The Most Challenging Person You Will Ever Lead in Your Insurance Agency

As an insurance agency leader, there is always one person that's so challenging to lead at your agency. They just, they drive you nuts, they make you crazy. And on today's AgentLeader podcast, I'm gonna tell you who that person is and how you can help them. The Agent Leader podcast is brought to you by the Sitkins Network. Sell more, retain more, and earn more. You can learn more@sitkins.com ts in. Well, hey there, awesome insurance agency leaders. My name is Brent Kelly and I'm the host of the Agent Leader Podcast. I welcome you in joining me on today's episode, which, as I mentioned on the opening tease, all about leading that most difficult person in your insurance agency. Now, one of the many questions I get when I work with insurance agencies across the country and doing coaching and consulting is, you know, how do I best lead my team? Now, let me start out by saying that unless your agency just started from scratch so you're brand new, or you're a one or two person operation, that's the way you want to run things. You have challenging people on your team, and if you have people in your agency, you have challenges. And these people could have egos. There could be people with complacency issues, maybe people that are filled with drama or they just don't know how to listen effectively. However, none of these challenges and these people that you're dealing with will be your most difficult. The most challenging person that you're ever going to lead in your insurance agency is you. Now, maybe you already knew that's what I was going to say, but if not, maybe that's a surprise to you. The most challenging person you're ever going to lead in your insurance agency is you. See, no other person that you lead will have a bigger impact to your business. Results. Now, leadership, as I often talk about, it's very personal. And it doesn't get any more personal than leading yourself. You know, many of us are our own biggest fans and we're also many times our own worst critics. In other words, we don't often see ourselves the same way that others do. And if leading yourself, it's not hard enough, you've got to realize that as a leader of your agency, again, regardless of title or position, if you're a leader, you have influence in your agency. You've got to realize that everyone, everyone is watching. Your agency team is watching. When you show up, they're watching. When you leave, they're watching. If you follow through on what you said you were going to do, they're going to Watch you on how you treat other people, your clients, your values, your. They're gonna watch you to see if you understand and respect them. And that all depends on how you are first, leading yourself. This is really important. You know, as I work with agencies, again, it's amazing. As I talk about, everything rises and falls on leadership. But as a leader, you truly set the tone for the culture of your agency. A lot of agencies struggle with culture issues. Well, how do I improve our culture, our communication? Well, again, it starts with you. Now, that may seem like a great deal of pressure. Like, oh, my gosh, it's all dependent upon me. And to much. I agree it is a lot of pressure, but it's also a tremendous opportunity. So what I want to go through on today's podcast are four ways that you can best lead yourself and ultimately be a better leader to your entire insurance agency team. I want to focus on these four. So here's number one. How can you be better leader to yourself and ultimately your team? Well, number one is you have to serve first. The best leaders that I've seen are servant leaders. And that means you've got to be more than just a leader. You also need to be a follower. Have you ever worked for a leader or been part of an organization with a leader who was so far detached from your situation that you felt they had no grasp of your reality? They were just so out of touch. Arrogant leaders are rarely effective over a long period of time. Maybe short term they can get some wins, but over a long period of time, arrogant leaders are rarely effective because at some point, your followers simply will tune out. They'll just say, I'm done listening. To avoid being tuned out, spend time each day just serving your team, asking questions, listening and understanding them. You don't, by the way, this is really critical. You don't always have to have an answer. So often as leaders, we think that we always have to have the answer or the solution or fix something. Understand this idea. An open ear is far more powerful than a mighty mouth. And sometimes as leaders, and most leaders are highly, you know, they're highly focused on achievement, as you should be that we think we have to always have the answer. But I'm telling you, an open ear is far more powerful than a mighty mouth. Now, not only will being a better listener and serving first make your team feel like a million bucks, but you're also going to learn important ideas. Sometimes when we shut up and listen, we find out that our team is really, really smart and that oftentimes we get in our own way. So the number one idea of leading yourself and leading your team is you have to be a servant leader first. All right, number two. Second principle of this is that discipline starts with you. Have you ever had a conversation with someone? I hope this isn't offensive, but I think it's so true. Have you ever had a conversation with someone who is offering fitness and nutrition advice and they didn't quite seem to match their information, didn't match their outward appearance? How much credibility did they have? How about someone who is trying to give marriage advice, who's been divorced three or four times? Are they credible? Now again, maybe that's not fair. How can you judge people? Well, maybe it's not fair, but