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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.)

Sibling Rivalry in Mango Belt

Updated: Nov 18, 2024

Uday Samant

Ratnagiri, the heartland of the saffron coloured Alphonso mango will see two brothers in the electoral fray this time as the ‘kingmaker’ now wants to be the metaphorical king. Incumbent minister Uday Samant and his businessman brother Kiran Samant are contesting the polls from neighbouring constituencies.


Hailing from Vengurla, at the southern tip of Sindhudurg, the brothers have made Pali in Ratnagiri their political fiefdom. An astute politician Uday holds the industries portfolio and was among the Shiv Sena leaders who split the party along with Eknath Shinde. Uday, who began his political career with the NCP and later shifted to the Shiv Sena. He’s known as the politician with remarkable ‘timing’—to be on the right side of any opportunity at the best time. Uday made his electoral debut in 2004 and remained an MLA of the NCP until 2014 when he joined the Shiv Sena during the Narendra Modi-led NDA wave. When he realised that the saffron alliance had a higher chance of victory, he switched, but never soured relations with his former party chief or colleagues. In 2014 and 2019, he won the elections from Ratnagiri on a Shiv Sena ticket and was made a minister in the MVA government where he was cabinet minister for higher education and industries. While Uday has held the cabinet portfolio, it is no secret that his older brother Kiran is the one calling the shots, meeting people and addressing their demands on behalf of his brother. When Eknath Shinde and other MLAs were holed up in a hotel in Guwahati, Uday Samant was among the later ones to join the group, after weighing the pros and cons of his decision.


Kiran, better known as Bhaiyya in Ratnagiri, is believed to be the one who has groomed his younger brother for politics and manages the on-ground work for Uday’s elections. A builder, the two brothers run an enterprise. Kiran has been, for long, a political aspirant. The Samant brothers had tried to secure a Lok Sabha nomination for Kiran earlier this year but the BJP picked Narayan Rane instead. It is said that the sulking siblings were miffed by this decision of the party and Rane’s poor showing in Ratnagiri during the parliamentary polls is being attributed to Kiran Samant’s lack of support. While demanding a ticket from Shinde, it is believed that he was even willing to cross over to Shiv Sena (UBT). Kiran has publicly said that this would be his first and last election but would use the next five years to give Rajapur and Lanja a makeover. He’s pitted against Rajan Salvi, a Thackeray loyalist.


With only a few days away for the polls, the powerful Samant brothers are hoping to be in the Maharashtra cabinet together.

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