Would You Work for You?

Hey, Brent Kelly here. Welcome back to another episode of the Agent Leader Podcast. I'm honored that you're with me on today's episode. And let me just share with you up front that many of you, obviously that are listening to this podcast are agency leaders. And I will tell you that as an agency leader that I may say something or ask you a question on today's podcast that's going to upset you or at least ruffle your feathers. And I want you to know up front that I don't ask this or make this statement or ask you this question with any spirit of malice or you know, I told you or I'm going to get you. It's that I truly love this industry. I love working with agency leaders. And I think, you know, I know in my experience, whether it's been athletically and working with coaches and the different sports that I played or working with coaches that I've hired in the business world, that the best coaches ask me the most difficult questions or they require me to do some of the things that I don't like to do or want to do. That up front, I may say, who are you? And you know, I don't want to do this and all those kind of things complain and whine. But as I look back, I go, wow, you know, there was a lot of, a lot of power and truth to that. And so what I want to do today is share with you, first of all, give you some context before I make my statement and ask the question is give you some context of where this is coming from. Because I think as I talk with agency leaders, both in our private client group that we work with at Sitkins and those that may I meet on the road or have initial conversations with, there is no doubt that one of the greatest challenges for agencies today is to find, to attract, to develop and to retain top talent. That's a no brainer. If I had a magic pill to help every one of you as agency leaders say, wow, all of a sudden I've got truly the best, most committed, talented people in my agency working 100 miles an hour that are going to be there forever, you'd be pretty happy, right? Of course. Because dealing with people is a really hard issue. It's a challenge. But that's something we hear all the time is, well, how do I hire, how do I attract, how do I retain, how do I train, how do I develop my people? And there's a lot of things around that and a lot of different ideas and ways to do that. But I Do think when it comes to this type of questioning about talent, right. Talent acquisition, talent development, talent retention, I think sometimes it's easy to hide behind the question that's really, you know, it's the elephant in the room that maybe we don't want to ask. And so here's what I would challenge you up front. I don't know your situation in your agency, I don't know all that's going on. You may be doing things, things really, really well or maybe things are in chaos. But I can tell you when people ask I'm struggling or I don't know how or we haven't done a good job of finding, tracking, developing, training, retaining the best people, I can tell you the most common answer, if you have to be really honest, is the biggest reason why that's not happening is because of you. Yep, I just said that because of you. And this isn't a pointing finger thing, but I want you to be honest with yourself. And here's the question that I want to ask you and I want you to be honest. You may say, absolutely, but just really think critically for a second. Would you want to work for you? Would you want to work for you? Now obviously you know yourself and you may say, well, absolutely, I love myself. But just think of yourself in the context of someone who is looking for a position within an agency that is looking to be their best version, that is looking for an opportunity to be part of something pretty cool. The opportunity to strive to excellence, the opportunity to have a long term game plan, the long term to have some buy in and help design the growth of the company. Would you want to work for you? Because if it's just a paycheck, if it's just benefits, if it's just something to do that may work for a while, right. But where does the frustration come from? Why aren't I getting the best out of my people? Now there's a lot of things in leadership development that when they're in your agency that we help agencies work with their team on. But just start with this question. Would you want to work for you? I do a lot of analogies to the sports world and I'm very well aware of that. I know that many of you as listeners are not sports fans. So my job here, my goal here is not to dive into specifics of sports. But I always believe that sports and this is true in a lot of different areas of recreation, so to speak. I think sports provide a lot of lessons in life and business. Whether it's, you know, relentless Preparation, whether it's having an offensive game plan, whether it's accountability to result. I think there's a lot of things that sports teach, you know, having momentum. So there's a lot of good analogies. But I was starting to think about this from a professional standpoint and professional sports of why does the best talent when they become free agents? And I don't want to dive into free agency because there's a lot of different things. There's restricted and unrestricted and there's contracts, contractual things out there, but just in general terms. So just bear with me, just general terms of free agency, why does the best talent go to a certain team? If I had the opportunity to sign a contract and there's, you know, let's say 32 teams to choose from, why do I pick one? What makes me decide that? If I'm an elite level talent or even an above average talent, why would I choose to go somewhere now? Some could say, well, because it has the best contract, you know, it has the best money, has the best time. Maybe. Certainly in some sports, like football, maybe if you have an extra year or two, it's worth the athlete to say, hey, I don't want to take the risk if I get hurt. Okay, maybe it's the money. But let's face it, at this point, for most above average to elite level athletes, money probably isn't the number one issue. You may say it is, but it's not always the number one issue. By the way, most teams can match or get pretty close, so it's not going to be a