At the recent America’s Claims Event conference in Austin,Texas, I had an opportunity to deliver a presentation that focusedon leadership concepts for leaders – how we as leaders have toinspire improvement in our staffs.

While helping the Liberty Mutual Commercial Division role outtheir negotiations skills training program, I witnessed a greatexample of leading by inspiration.

Most top executives are content with letting the trainingdepartment handle the day to day training classes, but I watched ingreat amazement as Glenn Shapiro, their chief claims officer, gotpersonally involved in inspiring his entire claims force.

In the more than 75 classes provided by the claims trainingdepartment, the practices team and myself in 2014 and 2015, GlennShapiro would join the group at the start of the class. Either inperson or via video-conference he would spend anywhere from 45minutes to an hour personally talking to each group about theimportance of the subject, how it will improve results, andencouraging everyone to improve themselves by relating it to theirjob responsibilities. In short, he let them know that it was theirjob to improve themselves by taking the training to heart andapplying it when they returned to their desks.

The results of his efforts were immediate and dramatic. Therewas an incredible amount of focus on the part of the trainees and asincere desire to learn and apply their new skills. People wereengaged, energized and excited to learn. As trainers, we could havepreached for days about the importance of the material and it wouldnot have had a fraction of the impact that Mr. Shapiro had by beinginvolved and supportive.

The fact that their top claims leader took the time to talk tothem personally about their jobs and the important role they playedin the success of the company, and how he expected them to improvethemselves lit a fire under this group like something I have neverseen before. It was amazing, astonishing and inspiring!

Once people were inspired to improve themselves, those of usinvolved in the training had the easy part: to just do thetraining. It was such a pleasure teaching a staff of truly inspiredpeople, I almost hated charging for it (almost, I said).

When asked for his thoughts about people’s attitudes towardtraining being an important element in their jobs, Shapirocommented, “…The purpose of any training is ultimately change andimprovement. In order to create change that lasts you have tochange the mindset, tools and controls. If you only change thetools 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 involvedin supporting the training, Shapiro explained, “To get real,powerful change, people have to believe in the ‘why’ behind thechange first. Then, if your tools support the change and yourcontrols hold people accountable to it, you win. The tools andcontrols will last after the launch of training. They are tangibleparts of day-to-day work. But the mindset has to be builtstrongly at the outset or it will fade. That is why I feel sostrongly that senior leaders engage upfront on any important changeor improvement.”

Now THAT’S inspiring!

Carl Van, ITP, is president & CEO of InternationalInsurance Institute, Inc. based in New Orleans, La. He has been aspeaker at the ACE conference on numerous occasions, presentingconcepts based on his books The 8 Characteristics of theAwesome Adjuster; Attitude, Ability and the 80/20 Rule; NegotiationSkills for Claims Professionals, and various others. He may bereached at [email protected].