Why Today’s Leaders Must Become Corporate Athletes
In the 1984 comedy Revenge of the Nerds, war is declared between college campus’ “nerds”—brainiacs whose focus on intellectual pursuits have rendered them physically weak and socially inept—and its “jocks”—aggressive specimens of testosterone-fueled masculinity who are also dumb as anvils. While clearly a farce in the tradition of National Lampoon’s Animal House, the megahit released just six years earlier, the film capitalizes on the centuries’-old concept of dualism, the idea that mind and body are separate systems and that to excel at one necessarily means neglecting, or perhaps sacrificing, the other.
This same concept of dualism pervades today’s business landscape. Although some large companies have on-site gyms and encourage employees to maintain healthy lifestyles, many, if not most, top executives continue to embrace the Protestant Work Ethic, believing “hard work” and “long hours” are the keys to success, and that any time spent away from the computer, cell phone, or conference room represents nothing but lost productivity. This focus on the mental side of success is one reason Americans continue to put in longer hours than workers in virtually any other country, why we take fewer vacations, and why our rates of overall job satisfaction remain so incredibly low.
This mind/body disconnect was not always so in vogue. Twenty-five hundred years ago, the Greek philosopher Thales of Miletus wrote, “What man is happy? He who has a healthy body, a resourceful mind, and a docile nature.” Two-and-a-half millennia later, U.S. President John F. Kennedy, an outspoken proponent of physical fitness, picked up where Thales left off, declaring, “The Greeks understood that mind and body must develop in harmonious proportions to produce a creative intelligence,” adding, “Physical fitness is not only one of the most important keys to a healthy body, it is the basis of dynamic and creative intellectual activity.”
Numerous studies have confirmed the validity of JFK’s statement. While much research has focused on professional athletes, findings apply equally to people working outside the world of competitive sports. Their conclusion: Top performance is achieved when mind and body are developed in tandem.
An excellent deep dive into this research can be found in Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz’s article, The Making of a Corporate Athlete, appearing in the January 2001 issue of Harvard Business Review. In the piece, professional performance researchers present what they call the High- Performance Pyramid, a four-level model for achieving the Ideal Performance State (IPS) in any field, be it in the athletic arena or the boardroom.
The four levels of performance they review include:
Physical Capacity. To perform any task, even a mental one, people need physical strength and endurance. To appreciate how physical condition affects one’s mental state, just consider how much work you can perform when you’re physically exhausted, hungry, sleep-deprived, or just plain sick. The better you feel physically, the more work you can do mentally.
However, having the energy to work is about more than just taxing your
muscles. It requires interval training. Take bodybuilding. Athletes build muscle by breaking tissue down through resistance, but then resting—usually for 24 to 48 hours—to give the body time to heal damaged tissue. (The muscle that grows back is usually harder and stronger than it was originally.) Yet if no rest period is provided, if an athlete tries to “power-through” a workout routine day after day after day with no let-up the body can’t restore itself and damage to muscle tissue can become permanent.
Likewise, an executive needs to work for a set period of time, then break for physical exercise. In most cases, people find they can be more productive if they alternate mental and physical activity instead of trying to power-through each day on nothing but caffeine and sheer will. Perhaps counterintuitively, periodic exercise increases energy and stamina rather than depleting it.
Emotional Capacity. Top performers get this way by learning to perform under pressure. What separates champions from the merely talented is the ability to stay cool and focused when time and options are quickly running out, to avoid “choking” when it’s all on the line and it’s all up to you.
Don’t kid yourself: Stress is a killer. It can not only literally kill you through diseases like hypertension, it can also hobble your career advancement and leadership effectiveness by expressing itself via disastrous explosions of temper and/or panicked decision-making.
Although some people are born with “the right stuff,” for the rest of us mere mortals, acquiring enhanced emotional capacity takes practice. And time. Performance experts often suggest practicing meditation to learn how to manage stress and maintain an even emotional keel. Psychological counseling can also help you identify sources of anxiety and acquire tools to mitigate them.
Mental Capacity. Many people confuse mental capacity with skills development. Yes, continuing education is key for professional advancement, but Loehr and Schwartz are talking here about enhancing focus, time management, and positive- and critical-thinking skills. Even with the knowledge, training, and experience you already have, you can become more productive just by learning to prioritize your activities and attack each challenge with a solution-focused mindset.
Again, practicing meditation can be very helpful, as can building alternating periods of stress and renewal into your daily schedule. Rituals that encourage positive thinking, such as visualization, can also assist you to achieve the Ideal Performance State.
Spiritual Capacity. In this context, “spiritual” does not mean accessing the supernatural. Loehr and Schwartz are talking about purpose, the why behind the actions we take. People whose drive for success is motivated by nothing but money—so called “scorekeepers”—are prime candidates for professional burnout. Instead, we need to regularly remind ourselves of the good we’re trying to achieve in the world, of the family we’re working to support, the loved one(s) to whom we’re determined to bring happiness. Possessing a strong sense of purpose and unassailable values can help us weather even the most difficult of times.
The final lesson Loehr and Schwartz return to repeatedly is that, to work, all these activities must become habitual. They need to become ritualized. You can’t just choose to exercise for an hour every few days or meditate for 15 minutes once or twice a week. You must build time for these periods of renewal into your daily schedule and afford them the same level of importance you do your more remunerative activities.
Want to become a corporate athlete? We can help you improve your personal and business productivity by integrating the High-Performance Pyramid into your daily schedule and company culture. Contact me at laura@conoverconsulting.com, and let me show you how!