Leadership: How important is Physique?

Average height of Fortune 500 CEO is 6 feet

While nothing can be done about height or race or color, there is a lot that a leader has to do to be physically charming to influence people.

Some years before he died, Dhirubhai Ambani, founder of Reliance Industries in India, told his younger son, Anil: "Look Son, you can buy any luxury you want in life - from clothes to food, from a home to a holiday - but you can never buy health. Do whatever it takes to make yourself good." The younger Ambani was touching 40 then. He weighed an uncomfortable 105 kg and could barely walk a kilometer in an hour, let alone run. Like his father, his fitness, or rather lack of it, also had his shareholders worried.

How to succeed in business? Get thee to a gym! 

A study finds people tend to think overweight executives are worse at their jobs than slimmer counterparts. Research suggests that a few extra pounds or a slightly larger waistline affects an executive's perceived leadership ability as well as stamina on the job.

Fitness is very important. Exercising generates a lot of energy and counterbalances your work. — Rashesh Shah, CEO, Edelweiss Group

While marathon training and predawn workouts aren't explicitly part of a senior manager's job description, leadership experts say that staying trim is a virtual requirement for anyone on track for the corner office. Does not matter if you are son of one of richest man in the world. Anant Ambani, younger son of Mukesh Ambani worked diligently to loose 108 kilos.

Executives with larger waistlines and higher body-mass-index readings tend to be perceived as less effective in the workplace, both in performance and interpersonal relationships. Executives with BMIs under 25 were ranked more favorably by their peers in both interpersonal skills and task performance. Because demands of leadership are quite strenuous, physical aspects are just as important as everything else.

We have stereotypes about fat, so when we see a senior executive who's overweight, our initial reaction isn't positive — Barry Posner, Leadership Professor

Fitness imperative for executives is relatively new. Time was, a company chief spent every waking minute at work, sacrificing exercise, vacation and kids in the service of the firm. Employees were expected to admire and emulate this devotion. Now, executives are expected to take time off to “revitalize themselves". This paradigm shift could be attributed to sudden deaths of some high-profile CEOs, including McDonald's Jim Cantalupo, who died of a heart attack in 2004, 16 months after taking the post. His successor, Charlie Bell, died less than a year later of cancer at the age of 44. In 1997, Coca-Cola Chairman Roberto Goizueta, a smoker, died weeks after being diagnosed with lung cancer.

I was talking to potential investors for SyberPlace. After being through with due diligence on business plan and state of business, their question: "Who is your co-founder? What if something happens to you? You are the single point of failure." They were polite not to talk about how old I look.

In another instance we were meeting with one of Dhoot brothers (of Videocon), at his insistence. After the initial pleasantries were through, he was direct: "Mr. Goel, you are too old for this business. I invited the Bansals over for IPL, they were courteous enough to come, but they were all the time on their phones and had no time or interest in the game. Do you even understand, Mr. Goel, how much energy it takes to run such a business." Average age of Fortune 500 CEO is 57 years. So, it was not about my age - it was how old I "looked".

Deepinder Goyal of Zomato was being facilitated by NDTV. He was asked: "With so many restaurants vying for your review, you must be eating out quite often the most delicious food in the world?" His modest shy response was: "I am on a strict diet and I only eat home cooked food,"

Company's image and reputation are closely tied to the CEO, long-term illness or premature death carries not only profound consequences for the executive, but can also be catastrophic to business.

Daily grind that leaders must face necessitates both a strong mind and a strong body. What the mind believes, the body achieves.

Author's Note: This article is an outcome of inputs received on Leadership: You are the Influence where out of 8 attributes of an influential leader, readers had reservations about physique as a critical attribute. What do you say?