Fit to lead | Wells Fargo's Arindam Banerrji: Sports and fitness routines offer invaluable net practice for a leader

Arindam Banerrji, Executive Vice-President and Managing Director, Wells Fargo India & Philippines.

Note to readers: Fit to Lead is a series of interviews with business leaders on their approach to fitness, leadership and navigating the new normal.

The game that he loves and plays three days a week these days is one that Arindam Banerrji turned to as a teenager in Kolkata in order to get a sports scholarship at a US college. He didn’t manage a par as a golf scholar then and was, instead, set off on his current path where he finds himself as the executive vice-president and managing director of Wells Fargo for India and the Philippines.

The 57-year-old chartered accountant loves being in the thick of things and around people, so the pandemic was a tough time for him as he couldn’t play golf nor work with his colleagues in his office. “I want to be in the office meeting and communicating with people. I did get to spend a lot more time with my wife and kids but I just couldn’t adapt to the new normal,” says Banerrji, who usually works from 11 am to 11pm.

To offset his 12-hour work days, which he enjoys, he makes sure there is no shop talk when he is on the green playing golf with his friends. Banerrji aims to play 150 rounds of golf every year, and even in 2020, he managed to get 100 rounds despite the lockdowns. To Banerrji, fitness is not a journey with a start and end point. “It’s more of a desire to stay agile, productive and energetic. Neither is fitness an entirely physical attribute. I think it is just as important to accommodate a crossword, or sudoku as a jog or cardio or a game of squash,” he says. Edited excerpts of the interview:

How do you achieve your health and fitness goals?

Golf three days a week. That translates into about 12 hours of walking and playing per week. At times, definitely on the weekends, I join my wife on her 3 km evening walk. Sometimes, I also swim 20-25 laps.

Favourite fitness activity…

Golf, simply because it clears my head over a much longer period of time, and is played in a spirit unlike any other sport.

Your toughest?

Climbing in high altitude. I have done a lot of climbing in the past, but as you age you can’t pursue it as much.

Your new normal…

The pandemic caught us completely unawares, especially people like me, who have been in the corporate world long enough to become habituated to a certain workday routine and rhythm. Suddenly, we had to grapple with the fact that workspace and domestic space would have to merge. But after living two years in pandemic times, I’m happy to report that I haven’t done too badly. And the happiest recent development for me has been the return to office, which at Wells Fargo we started in a phased manner from March. The new normal is gradually beginning to resemble the old normal.

Has your fitness routine, in any way, helped you navigate the uncertainties of the current times?

One of the things that hit me hard when the first lockdown was imposed was not being able to tee off for months. That also brought a new perspective on what we consider “certainties” in our lives. Making adjustments to my fitness routine did help me get through the initial topsy-turvy months. Wellness and health became central to our conversation. I have never lived through a phase where every leader across the globe was signing off most official messages with a variation of “stay well, stay safe.”

The one change you would encourage your teammates to make to deal with the challenges of current times…

Be flexible. Expect the unexpected. The moment you accept that everything around you is fluid and can change at a moment’s notice, you realise that you need to be accommodative. Once you’ve made that switch in your mindset, a lot of things fall into place, while it becomes easier to find solutions or workarounds to those that don’t.

Leadership lessons in your fitness journey…

Whether it's a sport or fitness routine, it puts your power of assessing yourself or your competition to test every day. This, I believe, can be an invaluable net practice for a leader, since leadership has a great deal to do with assessing strengths and weaknesses—within your own organisation, as well as the larger business environment.

What impact does your image of a “fit leader” have on your team?

Hopefully, it inspires them to also stay fit. We often neglect our fitness regimen to attend to other immediate but less important needs. I hope the organisation at large realises that being healthy will stand them in good stead through the years.

Has being fit helped you become a better leader and a better version of yourself?

Physical fitness, while being very important, is still only a part of what makes a person “fit” for leadership. Pursuing a physical activity ensures that you are always in self-assessment mode and more observant and self-aware. Even more valuable than these is the ability to pause, restart and accelerate, that any fitness regimen helps you develop.

Your leadership style…

I believe in establishing connections with people and bringing empathy into every interaction. It is quite amazing how much insight you can gain just from listening to other people’s perspectives. If you have the tools and the penchant to build on those insights and connect the dots, the world is your oyster.

Goals for the year…

The biggest challenge in the current scenario for any leader in any industry is to put the uncertainty of the pandemic behind us and get the spring back in our step. At Wells Fargo, I want us to adopt to a different digital world which we are entering. On the personal front, I’d like to start swimming or playing tennis at least once a week apart from my golf and walks.