- Leadership Capabilities: Hone your personal leadership style and impact
- Business Building & Fixing: Navigate both business growth and turnaround situations
- Team Leadership & Coaching: Empower individuals and build a cohesive unit
- Stakeholder Management: Cultivate strong relationships with key players
- Personal Management: Maintain your own well-being for sustained success
Transcription:
Mary Boyd (00:08):
Hello everybody. How are you doing? That was so exciting. It made me feel like a superstar for a second. So unlike Jean this morning, who was a fabulous way to start, right? I dunno. I wanted to give her a standing ovation when I saw her and I was like, unlike Jean, no one thought I was going to be anything. Don't be sad for me. It's okay, I'm all right. But they're like, just do your best. It's okay. And they really meant it. They were like, no, it's okay Mary. You're going to be pretty average and that's okay. You'll be satisfied. I was like, no I didn't. And I was like, alright, I'm just going to keep doing my best. My dad just say, do your best and you'll always be a winner, and that's all right. And I took that to heart. I'm like, I'm just going to do my best. So you may not win, but you're a winner. You did your best. And I lived into that, but then I thought I'll just keep doing my best every day and a little bit and a little bit. And that actually worked out pretty well.
(01:14):
But what it's led me to love is leading because leading helps other people see the great in themselves and be the greatest that they can be that I see in them, and feel that greatness, feel the greatness. That jean's lucky enough to have that unicorn feeling when I see all those little reels on Facebook once in a while and the kids out there like second kid that's dancing, and the older daughter, the older daughter's, the responsible one that was also me. So that's what I love about leading, right? And it is love, right? Leading I think has a lot. The love is the word that I would put into true leadership. And so the other part of becoming a leader, someone's asked me, when do you feel like you became a leader? I'm like, wow, I was the oldest of nine grandchildren. All the accountability, no authority.
(02:13):
That was the first one. The other is, so those are good times and bad times. The other is becoming a mom. When I first had my daughter, I really understood what it was to be truly had to give all the love and unconditional love and accountability to raise this human being to be the best. I want her just to be the best that she could be the most, not be afraid of anything live into her potential, but also had to be therefore to be fair and kind, but disciplined and couldn't just give her candy for dinner. So all those kind of things. So those lessons I applied to my teams, which at the same time in my career are starting to get teams so good and bad. So in my career I've done three turnarounds or fixer uppers, strategies, strategies, relaunches, and I just joined Hiscox USA. And we are going to do a bunch of build and that's going to be really fun. And that's as the folks that I've joined and being at Plymouth Rock has been a blast there six years when I joined, we're at $750 million and about a hundred percent combined ratio. This year we're going to be 1.3 billion and about somewhere between a nine, eight and 99. So that's a pretty freaking great result.
(03:42):
So that team and that team, it's the strongest leadership team I've been blessed with being able to put together, it's in great shape, culture is great. And so I've been become more of a zealot than ever at really what are the things that work, that have tested and worked through the good and the bad and tough times to help a team and a business work. And we've had all of those in different places. And so in the time that we have together, I'm going to do a few things based upon the ask from everybody. One, I'm going to give you a little bit of philosophy, give you a tool that I've actually just recently put together for myself. I was doing a Harvard Business School guest lecture on the importance of trust in teams. And when I was doing that and building that reflection, I built this sort of self-assessment tool of my experiences and what worked.
(04:37):
And I thought this is actually good for planning anything new as well. And I'm going to offer it to all of you. So I'll introduce you to that tool. You can take a picture of it, I'll make it available through our chat, maybe through the tool, and that way you can all use it as you like. And then we'll have a set of some of the things that come with the questions that we can use and we can talk through them together if you have any questions. All right, how's that sound? Alright, so here we go. So one of the things about 20 years ago, my first turnaround, I've introduced this strategic spectrum a few times. I think companies fall into four categories. And when I started doing the turnarounds, I thought we got to figure out where the company is because companies always think they're somewhere better than they are.
