Leadership Insights: Alan Kohlberg on People, Strategy, and Adaptability (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: So my name is Alan Kohlberg, I'm President and CEO of Assurant. What we do is we partner with companies that make or sell or finance consumer goods. So think about your cell phone, your appliance, your house, even your funeral. And we partner with those companies to help protect the consumer around risk related to that purchase. We protect the things that matter most to people. We talk about how I spend my time, I spend my time engaging with people. That's I think the single most important thing I learned. It's not about your strategy, it's not about your products and services. Yes, those matter, but it's really people that make the business work or not work. So one of the things you learn as you get more senior in organizations is you can do very little yourself. What you have to do is get your organization aligned and focused. Another lesson is you really have to invest in and develop people. What you have to do is identify talent, you have to nurture that talent, you have to give people different opportunities, you have to move people around. One of the things I talk about all the time with our employees is the importance of inclusion and the need to surround yourself with people that aren't like you. That leads to a better thinking and a better process. I think the important thing about leadership is you have to adapt to situations. So one of the things I've always told people that work with me is you manage different people differently. You have to, as a leader, adapt to the individual and get the most out of each person, not just do your style all the time to every person. I think you get the best out of people by challenging them. I think where you don't get the best is if you micromanage. So if you're always paying too much attention to telling them exactly how to do it, they'll do it the way you told them, but they won't learn. But they have to learn and grow. You cannot do it for them. And the more senior you get, the more you realize how little you can actually get done. And you need to develop people. When it's small, you're able to personally carry the message to every employee. The difference when you get to a really large company is you can't personally carry the message to every employee. So what you have to do is you have to make sure that the messages are understood. How I carry my message, what I say, how I do it, no different when I was managing a team of 21 versus now we have 15,000 employees here at Assurant. Whatever you're doing at the moment, do it well, do it with passion. Don't view any task you're given as, oh, I have this task, I just have to do it. I hate it. I don't like it. For everything I'm doing, I'm going to learn something from and embrace it that way. So take on every challenge, do it to the best you can, and generally things work out.