. Pattern 1: The Generous Micromanager Modern micromanagement rarely looks aggressive. It looks thoughtful :   “Let me refine this so you’re not stuck.” “I’ll review it quickly.”   “Share drafts so we stay aligned.”   Leaders believe they’re being helpful. Teams hear:   “You don’t fully trust me.” “I should check with you before finishing anything.”   “My decisions aren’t final.” Gentle micromanagement shrinks ownership faster than harsh micromanagement ever did because people can’t challenge kindness. Pattern 2: Cultural conditioning around availability In many Indian workplaces, “time off” has an unspoken footnote: Be reachable. Just in case. No one says it directly.   No one pushes back openly.   The expectation survives through habit: Leave… but monitor messages. Rest… but don’t disconnect. Recover… but stay alert. Contrast this with a global team we worked with: A designer wrote,   “I’ll be off Friday, but available if needed.” Her manager replied:   “If you’re working on your off-day, we mismanaged the workload… not the boundary.”   One conversation.   Two cultural philosophies.   Two completely different emotional outcomes.   Pattern 3: The override reflex Every founder has a version of this reflex.   Whenever Rohit sensed risk, real or imagined, he stepped in: Rewriting copy.   Adjusting a design.   Rescoping a task.   Reframing an email. Always fast.   Always polite.   Always “just helping.” But each override delivered one message:   “Your autonomy is conditional.” You own decisions…   until the founder feels uneasy.   You take initiative…   until instinct replaces delegation.   No confrontation.   No drama.   Just quiet erosion of confidence.   The family-business amplification Boundary collapse becomes extreme in family-managed companies.   We worked with one firm where four family members… founder, spouse, father, cousin… all had informal authority. Everyone cared.   Everyone meant well.   But for employees, decision-making became a maze: Strategy approved by the founder.   Aesthetics by the spouse.   Finance by the father. Tone by the cousin.   They didn’t need leadership.   They needed clarity.   Good intentions without boundaries create internal anarchy. The global contrast A European product team offered a striking counterexample.   There, the founder rarely intervened mid-stream… not because of distance, but because of design:   “If you own the decision, you own the consequences.” Decision rights were clear.   Escalation paths were explicit.   Authority didn’t shift with mood or urgency. No late-night edits.   No surprise rewrites.   No “quick checks.”   No emotional overrides. As one designer put it:   “If my boss wants to intervene, he has to call a decision review. That friction protects my autonomy.” The result:   Faster execution, higher ownership and zero emotional whiplash. Boundaries weren’t personal.   They were structural .   That difference changes everything. Why boundary collapse is so costly Its damage is not dramatic.   It’s cumulative.   People stop resting → you get presence, not energy.   People stop taking initiative → decisions freeze.   People stop trusting empowerment → autonomy becomes theatre.   People start anticipating the boss → performance becomes emotional labour.   People burn out silently → not from work, but from vigilance.   Boundary collapse doesn’t create chaos.   It creates hyper-alertness, the heaviest tax on any team. The real paradox Leaders think they’re being supportive. Teams experience supervision.   Leaders assume boundaries are obvious. Teams see boundaries as fluid. Leaders think autonomy is granted. Teams act as though autonomy can be revoked at any moment. This is the Boundary Collapse → a misunderstanding born not from intent, but from the invisible weight of power. Micromanagement today rarely looks like anger.   More often,   it looks like kindness without limits. (Rahul Kulkarni is Co-founder at PPS Consulting. He patterns the human mechanics of scaling where workplace behavior quietly shapes business outcomes. Views personal.)

Arrogance or Nervousness?

Society too often assumes the role of unsolicited judge over children’s behaviour, disregarding the long-term consequences of its scrutiny.

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Recently, a child from Ahmedabad entered India’s one of the most popular shows, Kaun Banega Crorepati, with a lot of dreams. The fact that the 11-year-old boy would be taking questions from veteran actor Amitabh Bachchan on the most watched show in India must have left the parents on cloud nine. The boy who is a fifth grader has not even learnt the art of nurturing dreams. He would have been bombarded with a pool of non-stop instructions explaining him the dos and don’ts while on the show by his family, just like any typical Indian parents would do before a child heads for an exam or one of the biggest events of their life. Most children are not even aware of the seriousness and the depth of the occasion they are preparing to experience. At the age of 11, children often live their parents’ dream, and parents always work hard to leave no stone unturned to make their children achieve what they feel was never their cup of tea.


The debate over why a child behaved in a certain way on national television in front of an extremely popular and senior actor is a tricky one. However, society is the quickest to take the form of an unsolicited judge and make the life of the child and family extremely difficult. Little did the child know that life may become a hell after resuming school, after featuring in that one episode. This reminds me of the cold play incident when two a mere concert proved to be a nightmare for two colleagues to an extent that their careers and futures were devastated.


While social media, or society as a whole has raised questions over the child’s behaviour and the parents’ upbringing, it’s important to note how the host of the show has handled the child’s behaviour maturely with no aggressive counter reaction leaving a lot to learn from his behaviour while on the show.


How children behave is more of what they see and experience than what they actually are. More importantly, an 11-year-old spends most of his day away from his home, mostly in his school, tuition, which his peers. Family outings, functions and screen time take up 20 percent of their time which over all leaves very little exposure to parents. Hence, blaming the parents for how a child behaves on national television is an extremely poor choice.


According to a Mumbai-based child psychologist, there is something called attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Many children suffer from this condition which is undiagnosed or diagnosed. Answering questions before hearing the options, not being able to hear the rules, and no patience are symptoms of ADHD, as per this stream of opinion.


Having said that, now arises a larger issue of psychology being often underrated. For long, society has been ignoring or not counting psychological diseases as diseases. A person who approaches a psychiatrist or takes counselling sessions has since long been labelled as mad. Society has not been broad minded to take psychological illness seriously. Every school has a child psychologist attached who is expected to help children overcome a lot of psychological conditions. Not many parents are aware of this. A lack of mental health awareness can lead to a variety of negative effects, including a reluctance to seek professional help due to stigma, reduced self-esteem, difficulties for individuals in social and professional environments, and a lack of understanding from family and friends. This can result in delayed diagnosis and treatment, poorer mental health outcomes, and significant distress for individuals and their families.


Parenting is a tough job, especially in an era where children are exposed to digital media at a very young age, children are growing faster than they are expected to.


Adolescence is arriving earlier than in previous generations, leaving many parents struggling to adapt to shifting behavioural expectations. Children increasingly shoulder the weight of emotional complexity before they are ready. While the young ideally should be allowed to develop at their own pace, many are instead propelled into accelerated maturity, forced to perform in situations for which they are ill-prepared.


Competitions are meant to motivate children to work hard, however, through reality shows, children are often pushed into spaces where they feel they have to overdo their act to prove themselves and end up taking wrong lessons for the purpose of a healthy competition.

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