(05:23):
It's sort of like we all think we're better drivers than we are. And so really knowing where we are matters. So I won't spend too much time, that's not really what we're going to talk about today, but I'm always willing to talk about it. Surviving, competing, leading and winning. And there's basically though a few categories, where are we in terms of profitability in our industry? You can use combined ratio, but you can apply this to any industry profitability compared to the industry. Wary in terms of growth and where are in terms of capabilities. So is your profitability above average? Average below average? Is your growth basically fighting for flat growing, really growing above average or shrinking? And are you actually able to invest in new capabilities? You're just baselining it or you're really innovating. You can imagine then from those where along the spectrum that is, so companies that are just launching, you have some combination companies that launching are still sort of surviving, but companies that are in turnaround are also in surviving.
(06:32):
The average of the industry is competing. There's a number that are leading and only one gets to win, right? Only one that gets to win. But when we're building a strategy, whether we're in good times or bad times, we have to build a strategy. And as leaders, that's part of our job. We can't just do stuff. And that's sometimes what happens is that we're technically really good at something, we get put into a leadership position and we're just like, oh my gosh, I just got to start doing stuff because we're under pressure to do what Show progress? Are you going to show progress? And here's your next goal, here's your next meeting, let's show progress, put a plan together. We're going to have a weekly meeting, we're going to show progress. You hear those things all the time, what's your plan? Well that's okay, we're going to show progress.
(07:20):
But it is very important. Just take a step back and actually make a plan that you can connect to the results. The results are going to be measurable. And then you can show progress on that or make adjustments. And so very important. But when we're coming up with a strategy, you're going to make sure we have the capabilities to strategy and you get the right people and the people need to match the culture and building the culture that allows the people to do their best. And we're going to spend time on that today. And culture isn't just who we are, it really is created by how we work together. It's not just about the person, otherwise you get this. Does everyone look alike, act alike? It's everybody. It's how we work together and all the things that all the ladies have been talking about today.
(08:16):
But culture and how we build our culture has to be cared for. It really is, has to be built. And each day it's how we do it, how we work, it's in everything we do. And so I think very much earning trust, we earn our culture and we have to consider each other in that. And so when we do that, I focus a lot on trust and respect and belonging. We'll get to that in a minute because when we combine trust and respect and competency, an important thing can't be underestimated. Those things. And this is a just directional simple chart, right? We will get a straight line towards performance and also the ability to do innovation. Throwing that on there, this is not an absolute mathematical principle. So please don't take that. This is for the sake of our discussion. I don't think this is an actual pointer. So innovation there is absolutely, I can actually touch it here. Absolutely. The reality that you could have folks with lower competency and high trust and you're still going to get higher performance up there, something up in that middle. I started trying to mess around with this slide to improve upon it and put little scatter dots up there, smiley faces and stuff like that, but it looked terrible. So there we go.
(09:50):
But the reality is if you have low competency, or even if you have high competency but you have low trust and respect, you're going to get poor results or mediocre results. So why? Let's build upon it. And so when we start at it, really what I'd say is this is also, I didn't have anyone help me with this slide and obviously I've gotten more executive, I've gotten worse at this. Alright, so foundation, the foundation of it all really becomes shared purpose and mutual respect. None of that said goal, mission, purpose, whatever it says it is what we're shared purpose, what are we trying to do together? And then let's make sure we respect each other. So that means we understand what each other do well enough to appreciate how hard it is and how our work, whatever that work is, underwriting, product, technology, service, et cetera. How we all work together and how it weaves together. Because in our business, more than most businesses, but maybe that's not true in our business at least, and they all work together.
