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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.)

Kharge counters Yogi’s ‘batenge, katenge’ slogan

Updated: Nov 12, 2024

Says many Congress leaders died for country’s unity


batenge, katenge

Nagpur: Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on Saturday asserted that several leaders from his party have laid down their lives to unite the country, countering Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath’s ‘batenge toh katenge’ slogan.


Those who want the country to remain united will never pass such divisive remarks, he said.

Addressing a press conference in Nagpur city of Maharashtra, where assembly elections will be held on November 20, he asked the BJP to decide between Yogi’s slogan and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s unity message of “Ek hain, toh safe hain”.


The senior Congress leader accused the BJP and RSS of provoking people to gain votes. Citing a newspaper article, Kharge said he read that RSS favoured the slogan of ‘batenge toh katenge’ (if divided, we perish) being raised by the UP CM.


“First, you decide between yourselves whose slogan is to be followed – Yogi ji’s or Modi ji’s,” he said, and added, “BJP leaders give inciting speeches and speak lies and divert people’s attention from core issues.”


Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge on Sunday slammed Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP for equating a “red book” of the Constitution with “urban Naxalism” and said the PM gave a similar copy in 2017 to then President Ram Nath Kovind.


Addressing a press conference here after launching the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi ‘s (MVA) manifesto for the November 20 Maharashtra assembly elections, Kharge also said his party’s demand for a caste census is not to divide people, but to understand how various communities are placed at present so that they can get more benefits.


Notably, Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis recently alleged that Congress leader Rahul Gandhi was trying to seek support from “urban Naxals and anarchists” by holding a “red book” in his hand.


Gandhi, the leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha, has been displaying an abridged version of the Constitution in a red cover during his rallies.


Kharge said the red handbook was only used for reference and it was not the entire Constitution.

‘Even Narendra Modi gave a similar copy to then President Ram Nath Kovind on July 26, 2017,’ the Congress leader said displaying a picture of the two leaders.


Kharge also displayed a red book of the Constitution, saying it was not blank as was being projected by Modi and the BJP.


‘It is necessary to enroll him in a primary school again,’ Kharge said targeting the prime minister.

The Congress leader described the MVA’s manifesto as all inclusive and participatory.

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