The Cost of Carrying People
- Rahul Kulkarni
- Nov 9
- 6 min read
When compassion becomes unsustainable
(The People Paradox, Part 5)
Some leaders don’t burn out from pressure.
They burn out from carrying what no one else will name.
Rohit didn’t collapse.
He just... froze.
It was 11:42 pm on a Thursday. The monthly review deck blinked back at him, untouched.
Slack was quiet. The team had logged off.
And yet, Rohit sat there ... stuck.
Not from decisions he couldn’t make. But from feelings he couldn’t voice.
He wasn’t overworked. He was over-holding.
The fear. The drift. The niceness that had replaced clarity.
Asha’s quiet struggle.
Meera’s stretched energy.
The loyalists who stayed but stopped growing.
And the culture he’d built of a warm, proud “family” now felt more like a performance no one wanted to exit.
The company wasn’t broken. But the weight was uneven.
And Rohit - the founder, protector, emotional buffer was finally buckling.
The Accidental Weight
People still thanked him. Called him a “great boss.”
They said things like, “You always have our back.”
And he did. Maybe too much.
Because somewhere along the way, Rohit had stopped being the founder ...
and become the accidental manager of everyone’s emotions.
He wasn’t just running projects anymore.
He was running reassurance loops ...
checking in when others should’ve checked themselves,
absorbing tension before it surfaced,
holding silence so no one else had to speak hard truths.
Not because he wanted control.
Because he couldn’t stand to see people uncomfortable.
No one had taught him what to do when relationships grew heavier than results and;
how to lead people you loved without cushioning their accountability.
He told himself it was empathy.
But deep down, he knew it was fear ...
fear of losing loyalty, fear of breaking something good.
And that’s how the weight crept in.
Quietly. Kindly.
Until even gratitude started to feel like guilt.
The Mirror Moment
A friend who had failed, healed, and wasn’t here to impress.
A few weeks later, Rohit met Dev, an old friend who’d built and broken teams of his own.
They spoke the way old colleagues do ... with pauses, half-smiles, and small honesty between sips of chai.
Rohit didn’t rant. He recounted.
How the company had drifted.
How good people had grown quiet.
How every conversation now felt like a performance review disguised as reassurance.
Dev listened without fixing.
Until he finally asked:
“When was the last time someone held you accountable?”
Rohit laughed, the tired kind.
“Founders don’t get that luxury.”
Dev shrugged.
“You’re not wrong. But you also don’t have to do it alone. You need mirrors that don’t flatter.”
That’s when he mentioned Rahul and Rashmi.
Not as consultants.
As people who had helped him confront the same fog and build through it.
“They don’t show up with playbooks”, Dev said.
“They show up with questions that make you uncomfortable. Then they walk with you as you figure it out.”
Rohit nodded, unsure. But the seed had been planted.
The Unraveling Begins
Not solutions. Reflections with edges.
Rohit hesitated for a week before reaching out.
He expected frameworks. PowerPoints. Diagnosis decks.
What he got instead was unsettlingly simple.
No process maps.
Just questions.
Why couldn’t he delegate without guilt?
When had “family” become a shield for dysfunction?
Why was he still cushioning people he’d quietly outgrown?
It wasn’t therapy. It wasn’t strategy.
It was clarity ... with edges.
Through those early conversations, something began to shift.
He saw how his leadership had calcified around care.
How compassion had become containment.
This wasn’t about being a bad leader.
This was about never being shown how to evolve from founder to custodian,
from emotional sponge to systemic architect.
And then came the two lines that didn’t sound like advice.
They sounded like permission:
“You built something beautiful,” Rahul said once. “But beauty becomes a cage when it doesn’t evolve.”
“You don’t need to carry people,” Rashmi added. “You need to rebalance the weight, so everyone learns to walk on their own.”
For the first time in months, Rohit felt lighter.
Not because someone had fixed his team.
But because someone had finally named what he was carrying.
Naming the Truth with Meera
One fine morning, Rohit sat down with Meera.