(11:12):
And so it's like an orchestra. Our music, all our instruments play together to make one sound and we really need to appreciate how those sounds blend together. And so really making sure we know when we do that, that's the start of building trust. We trust in each other. And then that comes through our trading partners that comes through in the way we operate with our training partners. That comes through in how the company becomes trustworthy, right? Because when we're doing that, we're going to operate in a way that's more thoughtful. We're not going to make as many mistakes, we're not going to have to correct from those mistakes. Our partners dunno how to feel those mistakes. All of a sudden that's working well. Does that make sense? Okay, what does that deliver? Confidence seems obvious, but it's amazing when you're confidence whether, and this is not arrogance, arrogance is probably the worst thing any of us can have because people stop listening and learning when they're arrogant. There's a lot of folks that are out there that have that. But please, that's when we start believing our own hype. It's like we really get ourselves cut down. So all we have to do is thankfully we do is have children or parents or siblings. We're lucky. So thankfully we're all human beings and so we have all those people.
(12:42):
So confidence in our ourself but also in others. And what that does is that gives us a very, very important thing. It creates room for experimenting and innovating and renovating, renovating and innovation or partners, but not the same. But the most important thing on this box for teams, whether we're in a turnaround and fighting the fight or whether we're in a high performance creating thing, a creating phase is the ability to recover and rally as I refer to it or just simply rest. Because whether you're a high performance athlete or you're a corporate warrior, we've all been in a situation where you're so tired because you're a human being, you have a regular life and you're under pressure. Who here has actually been in a turnaround or a real trying to get something out of a mess, right? Great. Who's here has been in building a project, what's been also under super tight timelines and projects, right? Okay, so we've all been there. You worked all weekend and on every Tuesday you feel like you could cry Monday you're fine because you're still sort of energized from like, well you did. You're like, I made it through on Monday. I am still on it Tuesday, I'm just going to cry on Tuesday. I don't understand why Tuesday's a cry day because you're so tired.
(14:16):
But the ability, but we can't rest. Why? Because maybe we don't have anyone else to have our back to be able to cover. So if you have a team, if you all understand and you have it together, you have more of the ability to have the chance to say, okay, we're there. We can take that rest because more folks are competent enough to be able to do that. So it's important. So you can give yourself those chances to take your vacation and not check your email the whole time, right? Very important. Just like those performance athletes, when you get the chance to step back and just you're going to come back patient, you're going to come back with thoughts that are actually probably like, Ooh, that just unlocked a thought. I figured that out. You're going to come back smiling, you're going to come back and like, oh, what do you know it's going to actually work? You're going to not dislike that person. That annoyed you two seconds ago last time. It's going to be great. And then what does that deliver? Engagement, better results, credibility and resilience. This very subpar PowerPoint put together is an upward trend.
(15:31):
It easily could have been a downward slide. The same exact words would happen if we don't have shared purpose and mutual respect. If we start losing trust, if we don't have confidence, if we're not giving ourselves room to experiment or innovate, if we're not at renovating, if we're not giving ourselves rest, we're going to not have good engagement, we're not going to get the results we want. We're not going to have credibility and we're not going to be resilient even if we're working the heck out of ourselves and trying our hardest. And so we will get those, but we won't have as much. And so when I've gone through these, one of the things that I've thought about is the power of trust in all of those situations. Trust is so foundational. We almost all get to the point of here's our goals, here's some version of what we're trying to do.
(16:32):
And so how do we start building trust and respect for what we do? Okay, so this is the pause part. We talk about the reflection tool, then we get into the trust exercise for a moment. So leadership actually it looks pretty big up there. This is good. I always worry about this as a presentation. You do it at home. Is it going to be big enough? Alright, so this is the first time in inaugural worldwide. First time we see this thing in real life. So hopefully I'll take your feedback on it in case you want to make it better for next time. So the leadership, self-reflection, assessment and or planning tool. So the top part, this is how I did it, was in an Excel spreadsheet. So I'm a dork. So the challenge was I wrote the challenge for myself. I basically was describe the biggest challenge of correcting course near and long-term and the root cause of underperformance.
