3 Keys to Intentional Agency Leadership

So you want to become a better leader in your insurance agency, but how do you get started? Well, I think it comes down to one word, intentionality. And I'm going to discuss three ways that you can become more intentional in your leadership in today's AgentLeader podcast. The Agent Leader Podcast is brought to you by the Sitkins Group. Sell more, retain More, and earn more. Go to sitkins.com to find a program that works best for your agency. S I T k I n s.com. Well, hello there, agent Leaders. This is Brent Kelly of the Agent Leader Podcast. And I am certainly excited and honored that you are joining me on today's episode. And it was a few days ago, I was asked a question, and I've been asked this in a few different ways, whether it's preparing for a keynote presentation or a workshop that I'm doing with a group, because obviously I focus much on leadership, or was the question of how would a young leader or an emerging leader, how do you get started? What do you need to do? How do they become a better leader? And you know, again, as I said on the outset of this, of this podcast, it really boils down to one word. You've got to become intentional. And as I was thinking about being intentional, it's easy to say, well, just be intentional. But what does that really mean tangibly, what can you or should you do as a young or emerging leader to become more effective, to be a stronger leader? And as I was taking some notes and thinking about this for a while, it really came to me that there was three basic things that I would tell any emerging leader to focus on. Now, again, there's probably a hundred things you could do, but three basic things will definitely make a huge impact in your ability to lead. Now, before I get into those three things, I think it's important to state, again, the understanding of what leadership really is. Because if this part is not understood, and even though I've talked and spoken about this in different podcasts or different articles that I've written, I want to make sure I state it again, that leadership is not a title, it's not a position, it's not who makes the most money. Those can all be aspects of what leaders look and feel like. I get that. But understanding what leadership really is is a vital importance because as a commercial producer for 15 years, especially early in my career, I didn't understand that. And I thought as an agent, my position or my stature determined if I was a leader. But when you understand that leadership is one thing and one thing Only, and that is influence. The ability to influence other people in a positive and ethical way. I always like to add that second part because some people say influence is manipulation. Well, I guess it can, but I'm talking about positive and ethical influence. Whether you're leading your team at your agency, many of you are agency leaders. Whether you're leading your team, what kind of influence do you have? Who's following you? If they're not following you, you're not leading. And you don't have influence as a producer. What about your clients and your future ideal clients? Are they following you? Do you have influence internally on your team as a service staff? Who's listening to you? Are you sharing ideas? Do you have influence? See, again, you get to understand very quickly that leadership has nothing to do with a title or position. I never wrote an insurance policy in my career because I was a cic. Now, maybe that attributed to my, to my knowledge to have more influence, but it wasn't the title, it was my influence. And so it's really important I want to state that again before I get into these three different ways that you can build your leadership. Because when I say, how do you. Your leadership, how do you become a better leader? It's vital that what I'm talking about isn't about simply just being higher on the totem pole or running or owning an agency. Now, maybe you're already doing those things, and that's great. But what I'm talking about, when I say, how do you become a better leader or how do emerging leaders develop? I'm talking about how do you develop greater influence with people? And again, that can start at any level, at any position, from anywhere in the organization. So again, I just want to make sure that's really clear up front. So let me dive into these three things. And again, this is kind of fun because I just want to riff on some of these. What comes to my mind, what's in my heart, what I'm passionate about. Hopefully that comes through when I do these podcasts. That's why I love to do it. In fact, real quick aside, as my team knows that the Sitkins Group, I love to do audio notes where I can just riff on things. That's why I love these podcasts, because outside of just text, it allows me to express my passion. So how do you develop to become a better leader? Well, number one, the first thing is you've got to understand that you've got to be able to lead yourself. Now, leadership to me always starts from the inside out. If you don't first lead yourself effectively. Why in the heck would anyone else want to follow you? You know, and I know I've shared this story and keynotes and probably in different podcasts, but, you know, I look back in my life personally and I look back at the time as I share when I was 25 years old, dead broke at a gas station with no money, with no gas in my car and couldn't go see a client 10 miles away. I often wondered at that time in my life and that whole surrounding of why weren't more people following me? You know, I was, I was, I felt like I was pretty charismatic, but my external did not match the internal truth. I wasn't effectively leading myself. And when you can effectively lead yourself, you can't effectively lead others. So I would tell anybody who's an emerging leader before you worry about who you're going to influence on the outside, influence yourself. Now, we all have strengths and weaknesses because one of the most challenging things I think with self leadership is the fact that self leadership causes us to self reflect. And we've got to have greater self awareness. And sometimes when we do that, in fact, many times when we try to become more self aware, it's painful because we see the truth of the situation. What many times we try to hide from people. When we look in the mirror and we really analyze who we are as people and as business leaders and whatever the case may be, we realize there's some holes, there's some scars, and we all have them and we have them in different areas. You know, for example, as I was just sharing, for me, my financial scars began to show that I had some issues that I wasn't leading myself internally. It wasn't just financial. There were causes of that, of things that I was doing. I had to really dive deep and go, okay, what's the root cause of this? For some of you, maybe it's emotional or relational relationship. Maybe you're not strong in those areas. Maybe you're