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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.)

The Shadow of His Grandpa

Updated: Nov 18, 2024

Rohit Pawar

Rohit Pawar is wedging a tough contest from Karjat-Jamkhed assembly constituency. Actually, he had won this constituency comfortably in 2019 and hence it shouldn’t have been such a tough contest for him. But many things have changed in past five years making it a big difficult for him to repeat his performance. However, still he is roaming around crisscrossing the state along with his grand uncle to campaign for other candidate fielded by the party. He wants to grow in politics like his grand uncle. He is Rohit Pawar.


Born on September 29, 1985, in Baramati Rohit Pawar contested his first election from a zilla parishad constituency near Baramati in 2017. It was at that age of 32 that the grandson of Nationalist Congress Party (NCP-SP) chief Sharad Pawar’s elder brother Appasaheb and a member of the formidable family’s fourth generation ventured into the political arena of the state. Rohit is married to Kunti, an economist, and they have two children, Anandita and Shivansh. He completed his schooling at Vidya Prathisthan, Baramati, and graduated with a Bachelor of Management Studies from the University of Mumbai in 2007.


The late Appasaheb is highly respected in Maharashtra for his contributions to the development of the farm sector. Rohit’s father, Rajendra, is also respected for work performed through the Baramati Krishi Vikas Pratishthan. Rohit, a highly educated man, is the CEO of Baramati Agro Ltd., a position he assumed at the young age of 21. Under his leadership, the company has made significant contributions to the agricultural sector, including distributing 170 water tankers daily to drought-affected areas in Maharashtra. He also served as the President of the Indian Sugar Mills Association (ISMA) from 2018 to 2019.


Sources say that fielding him from the Shirsufal-Gunwadi constituency in the Pune zilla parishad elections was a conscious decision on the part of the Pawar family and his entry into politics was a low-profile event. He was elected to the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly in 2019. As a young MLA he established the Karjat-Jamkhed Integrated Development Foundation (KJIDF) to tackle local development challenges and improve the quality of life for residents. Additionally, he founded the Srujan Foundation, which organizes various events and competitions to engage and empower the youth.


Since the rebellion within the party by his uncle Ajit Pawar, Rohit has become the shadow of his octogenarian grand uncle Sharad Pawar. He has been taking on Ajit Pawar along with CM Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena and even the BJP. He has even seen the flip side of such aggression, when he got a summon from the ED for some irregularities at Baramati Agro Ltd.


In recent years, Rohit Pawar has been involved in various campaigns and initiatives to promote development and empower the youth. His efforts have helped raise the profile of the Karjat-Jamkhed constituency on the socio-political map of Maharashtra. As he continues to grow in his political career, Rohit Pawar is considered a potential contender for leadership roles within the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).

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