(17:27):
That's what I was doing. So I did three different in the course that I was teaching about, I had three different case studies of turnarounds. And so the professor asked me to share with her his background, how I would describe it. She didn't really know anything about the insurance industry and she said, how old were you in each of these times? So I also had to put my age, so whatever. She's like, wow, it's so weird. Anyway, so I started describing it and the first example, well this is how I described the first one, which was the biggest challenge was the how we sustainably position the company for future success, overcoming historical obstacles, breaking through the unproductive status quos and introducing new strategic positioning capabilities, operating rhythms and behaviors. Actually that was my second one. That wasn't my first one. So that example, I could tell you financially the problem was loss ratios and some expense, but that's not what that says, right?
(18:32):
Because we could change a loss ratio here or there, but it wasn't actually going to position the company in a better place to grow and actually hit something in a fix, a real fix. It might've gotten us to a quarter or two quarters of better results. And so we were figuring out how to really build it for a success. And so it got to a root cause. So I share that because as you're going through and you're thinking if you want to use this, think about how you would, not just the first issue, but what at the root is really going on that you might have to get after to help improve something. So the four categories that we think about as leaders are business or our business problem. So we have to do this, build a strategy, create a tactical plan, and then execute it well, no matter what we're doing with our teams, we still need to do that part with our teams, but still be able to do that.
(19:32):
We're going to do all it in the session on that today. But let's not forget about that. Our team align and empower our talent, connecting our team together, getting the right people on the team with the right capabilities is critical, but connecting them is where you win. And you can handle the tough times. There will always be tough times, even when no matter how great everyone is, build trust and belonging. Coach and connect them, okay? Our stakeholders, our stakeholders are not just investors, board members, executive team, they are our peers in other groups, they are our customer service folks. They are our distribution partners, they are our vendor partners. They could be all of these folks. We want to think about who they are and ourselves, our personal care and management. This gets back to a bit of what I was saying on the prior page, but as a leader, how we show up every day really matters because we're going to have to adapt our style to what our team needs. And that takes a lot of energy. And the better we get at adapting our own style to the point where no one can tell if you're an introvert or an extrovert, well, they'll all be able to tell eventually, but they, they'll know that you can flex more of an introvert and extrovert or you're going to figure that you're going to understand who they are leading.
(21:19):
Leading is guiding and guiding really happens at the front, the middle, and the back of the group. And so just like with that, as a leader, we have to get comfortable when we're doing our best to lead. Sometimes from the front we're going to say, this is where we're going. Here's what it looks like. There are going to be times we need to be side by side with our teams sitting there working together and being leading right from the middle. Here's where it is. What are you seeing? Helping to coach side by side. There's other times where're going to be there from the back and be like, yeah, you got it. Go, go, go, go. And individually leaders have different styles. Some of us are going to be probably the more introverted to be classic introverted are going to feel much more comfortable from the middle or the back.
(22:19):
And it's going to take energy and courage to be out in front as much as it requires us to be out in front, it's going to feel like self-promotion, which you might feel a bit of disdain for. It's your job to do your job best for your team. You have to be willing to stand in front of everybody. It's not ego in that case, you just have to do it. I know, trust me, it feels crazy and I'm up here in front of all you people. Trust me, the remember no one even saw me. I can't believe my life in this second. And then you have the other folks who love to be out in front.
(23:08):
I mean jean's fantastic. She's so cool. She's like, and have to also be comfortable with, okay, now I'm going to be in the back. I'm just going to bring my energy down and I'm going to sit in the back and have, I'm just impressed by Jean. So she's my new hero for the day. But there's some folks that are just so out in front, but it takes a little bit more time for to sit back and go, okay, yeah, yeah, okay. Imply patience and empathy for certain. Some people say, there's some leaders I know that you don't suffer a fool lately. Those kind of things like taking some of those times. Think about those, the categories I have here. I went a little too deep there existed. I gave myself this measurement rubric one which skills I went through and said, in this case, in the business case, which of my skill sets, what did I do and apply to the problem that I already had a skill that I applied and I described it for myself.