having a difficult time in relationships. Maybe you're having a difficult time with your health and your fitness, maybe spiritually, right. It could be a lot of different areas in our life. We are whole people, not just business people. But again, to lead others, you've got to first be able to self analyze and be aware of yourself. Where are your gifts and where are your weaknesses? And to be able to address that. One of the things that I love, that mentor and CEO and friend Roger Sitkins shares in our training, something that I share all the time now too, is that all progress starts by telling the truth. See, the truth is a funny thing, isn't it? Because sometimes you tell you go seek the truth and that's what I'm asking you to do now is to go be self aware and go be reflective and be honest with yourself. But I also think about the time in the gas station that I've shared that I was dead broke and couldn't go see a client 10 miles away and had to crawl back to my office basically and, and tell them what was going on. And it was a bad situation. It was really embarrassing. In that case, I don't know that I sought the truth. It just smacked me in the face. So whether you seek the truth and you find it or it smacks you in the face, truth eventually will find you. And all progress starts by telling the truth. And I know for me personally, when I heard this quote from the late great Jim Rohn, who I speak about all the time, it really was foundationally, it changed me, it changed my life. I mean, looking back at that, about 15 or so years later, and Jim said this, he said, if you work hard on your job, you can make a living. If you work hard on yourself, you can make a fortune. And when I first heard that, I didn't hear it, I heard it, I didn't hear it, if that makes sense. It kind of went through me like, oh, that's interesting. But as I look back in my life and again, hopefully I'll continue to look back on things and try to improve my own abilities and skills and things that I'm wanting to do add value my own leadership. But as I look back 15 years, I realize there's just such truth to that statement. All of us should work hard at our jobs. We should all be doing the things we're required to do and put the time and the effort in to be a good employee, to be a good manager, to be a good producer, whatever our, our status is. But when you really look within and you realize that to become a great leader you've got to first lead yourself, that requires you to self reflect and that requires you to work on things that are hard to work on. That requires you to begin a personal growth plan, a growth journey, what are the things that you need to do to get better? And so that's why that quote is so important, because it is a never ending job, It's a never ending process. We're continually in improvement. So to lead others, lead yourself first, but make sure you understand it never ends. There's no finish line. You don't just say, oh, now I've got it all figured out. I'm the great leader, I'm going to move forward and go do something else, right? It's constant, never ending improvement. So again, key number one is you've got to lead yourself first. The next key for any emerging leader who wants to be intentional about that process and improving their leadership, improving their influence is, it's very simple. Key number two is to add value to people. Now, you may be listening to this going, come on, Brent. That's it. That's pretty simplistic. Yeah, I'm a pretty simple guy. My question to you is, how well do you do that every single day? I know I fall short in this area. Sometimes where I get to the end of the day, I'm like, man, have I really added value to people. But it takes me back to when I read 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey, who talked about, we either make emotional deposits into people or we make emotional withdrawals. You know, a lot of insurance agents in particular. Unfortunately, when I have conversations, I come to find out that oftentimes people are not seen as resources or assets or investments, they're seen as expense. And when I see that, I know immediately that agency is in deep trouble. Because that is, it's just like anything else, it spreads. And if a top leader doesn't add value to his team, they're not adding value to their clients, they're not adding value to their community. Again, you can fake it for a while, but at the end of the day, if the mentality is, ah, people are just a method behind the madness, then you've got a major problem. And so if you add value to people every day, as Stephen Covey says, and you make these emotional deposits, eventually you're going to become rich. And I don't just mean financially, I mean rich in relationships and abundance. And if you continue to make withdrawals where you're always trying to take, take, take from people, eventually guess what? No shock, you'll become bankrupt, right? So you've got to be able to consistently add value to people. So I would tell any emerging leader, again, from whatever your current position or title is, whatever your role is, what can you do in every interaction to say, how can I add value to this person? How can I add value to this person on my team? How can I add value to this future ideal client? How can I add value to our current clients? How can I add value to members of my community? Again, not to overwhelm you, but Just in that basic mindset approach that you're constantly adding value to people, you will be amazed over a period of time what that results for you, what actually happens. And this is not to be manipulated. If you're, if you're doing this because you're trying to get something, then you're already missing the point. But I often hear from insurance agencies in particular, and this is a fair question of how do we add value to our clients? Great question, right? How do we add value to our clients? What's the value add that we can do? How do we add a certain risk survey, or how do we add certain coverages, or how do we add, you know, lost control, all those things. And by the way, those are really important and those are really valuable. But I would always start by asking the question, well, do you first value them? Like, do you truly value your clients? Just like, do you truly value your team? That's the fundamental question, right? We can always figure out things how we can do value adds, but how do you truly add value to people? Well, you first, you value them. So again, this may seem simplistic, but if you're an emerging leader and you want to continue to grow your influence, just add value to people every day and see what happens, you're probably going to be maybe not surprised, but you're going to start to see results in a period of time by just treating people, guess what, the way that you'd like to be treated. Go figure, right? Big concept. All right, the third and final key that I want to share on. How do you become more intentional as an emerging