let me tell you, it's true. When it comes to credibility, discipline starts with you. See, the reason why self leadership is so challenging is that the mere doesn't lie. Our results do the talking. Our results speak volumes. As I stated earlier, as a leader, everyone is watching you. If you ask your team to be disciplined, you must be disciplined yourself or your message will fall on deaf ears. It's the idea of you are a role model. People are watching you. You know, if you require a producer on your team to make 50 cold calls a week, that's your standard. Are you willing to do the same? If you require your team to show up for a Friday afternoon event or a meeting, will you be there? If you require your team follow a process for the betterment of the agency, putting something in the, in the automation system, whatever it may be, are you following the same process or are you taking shortcuts? Now I know what some of you are thinking, well geez, I've already done that. I don't need to do all those things. I don't need to make the cold calls. I've proven myself. I get all of that. I. Because, listen, I understand that as a leader, your time may not be best spent doing certain activities that your team is doing. That's why you have a team. However, you've got to be willing to put in the time, the work and the effort to be the model of discipline, agency discipline. If you want your agency and the team members on your agency to be disciplined, you best be disciplined yourself. It is important. That is the law of modeling and it is real. Alright, number three, what's the third principle of leading yourself to lead your team? Well, number three is slow down, have some patience. Now as I say this, I'm talking to myself because I'm a natural quick start. In fact, there's a personality test that we use in the Sitkins Group called the Colby Personality Test. There's a lot of great personality tests out there, but the Colby Personality Test lists four areas. And one of those areas is a quick start, meaning that people just want to get things going quick and just go and maybe terrible follow through, but they want to just get things started. Now, I scored a 9 out of 10 in the quick start category. That means I often make quick decisions, I expect quick results, and I often come up with way more ideas than I can actually put in place. Happens all the time now, I think while there's value in thinking and moving fast, it also has its weaknesses. See, as I work with insurance agencies, this is very common. Many of the agency leaders are also the top sales producers. No kidding. That's oftentimes how they became the leader they produced. Now, to be a highly effective agency leader, you must be more than just a top producer. That's the change in dynamic that's really difficult. You can be a great producer. And by the way, many agency leaders say that's all I really want to do. But if you want to be a true leader and inspire others to ultimately replicate or at least come close to your results, you've got to be more than just a top producer. You've got to learn how to lead. Other top producers see, winning agency leaders understand that it's not about just finishing the race first personally, but it's how many you can take with you across the finish line. Let me give a great example. I grew up in that as a kid, at least my teenage years in the 90s. And that was obviously the heyday of the Bulls. You know, Michael Jordan of the Chicago Bulls won several scoring titles, right? He was the leading scorer in the league several times before the Bulls eventually won their first of six NBA championships. Now, I'm, I would venture to guess as a fan and watching Michael Jordan, his career, he probably could have won the scoring title every single year. Not many years he did, but. But that could have been his entire focus. But it wasn't until he realized to achieve the ultimate success, which is a championship, he would have to sacrifice some of his personal success. Now, this doesn't mean that Michael Jordan, you know, tried less hard or he slowed himself down. I mean, he was relentless. But what he understood was he'd have to get his team involved. He would have to have them be part of the equation to win, or he would just be scoring a lot of points and, and being frustrated as a team every year. Now that Requires patience. If you are too far ahead of others, Right. If you are so far out ahead of the pack of your team, right. You're just in a distant world. Eventually your team's going to get frustrated and they're going to stop following you because they just can't even relate. And I'll tell you, for high achievers and if you're listening to this and you're an agency leader, you're a manager, you're a high level producer, slowing down may feel completely unnatural, but high performing agencies are filled with leaders who value long term success over short term satisfaction. I'm sure you've heard the idea that, you know, you can, you can lose the battle and still win the war. In some cases, by slowing down and empowering your producers and other people on your team, you may have to take a slight step back from your own production if that's what you want to do. All right, number four, if you want to lead yourself to lead your team, number four, this one is huge. It's number four. But it's probably the most important, at least something I hope you can take away from today's podcast is you have to accept accountability. Just last week, our team at the Sitkins Group, we worked with a successful insurance agency on their annual planning. We sat down for two days in a room and we talked everything about their planning moving forward in 2018. Now, every agency I work with as part of the Sitkins network, they all want to sell more commission, they all want to retain more clients, they all want to earn more profit. And we have training