(24:14):
This is what I did and I used and it really helped and it existed and I used it to deliver a successful result. And then I went, all right. So I gave myself that one and I used a couple of these and it was helpful and one was like, this is a new skill that I sort of built for myself or delivered rather, if you will, and used it effectively. And then here's another one that I needed to do this, but I didn't show up very well. I could have used to do this better in retrospect, I could have been better at that, but either I had it and I didn't use it at full strength or it was a gap for me. It wasn't yet developed either in my own skillset or just to miss, right?
(25:03):
So that's something that I would offer. And I've done this on all of them for myself and had to go back and say, okay, I'll tell you one of the places. I always screw it up on a stakeholder. I'm always missing a stakeholder. I try and try and try. So I've gotten better at it and in my earlier days for sure. Where I would also mess up is because if you're someone that is a technical expert at something and you're under pressure, this is a young leader's challenge is you are under pressure, you want it to get fixed and you're trying to help your team, but then you accidentally start doing stuff for them and then how do they feel? And you're just trying to help and you're really trying to help and you're like help. They're like, stop helping you make us feel like we can't do it that I've done.
(26:05):
And so I've gotten better at not doing that, but I would offer that as one of the things to lead successful teams through the good and the bad times. Give them the room, give them the trust, give them the time. But what I will try to say is I've also asked myself which of the prior experiences that I've had that I draw upon to help me in these cases and reflecting upon that. And so as I did this for that exercise, I thought to myself, this is pretty cool. I'm going to do this again. So I'll share with you, I'm going to do this again. I have a new gig and so it's going to be pretty interesting. Maybe next time I'll tell you what I did.
(26:53):
So this is it. So for what it's worth, I thought it is, it was a helpful reflection. I think for me it was a helpful reflection. And so if it's something that you might find helpful, it's for you to use. Okay, alright. Building a team that trusts each other. We talked about this already. Who do we need? How do we work? How do we show up for each other and how do we protect and honor it? Are the questions we need to ask each other? Ask ourselves. And I put these questions up here because I figured they're ones that we could reflect on. And I figured for folks that want 'em, we could take a picture of it.
(27:39):
I ask myself these questions, I write stuff down for myself and then make myself on my phone. I go back and I read it and that kind of stuff. And that's how I do it. Whenever I'm trying to, if I feel like I'm not doing a good enough job, I go back and do my little checks. Belonging. Belonging and psychological safety are to the two things that I didn't go in and say almost start creating belonging. It just really started to happen. And the time I've had when I've gone back and asked my prior colleagues and teams, even over the course of time, what worked best for you and what didn't work best for you and have applied it, particularly in the time I've been at Plymouth Rock in the past six years was we all felt like this trust and belonging. And I'm like, all right, so how do we do it?
(28:27):
And so that is really the question. So when people feel like they're on a team or they just doing a job, that was one of the biggest changes. When I was at Explorers, people used to just go to the company. They actually just had the job because they were the person in the company. They were the person in the family that had benefits. And so I wanted them to not feel like that was just a job. It was actually, they were part of a team and a career. And that was a big change for the company. But in a company joining a company, the next two are really important because we can go through lots of effort to hire top talent, but for some places it could take a long time before you feel like you belong there.
