Creating ART in Your Insurance Agency

Welcome to the Agent Leader podcast. My name is Brent Kelly, your host. Thanks so much for joining me on this episode. And today I'm going to be sharing with you an acronym. And if you followed Sitkin's group for any time or listened to this podcast, we've shared different ones on this podcast. We love acronyms. So today's acronym is going to be art. I'm going to talk about creating art. In fact, it's kind of a double acronym. I'll get to that in a minute. But creating art in your insurance agency. Now, before I dive into this awesome acronym of art, I always want to share the purpose of the Agent Leader podcast. My purpose to you is to help you as an agency leader gain greater clarity, to build more consistency in yourself and in your agency. And lastly, just to make a commitment. And I can't. I can't make anybody make a commitment, but to help you think about what are the commitments that you need to make to yourself, the commitments that you need to make to your agency team, the commitments that you need to make to your clients and your community. So wherever those commitments are for you, because that really is the separator, right? Oftentimes we know enough to get things done. We just don't commit to actually doing them. So I'm hoping this podcast will continue as we release these every week, inspire you to gain clarity, consistency, and to make those commitments. So want to dive into today's content based around art and art? We're going to get to the acronym. Before I get to the acronym, I just want to share a couple of the definitions of art. So if you go to Google or if you're really old school and you've got an actual dictionary, I don't know how many of those actually exist in anymore. There are many definitions of art, and two of them stood out to me in terms of what I'm going to talk about today, and I'm going to modify this a little bit, but the definition of art, one of the definitions was this application of human skill and creativity. So application of human skill and creativity. The second definition that I saw in here was a skill of doing a specified thing, usually through practice. A skill of doing a specified thing, usually through practice. Because generally when I think of art, I mean, the first thing that pops in my head when you say the word art. I mean, ask you what pops in your head when I say the word art? For me, it's a painting. But as we all know, art could be music or art could be dance, or art could be Theater. And that's generally what we think about the creative side of art. And that's true. But I also think in the world of business, and as these definitions talked about, there's also a way to attach creativity with human skill and then doing a specified thing, usually through practice. Right. I mean, we look at art, well, any type of art that we see, whether it's art as far as paintings, music, or art as far as business or sports or whatever, it may be a performance. There are three things that kind of stood out when I'm learning these definitions. It's having skill, it's creativity. Right. So thinking a little bit outside the box and then practicing. So it's skill, creativity, and practice. And I think that's pretty good. So what I want to do now is get into the acronym. So you, as an insurance agency leader, how can you apply art in my term of this acronym? I'm going to share to help improve your agency results, help improve your agency communication, help improve your agency leadership. I mean, all kinds of things. This works both internally within your agency and if you're an insurance producer or service professional, having communication with your team, we call high performance teams. Or if you're an agency leader or manager. Right. Just communicating and getting better connection. We've talked about that in previous podcasts with your agency staff as well. And then from the external side, whether. Whether it's centers of influence, your future ideal clients, your clients, community members, how can we create better art both internally and externally? So the first part of art, the A of art, and I told you these are double acronyms. So I'm going to have two things for you here. The A is appreciation and alignment. Appreciation. Alignment. And let me start with appreciation. There was a speaker who, and I honestly don't remember who said it, so I apologize to the speaker, but he had a great saying. He said, what you appreciate, appreciate, appreciates. What you appreciate, appreciates. Made a lot of sense. You think Oftentimes about appreciation, we think of it from a business sense. We often think of money. You put money in the stock market, it appreciates. Well, at least we hope it does. It appreciates what you appreciate, appreciates. The same thing is true with the people around us. What we appreciate, appreciates, they get better. It's such a simple, minor thing that many of you go, oh, yeah, Brent, I know, but how many times have you just walked up to someone, in this case, maybe a zoom call or a phone call in today's world and said, hey, I just want to reach out and let you Know, I really appreciate what you're doing. I appreciate you. I appreciate this project. I appreciate whatever it is, I appreciate it. Because what we often think is minor and maybe meaningless could make the day of that person or persons that you say that to, an appreciation. So just my first