I’ve often felt that energy, not intellect differentiates the best business leaders from the rest of the pack.
We know physical activity reduces stress. In a counterintuitive way, it also increases energy and it’s energy that sustains critical thinking and managerial resolve. Good leaders channel that energy surge into the most daunting problems they face enabling better solutions to emerge and driving faster problem resolution.
Greg Wells, former international level swimmer and now assistant professor of Kinesiology at the University of Toronto says “business leaders should train like high performance athletes”. Think goal setting and measuring results and you can see the similarities. There’s also the lengthy training program needed to prepare for peak athletic performance. The same thought process is employed to build a business management team that can drive business excellence.
The discipline of fitness easily transfers to management style. The mental strength to manage a workout on your bad days is the same toughness needed to persevere in attaining business objectives when setbacks and mistakes cloud strategic execution. Your workout results tell you that bad days can be overcome with perseverance and the same will occur on the business playing field.
Quoting George Allen, former NFL football coach, “a workout is 25 % perspiration and 75 % determination”. The stuff of business excellence is much the same. While clever strategizing and stirring speeches to the troops are necessary, many of the results depend on the grind of daily execution and the one-on-one encouragement given to struggling junior managers.
A more obvious benefit of fitness in a business leader is resistance to illness and faster recovery of energy and purpose during long travel schedules and body destroying boardroom meetings that extend for days at a time. The fact is, leadership sets the pace for the broader work community. A leader who starts early and retains focus over long business days carries the workforce along. In a sense the workforce feeds off the leader’s visual and vocal energy.
Finally, physical fitness engenders self-confidence. The best business leaders are genuinely confident (the very best without arrogance). That confidence is often seen in their posture and mental attentiveness, listening actively to learn, rather than constantly speaking of their own thoughts. George Allen sums it up well: “when you finish a workout, you don’t simply feel better: you feel better about yourself”. And that positive self-image can only add to the leader’s management confidence.
Visit Osborne-group.com for other Principals’ ideas and opinions on a range of topics. The Osborne Group provides interim executive management, consulting and project support across all sectors and over a broad scope of service areas.
