PHILADELPHIA, PA.–Developing leaders that understand multiple insurance industry disciplines is a pressing issue facing companies today, according to insurance company executives attending the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies conference here.

Darwin Copeman, president and CEO of the Cameron Insurance Companies, said in an interview he tries to develop multidisciplinary leaders at his company by exposing leaders and potential leaders to different areas of the business, regardless of whether they work specifically in those areas.

Mr. Copeman, who is incoming chairman of NAMIC's property-casualty conference, said he establishes a philosophy of: “We're all in this together; we all build the plan together; we all own the plan together.”

That philosophy is then expanded into interdisciplinary committees. For example, he said a reinsurance committee may have managers from underwriting, claims and accounting, in addition to the company's chief financial officer.

While reinsurance may not necessarily be the job of all of those departments, each representative on the committee learns to assume some responsibility in that area, he explained.

A company's chief executive officer can also play a large role in developing multidisciplinary leaders by moving people into unfamiliar territory within the company, Mr. Copeman said.

“You have to work at trying to move bright, talented, enthusiastic, energetic people into areas where they might be uncomfortable, so that when they're exposed to an opportunity to lead a different part of the organization, they do so from a base of knowledge that they've gained from being exposed [to different areas of the business],” he related.

Leveraging younger talent is advantageous in that respect, Mr. Copeman said. He explained he has members of the so-called Millennial Generation in his family, and he has watched them work collaboratively with their peers.

“I think they're much more attuned to being able to manage multiple tasks at one time,” he said. “They're much more interested in learning not only what happens, but why something happens in another part of an organization.”

Given that enthusiasm, Mr. Copeman said, a younger worker could more easily be moved to spend a six-month rotation in, for example, a marketing function, even if that's not where they may want to end up.

Conversely, he said an established worker who has worked in marketing all his or her life may have a natural tendency to resist moving to another area within the organization.

Baby boomers, he said, do not always like to take on roles with which they are not familiar because they do not want to fail. However, he said these workers still play instrumental roles not only as current leaders but as mentors to younger future leaders.

A panel of insurance company executives also addressed the issue of leadership at the NAMIC convention, and the speakers agreed that, when recruiting future leaders, the character of potential workers is just as, if not more important than experience.

Todd Carmony, president of Wayne Mutual, said he hires for attitude, and then trains for insurance work. Character flaws, he said, do not get better with time.

Ron Simon, CEO of Auto-Owners, also said qualities that cannot be taught, such as integrity and credibility, are important. Training for multidisciplinary roles, he said, is the easy part. He also said he does not understand the concept of teaching “business ethics,” noting that people are either ethical or not.