At the recent America’s Claims Event conference in Austin, Texas, I had an opportunity to deliver a presentation that focused on leadership concepts for leaders – how we as leaders have to inspire improvement in our staffs.
While helping the Liberty Mutual Commercial Division role out their negotiations skills training program, I witnessed a great example of leading by inspiration.
Most top executives are content with letting the training department handle the day to day training classes, but I watched in great amazement as Glenn Shapiro, their chief claims officer, got personally involved in inspiring his entire claims force.
In the more than 75 classes provided by the claims training department, the practices team and myself in 2014 and 2015, Glenn Shapiro would join the group at the start of the class. Either in person or via video-conference he would spend anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour personally talking to each group about the importance of the subject, how it will improve results, and encouraging everyone to improve themselves by relating it to their job responsibilities. In short, he let them know that it was their job to improve themselves by taking the training to heart and applying it when they returned to their desks.
The results of his efforts were immediate and dramatic. There was an incredible amount of focus on the part of the trainees and a sincere desire to learn and apply their new skills. People were engaged, energized and excited to learn. As trainers, we could have preached for days about the importance of the material and it would not have had a fraction of the impact that Mr. Shapiro had by being involved and supportive.
The fact that their top claims leader took the time to talk to them personally about their jobs and the important role they played in the success of the company, and how he expected them to improve themselves lit a fire under this group like something I have never seen before. It was amazing, astonishing and inspiring!
Once people were inspired to improve themselves, those of us involved in the training had the easy part: to just do the training. It was such a pleasure teaching a staff of truly inspired people, I almost hated charging for it (almost, I said).
When asked for his thoughts about people’s attitudes toward training being an important element in their jobs, Shapiro commented, “…The purpose of any training is ultimately change and improvement. In order to create change that lasts you have to change the mindset, tools and controls. If you only change the tools people use, they may ‘comply’ but they won’t ‘commit.’ The same is true if you change only the controls (metrics, quality assurance).”
When asked about his philosophy of getting personally involved in supporting the training, Shapiro explained, “To get real, powerful change, people have to believe in the ‘why’ behind the change first. Then, if your tools support the change and your controls hold people accountable to it, you win. The tools and controls will last after the launch of training. They are tangible parts of day-to-day work. But the mindset has to be built strongly at the outset or it will fade. That is why I feel so strongly that senior leaders engage upfront on any important change or improvement.”
Now THAT’S inspiring!
Carl Van, ITP, is president & CEO of International Insurance Institute, Inc. based in New Orleans, La. He has been a speaker at the ACE conference on numerous occasions, presenting concepts based on his books The 8 Characteristics of the Awesome Adjuster; Attitude, Ability and the 80/20 Rule; Negotiation Skills for Claims Professionals, and various others. He may be reached at [email protected].
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