New leaders in Canada’s insurance industry need training, mentoring

Canada’s property and casualty industry needs to focus on coaching and mentoring its future leaders, as a large generational cohort prepares to leave the business, panelists said at the 2011 CIP Symposium held in Toronto on Apr. 8.
The panel, What it Takes to Be a Leader, follows two Insurance Institute of Canada demographic studies undertaken in 2008-09. That research, which included a survey of 2,800 people working within the Canadian property and casualty industry, showed 43% of the workers surveyed fell within the demographic category of the Boomer generation (between the ages of 43 and 62).
But as managers move out of the industry, it is important new managers receive the training they require to succeed as the industry’s next generation of leaders, said panelist Ross Totten, president and CEO of the Totten Insurance Group.
“The leader needs assistance in acquiring new skills,” said Totten, who gave a presentation about coaching. “In the insurance industry especially, we are very good at throwing people into the deep end of the pool and hoping they can swim out, by moving them into management roles and not training them for it.
“We also tend to make it more interesting by putting a few sharks into the pool as well.
“But we don’t very often give them the skills they need to succeed. And that’s a very big shortcoming. Oftentimes, coaching works very well in helping these new managers acquire the skills they will need to be better managers.”
Totten distinguished coaching from mentoring. Unlike mentoring, coaching is narrower in focus, he observed.
Coaching, for example, trains in specific skills related to job performance. It is task-oriented, it focuses on specific issues and its purpose is to improve and individual’s performance on the job.
It is frequently short-term, and ends when specific skills are mastered. The coach most likely sets the training agenda.
Mentoring, on the other hand, takes a much broader, long-term approach to the betterment of the person. The person in need of a mentor often sets the agenda; those asked for advice frequently do not see themselves as mentors.
Panelist Carla Blackmore received the CIP Society-Ontario Division’s GTA Fellow of Distinction Award in 2010, in honour of her contributions to the industry and the charities it supports.
She presented a number of examples in which she helped people who came to her for advice. Only later did she come to realize she was ‘mentoring.’
“I’m actually really proud to be a mentor, and yet it actually took a long time before I realized I was one,” said Blackmore. “Mentors can be anyone. Any of you.
“The first person I mentored in our industry did not tell me that she considered me to be her primary mentor until 32 years later.”
Blackmore noted mentorships are more relationship-oriented than coaching. They can be related to both personal and professional development. They provide information, hope, support, confidence and friendship.