stance to you on an A is, who can you go appreciate this week? Who this week could you pick up the phone and say, I just want, you know, I appreciate you. I appreciate you. It's simple, it's powerful. And I know when I teach this, I'm going, gosh, there are a lot of people that I don't often say, I appreciate it. I hop off the phone and go, you know what? I don't think they realize how much I appreciate them with my own family, with my own internal team at Sitkins. Do I say that enough? I mean, these are things that we're all dealing with, but they're very simple but very powerful. The second part of the A is alignment. And certainly from the insurance agency, you would think about roles that we have. We've got to be aligned. And I think oftentimes we forget that we have different strengths, we have different unique gifts that we bring to the table, and we don't have to do the same thing. We shouldn't do the same thing. We should surround ourselves with people that make us better. We just need to align with them. And alignment, of course, this kind of goes in appreciation. We've got to communicate the vision of where we want to go. Where is this agency? That. Where are we going? Or if I'm an insurance producer talking to my service team, where do I want to go? And here's the second part. Why is this important to both of us, to all of us, not just me? Here's where I want to go, and here's why. This could have an impact with you. If you can share that with people, guess what? You will align with them. You don't have to agree. You're not going to agree on everything, nor should you agree on everything, but you should align the last thing that you want to do. And I see this with agencies when I coach agencies. One of the biggest challenges that we see is that we have people that. And this is my analogy. We have people on a boat trying to row a certain direction, and a few people are rowing the opposite direction or they threw the anchor out the boat because we're not aligned. Now, two things need to happen, in my opinion on this. Number one is we need to have a real conversation about, hey, here's where we're going, why we're doing it. Do you want to be on board? Are you part of this? Do you want to be part of this? Because we all know the last thing you want to do is be dragging the anchor around or having people that are always pushing or resisting against you. We got to have an open conversation. So the first thing is we got to have that conversation. Either they're going to say yes or the second aspect is maybe it's time to find new people to align with. If they don't, and that's okay. Free people to go do what they really want to do. Don't hold people hostage in positions or situations that they resist. But our first obligation is to share what our vision is, where we're going, why we're going there, how they can be part of that, how they're going to win. That's all part of alignment. That's leadership in any capacity. So the first A is appreciation. Alignment. So as I would ask you, first of all, who can you appreciate and who do you maybe better need to align with by having a conversation? You know, I realized is I've been doing all this work. I've never really shared with you where we're really going and why it's important. Because if you don't share that with someone, how would they know and why would they care? Why are they. Why do I feel this friction? Why these my team members or by the way, my clients? Same thing. Share. Here's where we're going with this. Here's why this is important. And as they get buy in the alignment, the buy in the alignment becomes much, much easier, much more and more effective. So the first A is appreciation and alignment. The next is the R. So art. Next is R. Two things. I may even add a third if I'm going to get really crazy here. But rapport, number one, relationships, which I think those two go together. Rapport and relationships and respect. Well, how do you build rapport? How do you build relationships? How do you build respect? Well, we could do a seven hour session on what that really means, but I'm going to keep this really simple for the sake of this podcast. If you want to build greater rapport, if you want to earn respect, if you want to enhance and develop relationships, ask meaningful questions and allow the other person to share their answer in detail without judgment, without interruption, and without your agenda at the top of your list. Ask questions anywhere from rapport type of questions. Tell me more about yourself, tell me where you're looking to go. You know, whatever questions These may be all the way to business questions, certainly with producers and agencies about things. And again, it's just the fact that I care enough about you to ask questions. And when you ask questions and when you open up, you build rapport, you improve relationships, and guess what? People respect you more. I'm sure you've heard this before. I may have shared this in this podcast before, but in any conversation, if you're doing 20% of the talking and 80% of listening, I promise you, you're building rapport, you're improving the relationship, and they respect you more. So my challenge to you this week and whenever you're listening to this is when it comes to rapport, relationships, respect, who are the people? When you have conversations, you need to shut up more on just ask questions and be quiet and listen