The time is now, he continues, “to ratchet up the leadership capabilities within the community of mutual insurers.”

He defines leadership as someone taking the initiative to have influence over a situation because leaders want to take action.

It is also a mindset, he says. “One does not need a title, a position or a spot on a roster to want to take action and make change.”

The easiest way to understand the power of leadership is by examining where leadership failed, says Kennedy.

For example, with the Enron debacle and Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme, Kennedy says the failure of leadership was the day they forgot their mission. He believes they did not start off their career's intending to “have such a negative effect” on society.

However, he says, they “lost their mission, misplaced their values; they forgot what they were all about.”

NAMIC's vision of leadership is to aspire to pull “us forward every day,” and to “provide positive contributions to society” through a sound and ethical insurance industry.

These values, he says, hold mutual insurance companies together and point NAMIC's members in a direction to have a positive impact in the areas they serve.

Because NAMIC members seek to hold to these high ethical values, they will not fall into the kind of moral failures Enron and Madoff fell into, Kennedy says.

He says he plans to take this message around the country and expand on it in the coming months to other members.

Kennedy refers to Immediate Past-Chairman Sandra G. Parrillo, president and CEO of The Providence Mutual Fire Insurance Co., and her leadership skills during her one-year term.

“She demonstrated her vision, her mission and values with great passion,” says Kennedy. “She never forgot the mission of NAMIC and she never let the rest of us forget it either.”

He also offers an observation from Warren Buffet about mutual insurers, who said that mutual companies combine “a strong corporate personality and a great culture; and they work miracles every day.”

Kennedy says that if mutual insurers “hang together with one collective voice and think like leaders” focused on their vision, mission, and values “then I am firmly convinced that there is nothing that we cannot accomplish.”