Leadership And Dancing With The Angels

My father came from the 'old school' having witnessed the Second World War, the Japanese occupation, the American liberation, and the rise and fall of my grandfather’s cigarette factory.

I came into his office when I was around nine years old in the early 80s where the place was just buzzing with busy people.

Typewriters and telex machines were tapping away in the background as he opened a listing from a book called The Top 1000 Corporations of the Philippines.

There, his company was listed somewhere in the 700s as he pointed at it with his thick stubby index finger projecting from a cuff perfectly extending from his suit sleeve.

He said:

Blood, sweat and tears! You need to work like a devil to dance like an angel.

He’s up there right now with the angels looking down with a high-brow probably saying; “Well, my son is still working at it!”

A famous wise saying goes:

What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his/her soul?

Indeed these words should ring louder for many executives as one would usually encounter a 'Faustian bargain' of sorts especially when they move higher up the corporate ladder.

“Everything has a price,” my father would say. I have witnessed (having been one) many executives who play the risk and bargain of moving up the ladder only to forfeit their health and eventually their quality of life.

The wagers were often high! We tend to overlook the quality of our relationships with our loved ones and friends and in the process, neglect ourselves.

This is not to reprimand anyone; because I know how it is in the C-suite when you’re just about to pack up for work at 6:30pm, your boss pokes his head into the office to say, “We have a dinner meeting at 8pm! I’ll meet you up front at 7:30pm!”

There is a huge gap between doing your job really well and understanding and working the business.

The latter takes a higher level of commitment which sometimes supersedes many other priorities. Business usually comes first.

There is also a career paradox that creeps into a lot of our decisions. Charles Handy in his book The Age of Paradox says that we usually work on our careers so that we earn a better quality of life.

However, what happens is usually the reverse. We work so hard that we start neglecting our health. And once we do, our effectiveness at work starts to diminish as well.

We work so hard just to appreciate that it takes more resources to guard your health through corrective measures. Sadly the most you get in the end is just a bunch of 'stuff'.

In 2012, I had the best year 'career-wise' when I often rode a private plane to and from work. I racked up at least 26 billable days per month. We were liquid.

We had a lot of cash in the bank but along with it was my obvious gain in girth.

While I tried to put in the hours as a 'weekend warrior' biking my lungs out whenever I had the time, still the executive life caught up with me.

Not to mention the loss of sleep and missing some important dates in my family’s life. Sure, work was good! But when January 2013 came around, I failed the stress-test on my APE (annual physical exam)!

After spending a thousand dollars on bike parts, I found that my body was the one in need of dire repair. I was put on a stricter diet and a regimen of statins and anti-hypertension medication.

Climbing high could also lead to a crash

The paradox of career success and health is inversely structured. In your progression towards the top we slowly tip the work-life balance in favour of advancement.

We focus on building our careers with the justification of seeking a higher quality of life. We do get to a sweet spot that gets stretched at some point, but somehow the allure of success and a skewed sense of purpose slowly tend to reel us into the career track.

Every decision (even the smallest ones) that we make between work and everything else works along a zero-sum sort of balance sheet that crediting hours to work takes away from either yourself, family, society, and fitness.

In the end, some of these accounts cannot afford to give anymore. At this point you need to re-align your priorities!

We have to realise that our bodies can only take so much. And just as you would demand for your mind and body to remain productive, it is subjected to physical principles and limitations.

What I did learn from working with competitive athletes, of which some are successful entrepreneurs, is that we need to adapt to a “physical performance mindset”.

At the end of long days of conflict where you seem to be pulled apart in different directions, you will realise that you only have one body. Take care of it! Upgrade it! Enforce a renewal!

Time and motion = Time and energy. Always set aside the time to condition your body and mind for peak performance.
Invest in fitness and you will find that you can push your energies a bit further every time it’s called for. You cannot be the dynamic leader you want to be if your body is not willing.
Manage your exercise like a task! Invest at least two hours a week in cardiovascular exercises. Set appointments with your workout tasks on your calendar.
Two hours can be broken down into four 30-minute sessions. Keep this as a discipline and you will soon realise that you are exercising most days of the week. That in itself is an accomplishment!
Find some exercise hacks. Make it convenient enough so that you don’t have an excuse.
Acquire a health baseline. Visit your health professional and get an accurate assessment of your health and fitness. Finding the 'need' to correct matters could start you off on the right path with the right priorities.

Investing in yourself yields enormous returns on actual work output and effectiveness. You will find that with exercise, you will have more energy for increasing demands across all areas of life.

Being in touch with your body also means you have the ability to listen to what it is saying, whether or not it could push itself or ask you to slow down and recover. Time may be inflexible but with exercise, you can feel that energy could be elastic.

Looking fit and healthy can also give you a boost in your career. A leader who knows how to manage himself/herself and his/her energy across a wide range of demands is “fit to lead”.

If your outward appearance seems like it could take an extra assignment, so shall these opportunities open up to you.

You will always be that person who looks fit for the job. In a study published by Frontiers in Human Neuroscience “New evidence suggests that healthy-looking individuals are perceived as better leaders, even over intelligent-looking people.”

So, if you are looking to increase your executive/leadership clout, you might as well start with yourself! Be fit to lead!

The familiar paradigms of the old school need to be redefined in the modern age though they both point to the same thing: Commitment.

As my dad would say, "You need to have your hands bleed practising, in order for you to be exceptional”. But I would like to redefine blood, sweat and tears along the following directions:

Blood: Commitment, trust, loyalty with the ones you lead and those who matter. Be willing to give yourself to them.
Sweat: Giving yourself 100% to every task, in everything that you do. Strive for excellence and exceptional results.
Tears: Connect with those that matter. Engage them even at an emotional level. Everything is personal. “Business is personal”.

My dad is up there saying: