Can you stand on a table and do a jig?” I asked a school friend who has been clambering up the corporate ladder with some dispatch, and is tipped to be the big wheel soon.

He looked quizzical, so I helped him out, “You better learn to shed your inhibitions and shake a leg, otherwise, you have no chance of CEOdom.”

Gone, I told him, are the days when a corporate general could simply strategise on where to take the business, do a bit of operations and people management, delegate a lot and go home with a clear conscience.

Now, along with the business and management essentials, it appears that CEOs also have to be adept at running marathons and giving clever one-liners for television soundbites, not to speak of looking like a fashion plate at all times, playing golf or tennis or squash, perhaps, singing and dancing as well. It also helps if they can act a bit.

At a Philips media retreat in Goa, along with 40 other presspersons from across the country, I watched with amusement as the Anglo-Dutch company's India CEO and his vice-presidents put up a skit depicting all that was new with the company. Imagine the hard work that must have gone into it, the rehearsals to mug up all those lines and deliver them with aplomb.

At a technology services company that I visited recently, I learnt that the top leadership had been forced to dance to Bollywood numbers in front of their entire staff. It was an auction event — to raise money for the company's CSR, in which the employees bid a lot of money to get some cheap pleasure out of seeing their bosses do the latkes and jhatkes .

Recently, nine jet-setting Indian CEOs had to sing for their supper at a charity event, where they were asked to croon to collect funds. And with golf becoming synonymous with business, executives take great pride in telling you that today more business is done on the greens than in boardrooms — it's not surprising to see upwardly mobile managers scrambling to learn the game.

Every year, at the Airtel half-marathon in Delhi, the list of CEOs running seems to be growing longer and longer, going by the line of PR women visiting our office, wanting a picture of their sprinting CEO to be published.

And no sloppy dressing, mind you — a recent survey says that bosses can get a dressing down if they don't dress up. The online survey conducted in 24 countries, which had 1,000 Indians respondents, revealed that 66 per cent of workers want their senior managers to be more dressed up. The Indian respondents, especially, want their bosses to look smart rather than casual.

“If you want people around here to take you a bit more seriously, you should change your office attire,” I advised my bureau chief, waving the survey at him. He comes to work, wearing white khadi shirts and chappals . He says, “if women can wear comfortable clothes to work, why not men?”

But to get back to CEOs — how come the recent crop all look so alike — younger, fitter, dressier, very sporty, blessed with a gift of the gab? Is there a school like the one out of which all those Miss India aspirants come out of? Or airline stewardesses?

Turns out that personal image consultants for CEOs are mushrooming. Trawling the Net, I found one such image consultant who says on her page: “Today, it is not enough to perform your job effectively and professionally, it is also central to your role as CEO to have an enhanced visual appearance...”

But do shareholders really care if the CEO has six-pack abs and an ‘enhanced visual appearance'. Nah, I suspect, they wouldn't mind a dapper-looking CEO, who can run the long race, and give great soundbites, but on the whole, would be content to have anybody who delivers results.

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