big discrepancy in money. So what is it? And this is kind of a broad brush, I get that. But as I was thinking about it and taking some notes and writing down some thoughts on this, two things stood out to me. Why elite talent goes to certain organizations in professional sports. I think number one is that they want to be part of something that matters. And I'm going to dive into that just in a second. What does that mean? Because that's still a little bit vague, right? But they want to be part of something that matters. And number two is they want to be part of something that's excellent. So let me take this one by one, because it is a bit vague. Be part of something that matters. Well, when I look at elite talent, they want to be part of something that has a purpose or a vision. Now, oftentimes this has to do with relationships, doesn't it? They have a great relationship with a general manager or the coach or someone on the Team. And there's a central theme around this team that has a heartbeat or a purpose that they can relate to. Their value system aligns with the organization's value system. And often people, oh, well, sports, they don't really have value systems. Yeah, they do. You can choose a lot of places to go. So there's got to be an alignment of purpose and values and vision. They want to be part of something that matters. That's number one. Number two is, I believe they want to be part of something that's excellent. They want to find the organization that's going to help them get to where they want to go and certainly help the team get to where it wants to go. But let's start with the first part. Are we selfish as human beings? Yeah, unfortunately, we are. That's part of who we are in our DNA. And I can tell you that people that are looking for your insurance agency aren't thinking about, boy, I wonder, you know, how I can help this leader get to where they want to go. That's not their first thought. They're thinking, how can I help myself and my family and whatever it is, do the things that I want to do? Now, whether that's fair or not, it's true. It's that antenna on their head of what's in it for me? W I I f m so they want to be part of something excellent that starts with them. And I think the elite performers also say, well, I realize that I need a team around me to do that. There are some individual sports, but for the team sports, we want to figure out, how can I help the team get to the top? Because as anyone knows, if your team wins, then you win in a lot of different aspects of professional sports. So I think it's these two things. They want to be part of something that matters, and they want to be part of something that has excellence acquired to it. So let's translate this to the agency world for a second. When you look at your agency culture and there's a lot of different things we could talk about around agency culture. Does your agency culture, does it have a heartbeat? Does it have a purpose outside of selling insurance policies, outside of having people work at your office, all those kind of things, what is the true purpose, the true heartbeat of your agency? If someone were looking to become part of your team, could you convey specifically what that would mean to them? What your agency is all about, what it does. And by the way, when you have a true purpose or vision, it will not align with everybody. But by the way, you don't want everybody. You don't want everybody. You want people that are part of your culture up front. They know what you stand for and they know what you don't stand for. One of the things that we work in depth with our private client group at the Sidkins Network on is we have actually it's coming up late in September, our CEO FIT program. This is our leadership training for our private agency members and we talk a lot about leadership development. One of the first things we dive into is what really is the vision and the mission and the critical success factors of the agency. Again, what do we stand for, what do we not stand for? What's acceptable, what is not acceptable? And it may seem, well that's pretty easy. But I can tell you most agencies don't really know. And if you want to attract and keep and retain the best talent, first of all to attract them, that has to align, right? Your purpose and vision aligns with their purpose and vision if you want to keep and retain them a long period of time. Obviously if you're aligned up front, it makes that much easier long term versus bringing someone on who doesn't really fit. And we're going to try to put the round peg in the square hole or vice versa and then see if we can make it work long term. It may not. It may not. So what is your purpose and vision of the agency? And the number two is what's your level of excellence? You know, average talent or below average talent doesn't really care who they work for, they just want a paycheck. And that's what happens if you don't really strive for excellence and can define what excellence is. If you can define the results that you go by and this goes back to non optional behavior and the results that your agency is all about, both for your team, for your clients, for your community, with your insurance carriers, whatever it may be. If you can't define that, okay, I gotta check, but if you say here's exactly what we stand for, here's what excellence means to our agency and they go, wow, I want to be part of that because I can tell you the best performers want to be held accountable. If someone doesn't want to be held accountable, look out. There's a reason for that. There's a reason for that. One of the tools that we use with our private client group is reverse performance management. And this kind of starts with some different employee. I don't even call these contracts, they're agreements that we can say this is exactly what the expectation level is for our highest level, whether it's a producer team or anybody else and what the outcome is. And they may say, wow, there's some stuff that you guys, you guys really require a lot. But guess what? The outcome's pretty darn cool, right? Because it goes back to the analogy of the sports team, is that I want to be my best version. I want to aspire for excellence, and I want to be part of a team that aspires