(29:11):
And there are places where we see a lot of really promising talent that leaves the organization after a short period of time. And we probably can all know of some of those companies or maybe have been at some of those companies. And the answer for why that happens, we can talk about later. Well, I'm not going to talk about later, can't. You guys can talk about it later, but we don't want to be that company. I don't want to be that company. I want folks to feel that way. And I want folks to feel that they are belonging there. This one's very important. Having the psychological safety to be wrong in front of a peer or in front of their boss, being vulnerable or just being, you can't experiment and be right all the time. It's scientifically impossible. So that's okay. So to remind folks of that, I just started as Cox on Monday, which feels like it was 85 hours ago compared to how we just had a very full set a couple of days. It was great. But one of the first things I shared with the folks said, they're like, tell us something that's important. And we went through the morning was like, oh, very important. If for some reason this is a place where people say everything's an opportunity and not a problem,
(30:49):
That's not what we're doing because there's no way we're going to be able to prioritize something if we can't tell that it's a problem. A problem is okay, it's good. Find them. It helps us figure it out. Let's celebrate it. It's not a person that's a problem. We've figured it out. But there's some places where people feel like they can't even say something's a problem. And that's a place where oftentimes people don't feel safe. And so I think the reason I bring that up is I think we want people to feel safe. And so it's amazing what happens when they do. It's amazing. You get to hear a lot more ideas, which is listening. There's some folks, I've had some folks in my, there's a really, really talented person on a team of mine that this person would say says they have some, they're not deaf, but they have some hearing loss. And I said, I am empathetic to that, but what about your listening? Because sometimes on your emails you're not even listening.
(32:02):
So this is when we're joking around. But this is definitely something, it's very important that we truly listen and engage with each other. And that includes particularly in the leader situation, that we are at the table listening to each other, that we're showing up, that we're not distracted on our phones, on our computers, et cetera, that we are with our team. And it makes a difference because we will learn more that way. And they learn to learn that way too. Role modeling, it is very important and respect. And I'm running out, I'm out of time, so I got to roll. Obviously these things come, respect is the most important thing. And making sure that we are requiring each other to show respect for each other. It has to be a zero tolerance in that case. And this is how do we do it? How are we spending our time?
(33:05):
Don't communicate for theater is what my recommendation is. If we're having a monthly business review or we're having a meeting, don't have a meetings for the sake of things. Have working sessions. If someone has a new idea or spots a problem, it's the same thing. How does it get support versus getting attacked? The best ideas I've ever had have told, people have told me why they won't work, but that doesn't mean that that's actually just been the best next question, which is like, okay, cool, then how do we get past that obstacle? And then we keep going and how our decisions are made. How long does it take? Who's allowed to make them? How are they communicated? The folks that need to know as a leader, you are the one that can help figure that out. If someone says, well, that won't work. Well, how could it work? Or who can fix it if it's broken, who do we know that can fix that? Is there anyone here that can fix that? Asking those kind of questions. But I try always to avoid starting a question with the word why, because that really freaks people out.
(34:16):
How when? Who all safe words? Very safe words. Okay, I think that was it. I must've not put a question slide on there, those last of the question slide. Alright. And then of course it's how often does your team experiment? But thank you, thank you for that. So hopefully that was a little helpful. I would say that in terms of leadership, it is absolutely, like I said, it's the greatest job and the toughest job I think that any of us can have. And I think the reward is, reward is always in watching our teams just get so thrilled about what they can do and inspiring. They're inspiring others as well. And every once in a while I get lucky. I was so scared when I was to tell my team that I was leaving and because I invested so much, but when I did, the nicest thing happened.
(35:40):
I was telling them, I remind 'em. I said, guys, the culture here, they said, thank you so much for allowing us to have this culture. We really built a great culture together. And I don't know if Jamie's here, Amy's here summer, and I heard this tens of times. People were, thank you so much for helping us build this culture and we're going to keep it going and we'll miss you, but you need to go do this somewhere else so other people get to have it too. I wasn't that great. I was like, that was so nice. So I was very happy to hear that kind of thing can happen. And I share that story, not to give myself a credit, but just to hopefully let you know how amazing it is and how big an impact you all have, you are all having that you don't even know positively on the people that you're leading. So please just take that encouragement and know that you're inspiring people every single day. And I want to thank you for doing that and spending the day investing in yourselves to do it even more. So thank you.