A manager recently contacted us about a situation where an employee felt micromanaged because their deadlines were being closely tracked.
The manager, on the other hand, believed they were simply being supportive after noticing the employee was struggling to keep up.
Both genuinely thought they were being reasonable.
Neither was wrong but they weren’t aligned.
That’s the tricky thing about reasonableness in the workplace: it isn’t absolute.
It shifts depending on context, perspective, and emotion.
What feels reasonable to one person might feel completely unfair to another.
In HR and leadership, we use the term “reasonable” often… a reasonable adjustment, a reasonable request, a reasonable management action… but the interpretation varies depending on where you are standing. And that’s often where things go wrong.
Many grievances or conflicts don’t stem from bad intent, they come from mismatched expectations and different definitions of fairness.
Reasonableness depends on:
🎈Context – what’s really going on around the situation?
🎈Intent – is the action meant to support or punish?
🎈Communication – have expectations been clearly shared and understood?
🎈Consistency – has similar behaviour been handled the same way before?
When we stop to ask, “What’s reasonable here for everyone involved?” we begin to see beyond our own lens.
It invites empathy, slows judgment, and helps restore balance before things escalate.
Because at its heart, reasonableness isn’t just a rule, it’s a relationship mindset. And when that mindset is missing, even good intentions can go wrong.