Leaders, often talk about building high trust, human centric cultures. Yet one persistent challenge hits close to home: how we handle sick leave in India.
Next time a team member requests time off when unwell, pause before the instinctive “double take.” Many of us mirror patterns we learned growing up.
Think about how we responded when our children said they felt sick before school. Did we sometimes question if it was a real need or an excuse? In many Indian families and schools, 100% attendance is celebrated like an academic trophy. “Take a Crocin and push through” becomes normalized “tough love” in a hyper competitive environment.
This conditioning travels from the classroom to the cubicle. Managers who grew up in low-trust dynamics often default to surveillance over empathy. A sick day request turns into negotiation: “Can you just handle this one task from home?” Hybrid work, meant to offer flexibility, sometimes erases boundaries instead turning rest into low grade productivity.
And the root cause is a scarcity mindset fueled by intense competition, where rest is misread as weakness and presenteeism is valued over sustainable performance.
This is a shared cultural loop we need to consciously break. As leaders, we must model output based trust, prioritize genuine wellbeing, and unlearn survival mode habits. The result will be healthier teams, better retention, and higher real productivity.
What shifts have you seen in your organizations? Are you seeing leaders successfully moving from presenteeism to performance focused cultures? I’d love to hear your experiences.
Leave a Reply