actively. Listen without judgment, without a premeditated response. But just let me ask you a question and let me really sincerely listen to you. By the way, this is one of the most challenging things for me to do because I'm just a go, go, go, go, go. And I got to slow down. And so do you need to slow down? Do you need to slow down with your team members? Do you need to slow down with people in your community, your centers of influence? Do you need to slow down with your clients? Right. Certainly in insurance, it's typically, unless you're doing very small type of policies, is a longer term sale anyway. And obviously the best way to build rapport and to earn respect, as I've talked about, is ask these questions. But are you moving too fast? Right? Are you moving too fast? So take some time soon to ask questions and actively listen, which leads to the T, A, R T. Appreciation and alignment was number one. Rapport, relationships, respect. So I had to kind of three there. My second R, the last is trust, teamwork, Trust and teamwork. Now you know big words as far as, okay, well, trust, teamwork. And I think these two certainly are aligned. Well, how do you build trust? Well, guess what? Teamwork helps. So there's the first part, but the basic part of trust, and we know this, this is the obvious thing, is just doing what you said you were going to do. And you know, here's the thing. Sometimes we look at trust as only the large commitments. You know, we've got to fulfill the large commitments. But how many small commitments have you made that you haven't fulfilled? I'll give personal examples for me, I mean, I'll throw myself under the bus a little bit. I have big visions and big goals and I Want to make sure I stay committed to those. But oftentimes I'll say little things. Oh yeah, yeah, I'll do that and I'll get this done and I'll do that or whatever. And weeks go by and they're like, well, what about that? Oh my gosh, I forgot. Right. So we have to monitor if we're going to build trust. It's not just the big commitments. Of course, those are important. But are you making micro commitments that you're not following through on? By the way, if you're an agency leader and you constantly do this and there's a new idea of the week, at some point people stop listening, they stop trusting that this new idea is ever going to happen. That's a smaller level, but it's an important level. If you're doing the same thing with your clients. Oh yeah, we do this and this and this. It's not about promise making, it's about what, promise keeping. And as I'm sure you've heard many times before, it's better to under promise and over deliver. So are there areas that maybe you are making more promises than you can keep? I think as Jim Roem says, never allow your mouth to overload your back. And believe me, we've all done it. I've done it where we just say kind of things because it's what we want people to hear. Right. We have good intent, we have good intentions, we want to earn trust. But sometimes because we just want to make these promises, we're not always able to to keep them. So trust is the first part of the T. It kind of goes without saying. But I guess where I would challenge you is oftentimes we look at the big thing and go, oh, I'm trustworthy, I'm trustworthy. I don't lie, I don't steal. Well, yeah, I don't assume you do. But again, are there micro commitments that you have made or are making that if you're really honest with yourself, people go, you know, he or she says that a lot, but they don't always follow through. So it's an awareness issue. And it's a tough question to ask yourself, but it's an important question to ask yourself. The second part of the T is teamwork. And I think what I mainly see with teamwork is this kind of goes back to the first few things I talked about. But how do we get greater buy in from other people? How do we increase teamwork? Well, one of the best things you can do is allow people to do their work. That may seem pretty simple, but oftentimes as high achievers as leaders, it becomes easier. Easy or at least easier in some cases to just jump in and do things for people instead of allowing them to learn, make mistakes and grow from them. Now, we don't want people to make repeated mistakes. That's a bad idea. We all know that. But are we even allowing people to grow and develop? I think that's one of the things that I see in insurance agencies that is often frustrating to me from the outside to watch is that whether it's, whether it's an insurance producer jumping into the service role all the time because I can do everything, or an agency leader hopping into every different department. Right. The micromanagement type of, of method is, well, at least I know it's getting done. I mean, at least I just, I don't know that I can fully, fully trust. Right back to that word of what's going on. Well, no, you're, you're, you're not trusting them. And guess what? They're scared to death to ever make a mistake. So their creativity, their art is minimized because we're not allowing teamwork to happen. In fact, one of the greatest stories I heard was from a great mentor of mine, very successful in business, who would host weekly failure meetings. In fact, you couldn't come to the meeting or you couldn't, you know, if you were in the meeting, you had to share your failure for the week. And they would all stand and applaud them, but they would talk