No slides. No announcements. Just truth.
“I made you a manager too soon. I thought trust would be enough.
But I gave you the title before I gave you the tools.”
Meera didn’t push back.
She smiled, tired but grateful.
“I didn’t know how to say no without sounding disloyal.”
That’s when they both saw it:
The People Paradox wasn’t just about talent.
It was about truth and their fear of confronting it.
The Asha Dilemma
Then came the hardest part.
Asha.
The earliest ops lead.
The soul of their early wins.
Still loyal.
Still warm.
Still lost.
In the new systems, she was always a step behind. She meant well but the company had evolved, and she hadn’t.
Firing her felt cruel.
Protecting her felt dishonest.
“What if we made space for her to still matter?” Meera asked.
“Not out of pity. But out of design.”
With Rahul and Rashmi guiding the process, they piloted a role redesign:
Asha would mentor interns.
Curate onboarding rituals.
Become a culture steward ... someone who preserves value, not blocks change.
No promises. Just a trial.
And a direction, not a destination.
Rebalancing the Weight
The next team meeting was quiet. Thoughtful. Different.
Rohit didn’t posture. He shared.
“I built this place like a family. But families can trap people too.
I don’t want us to stay stuck in our history.
I want us to build a team that evolves ... together.”
He didn’t promise answers.
He promised honesty.
Meera took over 1:1s that week with a new cadence.
Asha, nervous but relieved, began her pilot role.
And the team?
They exhaled.
Because even the best teams get tired of pretending.
And this one had finally stopped.
The Road Ahead
Did it fix everything?
Of course not.
Culture doesn’t recalibrate overnight.
Old habits linger. New rhythms take time.
And Asha’s path is still unfolding.
But for the first time, the weight is shared.
The drift is named.
And the silence has cracked open.
The real test of leadership isn’t how long you carry people...It’s how well they move once you finally put them down.
Final Reflection: A Series Closes
The People Paradox wasn’t written to offer solutions.
It was written to say what leaders often whisper to themselves:
“Am I being too kind or just avoiding conflict?”
“Is loyalty helping us grow or holding us back?”
“When did culture start replacing clarity?”
“Why does this feel heavier than it should?”
The answers aren’t easy.
But they begin when we stop carrying what others refuse to name and start reshaping the way we lead.
Rohit didn’t need a hero moment.
He needed a mirror. A nudge. A path.
And with a little help, he found one.
Key Concepts
Emotional Load Transfer
When leaders absorb team dysfunction as unspoken responsibility.
Example: Rohit managing unacknowledged tensions across roles.
Compassion Fatigue
The weariness of caring without correcting.
Example: Keeping Asha in her role despite declining fit.
Role Reimagination
Creating new paths for legacy talent to thrive.
Example: Asha becoming a culture steward, not just an ops lead.
Clarity Catalysts
External advisors who don’t give answers ... rather they enable better questions.
Example: Rahul & Rashmi guiding rebalancing without overpowering.
FAQs
Q1. Are you saying leaders shouldn’t protect their teams?
Protection without progression leads to drift. True leadership blends care with clarity.
Q2. Is it possible to design new roles without offending loyalists?
Yes but only if the intention is framed with respect, and the process is inclusive, experimental, and dignified.
Q3. Why bring in an external catalyst?
Because founders are often too embedded to see the drift. An outside lens can break the echo chamber.
Q4. What now for the Workshop?
They’re not done. But they’ve begun. And that might be the bravest step of all.
Read more deep-dive insights at www.ppsconsulting.biz/blog.
(PPS Consulting helps organizations scale without chaos through structure, governance, and people systems that grow with their teams. Views are institutional.)
The People Paradox series:
The People Paradox : Why every modern business must rethink what “culture” really means.
The Accidental Manager : What happens when growth promotes people faster than systems can prepare them.
The Culture Mirage : Why good intentions don’t always make good cultures.
The Talent Mismatch: Why growth always tests the people who built it.
The Cost of Carrying People: When compassion becomes unsustainable.
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