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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.)

What could be Jayant Patil’s bigger role?

Updated: Oct 22, 2024

Sharad Pawar’s hint at a bigger role for Jayant Patil has led to murmurs of discontent within the MVA

Jayant Patil

Mumbai: Supriya Sule or Jayant Patil—that’s the question buzzing within the NCP(SP). On Wednesday, Sharad Pawar made a statement that was loaded with a message that has got his allies thinking. At a party rally at Islampur in Sangli district, Pawar heaped praises on Jayant Patil’s leadership qualities and stated that Patil should shoulder the responsibility of steering the state in the right direction.


It was seen as a hint that Patil might be considered for the post of the chief minister of Maharashtra if the MVA wins the elections. So, was Pawar alluding to the possibility of Patil being projected as the chief ministerial face of the MVA?


For long, there have been whispers of Sule being given the state’s top job by her party, making her the first woman chief minister of Maharashtra. There has never been a formal statement on the issue though. Political watchers say that, as usual, the statement is nothing more that a “googly” that the shrewd politician is known to hurl at his allies and opponents alike.


Projecting Patil as the man who would shoulder greater responsibilities was a smart move especially since the statement came at a public meeting in Patil’s home turf, Islampur where the family enjoys clout and influence.


Patil’s father Rajarambapu was a force to reckon with in the region and besides being a cabinet minister, set up several cooperative bodies and educational institutes that have worked towards the socio-economic development of Sangli and Islampur, in particular.


Patil has been an able successor who has led these institutes and cooperative factories and banks. Cooperative bodies are a targeted voter base for political parties, a factor that the Congress and NCP have banked on, for years. A member of the NCP-SP who did not want to be named says: “We are appealing to the members of these cooperative bodies who have been our voters for long but not they’ve also been divided after the split in the party.” Harshvardhan Patil’s re-induction into the party after a stint with the BJP is also believed to be for gaining a hold over members of various cooperative bodies that he holds sway over.


Some say that Pawar’s statement could be only to unnerve the other alliance partners especially the Shiv Sena which has been openly talking about projecting Uddhav Thackeray as the CM face of the MVA.


Despite murmurs that he may cross over to the BJP, Patil has stayed loyal to the NCP-SP even in the face of great turmoil when Ajit Pawar quit, taking along several legislators. When some, in private, assured the NCP supremo that their departure was only to absolve themselves of various cases slapped on them by investigation agencies, Patil stayed with the party even in the face of an inquiry by the Enforcement Directorate in an alleged money laundering matter. Pawar’s public appreciation of Patil could be a double-sided sword—in acknowledgment of his loyalty and support and a tug at the heartstrings of the people of Islampur.

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