leader, as a future leader, is simply you've got to put yourself in the right environment. You've got to place yourself in the right environment. And you know, if you want to grow as a strong leader, you got to understand where you are, what you're feeding your brain, who you're surrounding yourself with, and what's feeding your soul. And I love this analogy. This comes from, from John Maxwell in this book, the 15 Laws of Growth, which by the way, I highly recommend to any, any emerging leader the 15 laws of growth to create your own growth plan. But he talks about just like a plant can't grow without the right soil, air or climate, you will never grow into an influential leader in the wrong surroundings. And there's three areas that we look at here. There's the soil. That's what you feed your mind. Let me just start with that and have a couple minutes to talk about what you feed your mind. You know, I look at Great leaders and influencers. One of the things that I notice very quickly is they always are putting positive, nutritious things in their mind. Just like our bodies, right? You want to put positive things in your body, you've got to put positive things in your mind. And it's also when and how they do it. When I wake up in the morning, I don't just start looking at random social media stuff. I don't watch the news, you know, before I go to bed. I don't do the same thing and fill my mind with crap and watch more news and listen, I'm not anti news. It feels like I'm picking on it, but in fact I am. But most of it's crap. Let's just face it, most of it's crap. And you can get the news that you need in about five or 10 minutes. That's all you need. People that watch us all day and they freak themselves out or they're always looking at what's going wrong and what the bad things are. Listen, you can only control what you can control. And I can't control a lot of the stuff that happens externally, but I can control what goes into my brain and my mind and how I consume content. So again, I'll just ask you, what are you feeding your mind? What is your soil? What are you starting your day with? What are you ending your day with as an emerging leader? You gotta feed yourself the good stuff. Read the right books, watch the right videos, listen to the right podcasts, all those kind of things that you need to do to fill yourself with the information and the mindset to help you get to where you want to go. Secondly is how do you feed your soul now without getting all airy here? This is your why, this is your purpose. You know, if you don't have a purpose, why are you waking up every day? What are you trying to accomplish? You know, I often see great leaders that have a strong, definitive purpose. They know their why, they know what they want to accomplish, which leads them to how they're going to accomplish it. So again, what are you feeding your soul? That is the air that you breathe. What's your why, what's your purpose? And lastly, who is feeding you and how are you controlling that? I could say who's feeding you? And also, what are you searching to eat? I guess is another way of saying it, but that's your climate. Those are the people that you associate with. To use another Jim Rohn quote, he said that you are the average of the five people you hang out with, you're the average of the five people you hang out with. So who you hanging out with? What is your climate? Who are you associating with? Now often when I talk about this, there can be some painful discussions because maybe you're associating with the wrong people. Maybe some of those people you've been associating with for a very long time, maybe some of those people are in your family, right? So in some cases you can't completely disassociate with those. But how can you limit yourself? How can you limit some of those relationships? Because you want to be around people who feel the same and think the same and want the same kind of things that you do. Who are the people that are maybe five or 10 or 15 years ahead of you in places that you want to go? Well, go talk to them, find these people, surround yourself with these people, because that is the climate. And I do believe the Jim Rohn quote that you are the average of the five people you hang out with. So take that really seriously. So as an emerging leader, I would ask those three things. What are you feeding your mind? What are you feeding your soul? What's your why and who are the people you're associating with your climate? Because those three things are all so vital to your success as a leader. I rarely, if ever, I'm trying to think in my mind right now have I seen successful people who hang around a bunch of people that aren't successful. No, not that I know. If you know someone, hey, reach out to me and let me know. I'd love to know. But typically successful people hang around other successful people. So begin to move yourself to associate with those people and you may have to lose some relationships. You also may have to put down the TV remote or stay off social media so much. And by the way, all those things are challenging. But again, if people ask me up front, what are some things that a, a potential leader, an emerging leader, needs to focus on and understand and start to develop. I would say these three things. Number one, lead yourself first. If you want to be an influential leader, you've got to first be able to lead yourself, which means you've got to be authentic and you've got a high level of self awareness. Understand who you are and those things that you need to improve upon and then begin a growth plan. Key number two, just add value to people. Don't make this hard. Make emotional deposits every single day and you'll begin to build these rich relationships. And guess what? People will want to add value back to you, not because you're manipulating them, because you truly want to help and serve people. It's amazing how that works. And key number three is just place yourself in the right environment. What are you feeding your head? What are you feeding your soul? And who are the people that you're hanging out with? Who are you associating with? Those things are so vital, so stay true to those things. Again, if I had advice from any emerging leader, again, understand that leadership is influence. You want to gain influence. You want to gain influence with your team, with your clients, with your community. Start with those three things that's foundational to influential leadership. Hey, thanks for listening to another episode of the Agent Leader podcast again. My name is Brent Kelly and you can learn more about me and some of our services that we offer at the Sitkins Group by going to sitkins.coms I t k I n s.com. Hey, by the way, if you like this podcast, if it's helping you and your insurance agency, go to itunes or Stitcher Radio and leave me a review. I would much appreciate it. Lets me know that I'm adding value to you out there in the insurance world. All the best.