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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.)

Congress sends a signal in Thorat’s promotion

Congress sends a signal in Thorat’s promotion

Mumbai: The visits of senior Congressman Balasaheb Thorat with Nationalist Congress Party (SP) leader Sharad Pawar and Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray on Tuesday has set tongues wagging in political circles. Many believe that the party’s decision to anoint Thorat as its chief negotiator indicates that he would be the top contender for the Chief Minister’s post if The Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) returns to the power.


Though few Congress leaders rubbished the rumours stating that almost all negotiations have been complete and that they are all set to announce the final list of candidates any day now, sources within the party claim that the reason Thorat has been given all powers because not only is he more accessible to all alliance partners and has a clean image free of controversies but also because ethe party High Command is projecting him as a possible Chief Ministerial candidate in case the Congress party wins more seats in the polls.


“Thorat comes from Western Maharashtra and is in good terms with Pawarsaheb. He had also increased the party’s tally in the last polls. Hence it is obvious like someone like him should be in talks with the stature of Sharad Pawar and Uddhav Thackaray. No one wants to interact with Prithviraj Chavan because he doesn’t have the credentials of Thorat,” said a NCP leader on conditions of anonymity.


Nizamuddin Rayen, Spokesperson for Mumbai Regional Congress Committee though prefers to differ. “All negotiations have all been done and completed. All four leaders of the party Nana Patole, Prithviraj Chavan, Vijay Wadettiwar, and Balasaheb Thorat have been involved in the negotiations and talks. The reason Prithvirajji isn’t much seen is because he has been given the task of creating the party manifesto,” he says adding that due to the Haryana results, the Congress party is taking Maharashtra very seriously and have appointment two external senior leaders, one ex CM and another a senior leader of the party in every division of the assembly constituencies.


“The Congress is a party which has many leaders who are both astute experienced and have a rich understanding of politics and coalition politics of Maharashtra. So, there is nothing much to read on who is being picked and who is not being picked,” says Nadeem Nusrath, General Secretary of Mumbai Congress and Spokesperson for Maharashtra.


“Balasaheb Thorat’s name is going around maybe because there others who are being given some other duties. Prithviraj Chahan is already preoccupied with writing the party manifesto which is also the most crucial job in an election.


There is Varsha Gaikwad,  who has caught the imagination of the Maharashtra voter by her Mumbai Nyay Yatra. All of these people are working as a team. And this team is going to deliver the results whatever matters in the end. It is not the question of who is good and who is bad in negotiations, it is just this that they are being utilised at the same time. They are all first among the equals.”

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