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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.)

MNS helped UBT win half of its total tally

Updated: Nov 29, 2024

MNS

Mumbai: Though Maharashtra Navanirman Sena (MNS) had not supported the Mahayuti in assembly election, unlike they did in the Lok Sabha, Raj Thackeray had asserted that the party shall be part of the government if Mahayuti returns to power in the state. However, while the party couldn’t get any of its candidate elected, it seems that their presence has actually helped the Shiv Sena (UBT) win at least half of their seats. This has further reduced the chances of MNS getting any share of power in the state government now.

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A closer look at the votes polled by the MNS shows that it has helped the Shiv Sena (UBT) candidates at least on 10 seats where the MNS candidates remained in the third position and Mahayuti candidates lost the seat by margins lower than the votes polled by the MNS candidates. Vikroli, Kogeshwari East, Dindoshi, Kalina, Vandre East, Mahim and Worli are the seven out of these 10 constituencies where the UBT clearly seems to have gained sufficient margin to win the seats because of the MNS candidates.


One can look at the most spectacular triangular contest in Mumbai that took place in the Worli constituency. Shiv Sena (UBT) scion Aditya Thackeray who fetched 63,324 votes defeated Milind Deora of Shiv Sena by 8801 votes. Deora got 54,523 votes while the third candidate Sandeep Deshpande of the MNS fetched 19,367 votes.


Deora said that all efforts were made to turn the MNS to its favour. “We were in touch with them. We even met some of their demands. But, after a limit they started becoming impracticable and it wasn’t possible to meet all their demands. We knew that it was not their purpose, yet, they became the ‘B’ team of Shiv Sena (UBT),” he added.


In Dindoshi Shiv Sena’s Sanjay Nirupam lost by 6182 votes to Shiv Sena (UBT)’s Sunil Prabhu, where the MNS candidate fetched 20,309 votes. Data like this further strengthens the ‘B’-team rhetoric. While reacting to the results Nirupam Said, “In 2009 people felt that the MNS was eating up the Shiv Sena votes which benefitted the Congress. However, at least on seven seats in Mumbai, the MNS grabbed Marathi votes and in turn helped the Shiv Sena (UBT). We realized this during the campaign. But, by then it was too late to rectify that.”


Raj Thackeray’s son Amit stood third in the bastion of undivided Shiv Sena – Mahim. This is the home constituency of Raj Thackeray. In the triangular contest between MNS’ Amit, Shiv Sena’s Sada Sarvankar and UBT’s Mahesh Sawant in this constituency Sawant won by 1316 votes while Amit could fetch only 17,151 votes.


Interestingly, the MNS had not fielded any candidate in any of the 16 constituencies where Congress won or the 10 constituencies where NCP-SP won. This clearly indicates that though MNS had vouched support to the Mahayuti, they were actually helping the MVA. However, the voters in the state rejected them. The MNS could gather only about 1.8 percent votes in the state even though they had contested 125 seats. This is likely to affect the party’s status and may also lead them in losing their party symbol.

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