programs and resources to help them do just that. However, I'll tell you, in the two days that we sat in that room together as a team and us as coaches, the most important thing that we did was not discussing specific sales strategy and tactics, which we will. But the most important thing that we did over those two days is that we agreed on being accountable to each other and to the entire agency team, all as a group. Because no matter how self motivated that you are, every one of us performs better when we're held accountable. I mean, again, very simple example, there are a lot of people who have great intention on working out every day and they hire a trainer. And I've asked some people, like, well, why do you hire a trainer? You seem like you already know what you're doing. Like, yeah, I know what I need to do. But I also know that if it's seven in the morning and my trainer's gonna be there, I better be there. That's why I pay for the trainer. Right? That's the same thing with accountability. See, accountability is not simply a willingness to share your actions. It's more than that. Right. Effective accountability starts before any action is taken. I love this stage of self leadership that leadership expert John Maxwell talks about in his book Leadership Gold. He said it develops in stages. It usually goes like this. And this is so true of many insurance agency leaders. Number one is we don't want advice. We know everything, we don't want advice. And then number two is, well, I don't object to advice if you want to give it. And number three, we figure out, you know what, we welcome advice. And the next step, number four is that then it becomes we actively seek advice because we know what it does. And then finally we actually follow and implement the advice given to us as part of accountability. See, accountability is simple as answering one basic question. If you answer one basic question, you understand accountability. Did I do what I said I was going to do? How often do you maybe you as a leader, I know I've done this, you come and I go, here's an idea we're going to do and this is what I'm going to start. And tomorrow I do this. Did I do what I said I was going to do? Now, as an agency leader, it can be challenging to find accountability partners, as many people on your team don't want to challenge your authority. Now, regardless of what you do, that's probably going to be true. But however, you really must welcome and encourage others. You know, go to your team and say, listen, I welcome. Encourage you to disagree with me and to hold me accountable to say what I was going to do. A lot of insurance agencies, it's very interesting if you talk to the team, they say, well, you know, he always has a new idea or she's always got a new idea. And then nothing ever happens. Your job is to tell your team, listen, here's what we're going to do. And I want you to hold me accountable to executing and making sure that I'm as a leader, making sure the team follows through on that. There's a great quote that I read from the guy by the name of Sam Rayburn, and he was a presidential advisor for Harry Truman when Harry Truman was thrust into president after the death of Franklin Roosevelt. And I read this and Sam was giving president, this brand new President Truman some great advice. And here's what he said. He said, from here on out, you're going to have lots of people around you. They'll try and put a wall around you and cut you off from any ideas but theirs. They'll tell you what a great man you are, Harry, but you and I both know you ain't. I love that. Right. And that's very true with insurance agency leaders. Right? We'll have. Because you've got people on your team that don't want to, you know, they don't want to ruffle any feathers or make any waves. And hey, you're the one writing the checks, for example. I'm not going to say anything. The reality of it is, is that we know the truth of our situation when we're really doing the things we said we were going to do. So let me ask you a question on this last section of accountability. Who is willing to tell you the truth, hold you accountable? Who do you have in your life, in your business is willing to tell you the truth and hold you accountable? The best agency leaders are the ones who will seek the truth even when it hurts. So I want to wrap this podcast up with just some basic ideas and thoughts. And again, hopefully this was helpful to you as an agency leader. And again, when I think of agency leaders, often people think, oh, it's got to be the agency principal. In many cases that's true. But anybody you're leading, if you're leading your team within the office, you're leading your clients. This is all important with self leadership. But here's the bottom line. Self leadership is the most challenging form of leadership. It's also the most important aspect of leadership. I love this quote. It says, when a leader doesn't inspect himself, the people don't respect him. When a leader doesn't inspect himself, the people don't respect him. And that's what self leadership is all about. It's having self awareness, knowing yourself, knowing the truth of yourself, seeking that out and trying to get better. And again, do the things you said you were going to do. Because when you learn to lead yourself effectively, others will want to follow you. You will have greater influence, you will build a stronger agency culture, and you're going to increase your agency revenue. And again, that all starts with you. I want to wrap this episode up with one final quote from former chairman of IBM, Thomas J. Watson, who said this. Nothing so conclusively proves a man's ability to lead others as what he does from day to day, to lead himself. If you want to learn more about the programs and services from the Sitkins group, please visit sitkins.com that's s I t k I n s dot com.