about what did you learn from it and how can we make sure we don't do that again? Guess what? Every week their team got better. And that's the question I ask you with teamwork every week. Is your team getting better? And the only way to get better is to learn and to grow and to mess up sometimes and then to rediscover new things, all those kind of things. That takes teamwork, that takes the opportunity, whatever your role is an insurance agency, to know that you can't handle and do everything on your own. And if that's your mentality, you will limit your growth substantially. You will limit your growth substantially. You'll never get to the level you want to get to if you don't allow other people to do, A, the things that you're probably not very good at honestly, and B, the things that simply you just cannot manage your energy or situations and time to do it, you run out of time. So these are just some things to consider and think about. And, you know, we've Been doing some training the last couple weeks with our producer camps. We've done account manager camps. We're going to be launching a sales management and we're also doing a CEO camp. And this is the thing that's kind of come out of this is that oftentimes we miss the art of business. We don't appreciate people as much as we should. We don't align with others by sharing our visions and dreams and goals as much as we should. And we can't figure out why we're getting friction. We don't do a great job of building rapport. We put up walls and relationships and respect and all those things that I've talked about. Because why? Well, we're probably not spending enough time asking questions and really listening to people. I've said it before, I'll say it again. I think the best gift that you can give somebody in 2020, and this is probably too true, you know, a few years prior and certainly moving forward in today's crazy, digital, busy world, the greatest gift you can give another human being is your time and attention. And I think that's a big part of the rapport and relationships and respect. And then lastly, it was about trust and teamwork, allowing your team to do what they need to do without the fear of someone, you know, hovering down their, you know, overlooking their over their shoulder and hovering above them of, oh my gosh, you better get this right versus saying, listen, I'm going to allow you to make some mistakes because I want you to grow and develop. Here's the thing, we're going to talk about it. We're going to have conversations so that next week we can get better. And by the way, I'm going to make mistakes, too. I want you to help me grow. Right? It works both ways and all that helps build trust. Right? Builds trust. So the art in your insurance agency, hopefully this was helpful to you. Maybe some new nuggets. A lot of these are quote unquote, soft skills, which I always find that are funny. Here's soft skills. Oh, soft skills. Training, communication and all these different things. Appreciation and leadership. Guess what? Soft skills are the hardest skills to master because A, you'll never be perfect, Adam, and B, people make this job awesome and they make the job challenging, right? I always joke with agency leaders. I said, you know, leadership would be really easy if it wasn't for all the darn people. And everybody laughs. It's true. Because you'll never get to the top. And it's always something you need to learn and Develop because people are always changing. And you as an agency leader, whatever your specific role is, remember, leadership is influence. This is the definition of our application of a human skill in creativity or a skill of doing a specified thing, usually through practice. It's something you can constantly get better at. And the more that you work on it and you're aware of it and you take action steps and you make the proper adjustments, guess what? The more that you're focused on this area, this soft skill that I just mentioned, the more effective you'll be, the better relationships will be, the greater your results will be, more profitable you'll be. And guess what? The business becomes a lot more fun whether you're dealing with your team members or your clients. But is it hard work to get the soft skill? Yeah, it absolutely is. Well, thanks for listening. And also just a couple notes. Our next virtual producer camp, which by the way, continues to be a huge success. It's just awesome. The live streaming that we're doing, the roundtables, we're getting feedback from all the groups, we're making little tweaks to keep making a little bit better and better and better. We're always listening and learning the best that we can. At Sitkins, our next one starts on September 10th. We have a producer 12 session camp as well as a sales leadership. Both start on September 10th. So it's coming up very soon. This will sell out. Our first two sold out. This one will sell out as well. So make sure you go to sitkins.com profit if you want to be the producer or just go to sitkins.com programs to learn about all of our different programs. So make sure you check that out. And also, if this podcast is adding value to you and your agency, I would really appreciate a review and means a lot to us, allows us to reach more people and allows us to serve more agency leaders at a higher level. So thanks for that. With that, I wish you all the best and your success. Thanks for listening.