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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.)

Why Israel And Amnesty International Face Each Other Over Gaza?

  • AP
  • Dec 6, 2024
  • 4 min read
Israel

Amnesty International accused Israel of committing genocide in the Gaza Strip during its war with Hamas, saying it has sought to deliberately destroy Palestinians by mounting deadly attacks, demolishing vital infrastructure and preventing the delivery of food, medicine and other aid.


The human rights group released a report Thursday in the Middle East that said such actions could not be justified by Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack into Israel, which ignited the war, or the presence of militants in civilian areas. Amnesty said the United States and other allies of Israel could be complicit in genocide, and called on them to halt arms shipments.


“Our damning findings must serve as a wake-up call to the international community: this is genocide. It must stop now,” Agnès Callamard, Secretary General of Amnesty International, said in the report.


Israel, which was founded in the aftermath of the Holocaust, has adamantly rejected genocide allegations against it as an antisemitic “blood libel.” It is challenging such allegations at the International Court of Justice, and it has rejected the International Criminal Court's accusations that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister committed war crimes in Gaza.


“The deplorable and fanatical organization Amnesty International has once again produced a fabricated report that is entirely false and based on lies," Israel's Foreign Ministry said in a statement. Israel accused Hamas, which has vowed to annihilate Israel, of carrying out a genocidal massacre in the attack that triggered the war, and said it is defending itself in accordance with international law.


Amnesty says Palestinians face slow death

Amnesty's report adds an influential voice to a growing list of players that have accused Israel of committing genocide — which would put it in the company of some of the deadliest conflicts of the past 80 years, including Cambodia, Sudan and Rwanda.


The accusations have largely come from human rights groups and allies of the Palestinians. But last month, Pope Francis called for an investigation to determine if Israeli actions amounted to genocide, and Saudi Arabia's crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, who has signaled readiness to establish diplomatic relations with Israel, accused it of committing genocide.


Israel says it is at war with Hamas, not the people of Gaza. And key allies, including the U.S. and Germany, have also pushed back against the genocide allegations. But Amnesty accused Israel of violating the 1951 Genocide Convention through acts it says are intended to bring about the physical destruction of Gaza's Palestinian population by exposing them to “a slow, calculated death.”


Amnesty said it analyzed the overall pattern of Israel's conduct in Gaza between Oct. 7, 2023 and early July. It noted that there is no casualty threshold in proving the international crime of genocide, which is defined by the United Nations as acts intended to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.


To establish intent, Amnesty said it reviewed over 100 statements by Israeli government and military officials and others since the start of the war that “dehumanized Palestinians, called for or justified genocidal acts or other crimes against them.”


Amnesty said it found that Israel “deliberately inflicted conditions of life on Palestinians in Gaza intended to lead, over time, to their destruction.” Those actions included the destruction of homes, farms, hospitals and water facilities; mass evacuation orders; and the restriction of humanitarian aid and other essential services.


It also analyzed 15 airstrikes from the start of the war until April that killed at least 334 civilians, including 141 children, and wounded hundreds of other people. It said it found no evidence that any of the strikes were directed at military objectives.


Israel blames civilian deaths on Hamas

Israel says it only targets militants and blames civilian deaths on Hamas because the militants fight in dense, residential areas and have built tunnels and other militant infrastructure near homes, schools and mosques.


It blames the lack of humanitarian aid on United Nations agencies, accusing them of not delivering hundreds of truckloads of aid that have been allowed in. The U.N. says it is often too dangerous to retrieve and deliver the aid. It blames Israel as the occupying power for the breakdown of law and order — which has enabled armed groups to steal aid convoys — while also accusing it of heavily restricting movement within the territory.


The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking around 250 hostage, including children and older adults. Some 100 captives are still held inside Gaza, at least a third of whom are believed to be dead.


Israel's retaliatory military campaign has killed more than 44,500 people, according to Gaza health officials, whose count doesn't distinguish between civilians and fighters, though they say more than half the dead are women and children.


The offensive is among the deadliest and most destructive since World War II, and has destroyed vast areas of the besieged coastal territory.

-AP

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