for excellence. So let's take this all the way back to the beginning and maybe that initial punch in the gut. If you don't feel like your agency attracts and trains and develops and retains the best talent that ultimately starts and ends with you and your agency leadership team. That's what it starts with, right? And that may be a hard thing to understand, but it goes back to the question of would you want to work for you? And be honest, Just say if you came in, would you want, if you were aspiring to be part of this agency, would it excite you? Would it motivate you? Would it empower you? Would it equip you? Would it inspire you? All those things. We could just keep going. Or is it. Yeah, okay. It'd be all right. It would be all right. You know, the purpose of leadership, and I certainly learned this from my mentor, John Maxwell. I've got a chance to spend some time with John Maxwell, Team. John says that everything rises and falls on leadership. And I used to go, man, everything. I mean, really, everything rises and falls. And as I work with agencies, it's true. Is that a lot of pressure for an agency leader? Yeah, I guess to a degree it is. But what a great opportunity, what an impact you can make in others lives. But the purpose of leadership is to add value to people. Yet the greatest challenge of leadership is to lead yourself first. So when I talk about these two questions or the question of do you want to work with you and understand that I believe that most people, that high level talent, that they want to be part of something that matters, and they want to be part of something that's excellent. Well, how do I do that, Brent? Where do I start? Well, it starts with you start by developing you, you as a leader, your character, your excellence. Because I can tell you as a father of five kids that it's not about what I say, it's about what I do. And my kids watch me like a hawk. They know what's up, they know the truth versus what's fake. And the same thing is true in leadership. The same thing is True in modeling, in your agency, your team is watching you whether you like it or not. Are you taking shortcuts? Are you doing the things that you ask them to do? Are you spending time building bridges and having this important communication with your team members? Are you really listening to what they need, what they want, understanding them, allowing them to have some buying and vision with that and working together? Are you investing your time, your most precious asset, right? Is your time only diminishing asset into mentorship, into those that have earned and deserve more of your time so that they can become next level leaders, so that you can multiply? Because ultimately, here's the challenge of this is you want to be able to replace yourself at some point, don't you? At least to the things that you don't want to do and empower and equip those below you to grow and develop and to shine. So all of this to me is all part of leadership. I'll leave with this and I don't want to make this podcast too long and I love to get your feedback and your thoughts. Agree, disagree on this. Again, there's a lot of aspects to leadership, don't get me wrong. But I think when it comes back to this question, and there's some really good services that really are that work on hiring and message board and assessments on your people, all that is really important. But sometimes I think we treat, right, we treat some of the things that we see. We treat the symptoms and not the root of the cause. In many cases it's that the leader is not really a person that high level talent would want to work for or work with. That's a really hard thing to admit in many cases. But here's the good news. You as a leader can improve. You can change, you can develop, you can grow. Robin Sharma says it so well. He says all change is really hard at the beginning, it's really messy in the middle, but it's glorious at the end. And so if you feel like your agency is stuck and you're having a hard time, like, you know, why aren't my people that work with, why aren't they, you know, why aren't they accountable? Why aren't they excited? Why don't new people want to be part of this? Again, the hard question is look in the mirror and go, what can I do better? What do I need to improve upon? How do I become a high level leader? Where do I need to start? And you know, I can tell you one thing at the Sitkins Group that I love is working with High level leaders and our private client group. There's a lot that goes into leadership. I had a conversation with someone recently and we talked about, you know, leadership can be very lonely if we're not careful because sometimes it feels like you're the only person that is asking yourself these crazy questions or going through these processes in your head. And so a couple things that we do with leaders at the Sitkins Group. Number one is we provide coaching, listen to what you're dealing with, help to provide some solutions and equip you and your resources so that you can better equip and resource your team. And secondly, as we surround you in a private client with other agency leaders so that you can have these deep level conversations for people to understand where you're coming from. Right? And you can have these conversations that matter and dive into some of these subjects and learn from each other and grow and share. It's a very powerful concept. So if you're interested at some point in becoming part of our private client group, not all territories are available. We're filling up. But if you're interested in working very close with us and other agency leaders, go to sitkins.com apply to see if your territory is available for the Sitkins Network. As I share in every episode, if this episode has provided value to you, if you've gained something from this, it's made you a better leader, at least let you think about some things that you need to do in leadership. I'd love for you to leave me a review or share this podcast with others. I'd appreciate that. And all the best in your success. I want you to be the best leader possible and for your team to be the best team possible. It starts with you and there's no doubt that you can begin that process, that work today. All the best in your success.