Keeping a physical fitness regime as a key leadership trait

What you need to know:

  1. Maintaining a physically fit body ensures that one stays alert for longer periods of the day than they otherwise would.

I run! Yes, I do.

I’m not talking about running a home or running an office although I run those too. I’m talking about physical running. Three or four times a week I get up at an ungodly morning hour, don my running gear and hit the road. Not because that’s the only time one can run, but because that’s the time I’ve become accustomed to. Not because that’s the only physical exercise one can do, but because it’s my chosen one.

It is not a walk in the park though. All runners I have interacted with, especially early morning ones like myself, agree that the toughest part of every run is the start. The stress of stemming the irritation caused by the sound of the early morning alarm penetrating one’s last morning dreams, the excruciating pain of waking and getting out of a warm early morning bed, the stealthy art of dressing in the dark and sneaking out of the house so as not to wake the rest of the household all combine to create an experience only hard-nosed diehards are willing to endure again and again.

So why do we do it? Amateur runners are drawn to the addiction of the habit because of the adrenaline high one feels after the run is done. It is a feeling that is not easily described, but rather one that needs to be experienced for one to understand. It is the same feeling that sports enthusiasts feel after a dose of their sport of preference. The stress of breaking one’s inertia and the great feelings derived thereafter notwithstanding, I believe that there are inherent leadership benefits to be derived from maintaining a good exercise regimen.

For starters, most psychologists agree that mental and physical fitness are closely correlated. As such, maintaining a physically fit body ensures that one stays alert for longer periods of the day than they otherwise would. Since decision making happens at all hours of the 24-hour day, one wants to be sure that if called upon to make a critical decision after a long day the outcome will be well thought out and rational. Further to that, because you stay alert for longer periods of the day, your concentration levels remain high for longer periods too, so you are still able to be creative and to logically reel through complex stuff long after the working day is done. To add to this, maintaining a physical exercise routine helps improve physical appearance and, as evidenced from the confidence with which professional athletes show up in front of huge crowds without a bother as they ply their trade, good physical appearance is a major self-confidence booster which in itself is one of the most necessary tools in the leadership toolkit.

The above speaks to improvement in a leader’s productivity as a result of staying physically fit. By far though, the greatest leadership benefit is in the impact that the leader’s actions leave on those that they lead and others that are inspired by them. Behavioral science scholars agree that by and large, people mimic the actions of those that lead them. Their learned behaviors are shaped by the behaviors that they see their leaders portray. If their leaders are short tempered and snappy towards them and others, they too will be short tempered and snappy towards their own teams. If their leaders don’t pay much heed to time keeping and the virtues of keeping their promises, they will inherit the same tendencies. So leaders who pay attention to their physical appearance through maintaining physical exercise routines will in turn ‘gift’ their followers with the same habits. This will have a spiral down effect as their followers will in turn inspire others to do the same which will eventually drive overall productivity positively. This ‘mimicry’ has both forward and backward linkages on the leader because they too benefit from it as demonstrated in their leadership styles. Leaders who follow strict physical exercise routines tend to favor coaching and pace setter styles of leadership. This is because as they strive to get better at their selected mode of physical exercise, they tend to look up to others better than they are in the exercise for coaching as well as to set personal targets that they aspire to achieve, thereby exposing themselves to coaching and pace setting, practices they then pass into their own leadership styles.

I would thus argue that the leadership benefits derived from keeping physically fit outweigh the pain and difficulty experienced in starting off. For this reason, I intend to keep up with my running for as long as physically possible, and if not already doing it, I encourage you to go ahead, get out of bed and break that sweat in your chosen physical practice. Hopefully we’ll meet on the road sometime soon.