7 minute read
Practical Wisdom from a Modern Day Mentor
By Steve Clabaugh, CLU, ChFC
It has been a privilege to have benefitted from several mentors in my life who have influenced my understanding about relationships, work and life itself. Their impact has been so significant to me that, over the years, it has been my practice to reach out to those men and women and to thank them for their wisdom and support. One individual who has influenced my career more than any other person is David C. Moore.
Dave was born and raised in Maquoketa, IA, an agricultural community in Eastern Iowa on the banks of the Maquoketa River. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science Degree from Northwest Missouri State University and later, as an insurance professional, completed the LIMRA Leadership Institute Fellow program earning the highly sought LLIF designation for corporate leaders.
Dave was the first group product leader ever to be chosen as Chairman of LIMRA. When I first met Dave, he was President, Ameritas Life Insurance Corporation – Dental Division He retired as President/CEO of Ameritas Life Insurance Corporation.
Even though we basically grew up in the same “neck of the woods,” we didn’t meet until almost 30 years after I graduated from high school in DeWitt, IA just 19 miles south of Maquoketa.
We met on an airplane that was stuck on the tarmac in Chicago during a mid-December snowstorm. I was returning home from my last business trip of the year, just before Christmas, when I was seated beside a kind and friendly businessman from Lincoln, NE. He initiated a conversation, most likely to pass the time while waiting for our plane to be de-iced, by asking “what do you do for a living?”
There must be something to the idea that core values are often related back to the culture of where a person is from because I felt, almost instantly, comfortable with his communication style and approach to life and business. Dave learned very quickly that I am passionate about worksite benefits as I shared with him what we believed in and how we tried to serve our employer and employee clients. He told me about his work leading the Dental Division at Ameritas and asked a lot of questions about our business.
What has most impressed me about Dave during that first meeting and in the 24 years since, is the way he thinks and talks differently about business than anyone else I’ve ever met. I was used to hearing and talking about product design, pricing, commissions, incentives, sales materials and so on. Dave understood all those subjects, but he believed that critical success factors, shared vision, alignment of key stakeholders, team dynamics, best practices and championship team behavior came before the details of product and pricing.
He was then and is now, about understanding that if you get culture right the rest will follow as a natural result. His team at Ameritas proved that the priority of “culture first” works - during his tenure they consistently produced 15% annual growth through a combination of organic sales and block acquisitions.
I was very impressed by this gentleman who was so gracious, knowledgeable and focused on the importance of organizational culture. By the time we landed a few hours later, he had invited me to come and share the same information with his senior staff. I found them to be just as passionate as he was about being a championship team. It wasn’t long after that meeting when I was privileged to join the team undertaking the challenge of creating a prospective new business as part of the Ameritas family.
Working with Dave, I learned the principles of Championship Team Behavior and saw how they worked in a high-performance team environment. He instilled in all of us, as his direct reports, the values that we have taken with us to responsibilities and organizations throughout the insurance industry at large. Dave had retired from Ameritas by the time I became CEO of a small Mid-Western life insurance company, so I was able to hire him as a consultant to help guide us in the development of our relational leadership culture. His work together with our leaders played no small part in our achievement of doubling the size of the company, and more than tripling profits in less than 5 years.
The combination of Championship Team Behavior along with the other tenets of Relational Leadership have added a whole new level of effectiveness in creating a positive achieving culture.
It is this combination that I was able to introduce and implement in the voluntary benefits industry and now offer to a wide variety of businesses from retail operations, educational institutions and manufacturing companies. All good teachers and students recognize the need for periodic review of the lessons taught and learned. With that in mind, I recently had the privilege of spending some time with Dave talking about the important principles he taught and modeled for us during a career that saw outstanding results in maximizing organizational results and building strong leaders for the future (most of whom still care about each other today).
Here are some of the lessons he shared that are very well worth sharing with you as today’s industry leaders I have primarily used Dave’s own words with some editing for clarity.
What is a Championship Team?
Best performing business models include plans that integrate individual business skills and competencies with other team members. Before you launch your business model to your chosen markets and customers, it is critical that you have the right people “on the bus” that are committed to working with each other to deliver best in class outcomes.
Best practice models will include personality profiles to help produce best outcomes. This helps leaders, managers and workers integrate personality profile differences and deliver best results for all key stakeholders. This is important because any two team members who have natural negative personality vibes need to find middle ground (a negotiated relationship) that will produce the best business outcomes. This is not always easy, but it is an important leadership skill needed to deliver the best results.
When Does a Championship Team Function at its Best?
When you have all of your critical business alignments completed, you will then need to get your business model performing at a “best practice” level. Championship team behavioral skills and competencies are critical at all levels in “best practices” companies. This means starting with your leadership team including necessary negotiated relationships at that level. When negotiated relationships are a required practice at all levels in an organization you will most likely see a high performing company delivering targeted results. Finally, you move your championship team model down into your organization, so it connects both vertically and horizontally, to create best outcomes for all key stakeholders.
During our recent discussion, Dave also reminded me of other important lessons about defining the business, market and customer focus, products and services, distribution systems and customer service excellence. I will save some of that wisdom for inclusion in future articles.
This month’s article tells you a bit about some of the knowledge and wisdom behind Relational Leadership Experience (RLE). I hope it also does credit in recognizing a small part of the significant impact on our industry by the man I am privileged to call my mentor, and more importantly, my friend.
As always, please feel free to contact me if you would like one of our program flyers or to discuss how RLE can benefit your company or that of your client companies.
RELATIONAL LEADERSHIP EXPERIENCE
Can it Help Your Employer Clients?
Your employer clients are facing new and different challenges in today’s business environment including:
Remote Work - Returning to Office
Diversity - Equity - Inclusion
Geopolitical Uncertainty - Cultural Conflicts
The timeless principles of Relational Leadership can help your employer clients navigate these issues as they grow and prosper their business. Relational Leadership Experience helps your clients:
Create and build high-performance teams
Select and train the right employees
Implement effective mentoring
Develop positive conflict management
Determine and implement the best outcomes
Achieve ongoing growth and success
In-person, online and combination programs available to meet the needs of your employer clients
To learn more about Relational Leadership Experience Contact: Steve Clabaugh, CLU, ChFC at sjcsr@hotmail.com or 910-977-5934.
