The Role of a Leader – Mike Edgeley, A-Plan Insurance (Part 2)

I’ve recently interviewed several Executives from a number of leading insurance organisations, discussing the role of a leader and other topical issues.

Following on from part 1, today’s interview is with Mike Edgeley, Managing Director at A-Plan Insurance.

Spanning an impressive 17 years in the military, Mike held various leadership and operational positions, within both The Parachute Regiment and as a staff Officer within the Ministry of Defence.
Mike spent eight years at BGL in various roles utilising his operational and commercial skills and then held MD positions at Lancaster Insurance followed by a portfolio of 6 medical businesses providing services into the GI, Life, Travel and Corporate sectors, for Capita.
Currently Managing Director at A Plan Insurance, after starting as COO in 2015.

Q9. Do you think leaders are made or are there naturally born leaders?

The typical answer to that is there is going to be element of both. I think you have to have the innate desire or ability to be in a leadership position because at times it can be quite lonely, and I don’t mean that in an odd way. There will be times when people will say ultimately you’re responsible, you’ve got to make the decision, and it’s not a clear-cut easy decision to make, otherwise leadership would be very simple. And certainly I can remember back to experiences in the military where we had quite serious situations when everything seemed to be going wrong, with everybody looking at you and saying, “What do we do?” And sometimes there is just no obvious solution, so you just had to come up with the best option and get people to back it.

So there’s pressure at times. I think there has to be a natural appetite to be comfortable being put into that position, but at the same time I think you can definitely train some of the attributes in. Fortunately if you’re in the military, out of that 17-year career if I added up the number of months or years I’ve been on courses, it will probably be at least 4-5 years in some shape or form on some sort of development activity. That in its own right can be stressful because it was always closely assessed, but it did provide that experience of making decisions under pressure. So yes, I think you can train leadership skills in, but there has to be an appetite and attributes to absorb that sort of responsibility.

Q10. If you look at your career in military and in the commercial world, is there one person or one thing that’s had the biggest influence on your career from a leadership perspective?

I think that answer comes in two parts. A number of people have been a big influence, but also being prepared to put yourself out of your comfort zone and learn is important. Have I ever had a mentor? The answer is no, not formally. Have I had people who have influenced me hugely? Absolutely.

Some people undoubtedly benefit from having one mentor. Personally, I like to think if you’re somebody who’s constantly assessing your own performance, the situation or task at hand, observing how other leaders operate, then you take and add those learnings and traits. I think there are a number of people who would deserve the title of mentor, I’m just not sure they necessarily realise they were! A number of Commanders in the military who I was working for at some stage. Peter Winslow and Matthew Donaldson at BGL Group, and Carl Shuker at A-Plan.

I would call them unofficial mentors. They may not even know they were influencing me but I would observe and absorb the way they did things and like to think I learned from it. I think the key is to not stop learning.

The other aspect that has been a key influence in my commercial career is to always put your hand up and be prepared to get involved in wider aspects of the business. Ultimately leadership is about making decisions and having knowledge and understanding of how different parts of a business work only helps that decision-making process. I have been fortunate to have been given the opportunity to get involved in different parts of the broking business; from business development, e-commerce, claims and change management. It all stands you in good stead for subsequent leadership roles. It does mean for the first few months of each role you are having to work harder to understand the detail, but it does empower you in the long run.

Q11. Is there anything you particularly need to hone or sharpen your leadership skills to keep up to date?

To me it’s practise, practise, practise. You are constantly practising your leadership skills. You’re constantly honing them because you have to face new issues, new challenges. What you do is build up a stock of knowledge of different situations and problems until resolving them becomes more intuitive. At that point you start to become quicker and more decisive as a decision maker.

I certainly look and listen at how other people have tackled problems whether in a military world or in a commercial world. But certainly for me, in terms of improvement, it’s always been about exposing yourself to new issues and problems. At the back end of that process you can reflect on it and assess yourself. I’m one of those people who tend at the end of a process to speak to people around me who I report to or worked with and ask, “How did that go? Give me some honest feedback”. Some of the feedback is relevant and you absorb it, and some you might disagree with in which case you reject it. But I think by constantly asking for input you check to make sure you’re applying yourself in the right way.

Q12. I suppose the higher you are up the commercial ladder it’s tougher to get peer level feedback, do you still ask for that? Do you get that in terms of roles you’ve had?

Yes, absolutely, whether from a peer or someone I work into So even fairly recently working with Carl Shuker, he’s one of those people who will pop in and just say, “How did it go?” If there’s something that he’s heard or seen and has a view, he may add, “You might want to consider this, that and the other.” Occasionally I’ll prompt the question and say, “From your perspective, how’s it going?” I think you can do that with a superior, but you can do it with peers as well.

You don’t have to be very soft and open your heart out, but after a particular activity you can get, either individually or small groups of people together, sometimes in a social environment and say, “Look, genuinely, how did it go? What could we have done better and any feedback on how we did?”

The military always does it as a formal after-action review process. Everyone thinks the military is very hierarchical. Well, it is, but actually at the same time you will get to know your individual soldiers extremely well. In the Paras you would spend months at a time living cheek by jowl with your soldiers. You get to know absolutely everything about them and then go through some fairly tough times together. Everyone has their role to play. At the end of an operation or an exercise, we would always get together and review how it had gone. And typically within that process, we would have a very candid, open session, walking through each phase, reviewing everyone’s perspective of what was going on, their decisions and actions, including mine. We would get it out in the open and then once we’ve done it, we would note down what we needed to improve and factor that in for future training. Some could be quite brutal sessions, 360 feedback, where a Corporal who was a Section Commander might state “That decision you made was wrong, we should have done it a different way” – you would review it, debate it, you might agree with it, you might not. As long as at the end of that process everyone knew we’d be better next time!

Q13. You alluded to it earlier, but is that the sort of thing you’ve done in a commercial environment?

Yes, I have but not as formally. It’s probably more after each activity or task we generally will look at something and say, “has that worked?” So at A-Plan if we’ve done an acquisition, or if we’ve done a particular activity we’ll generally sit around the table and say, “how did that go”, and we’ll do an after-action review. In terms of the organisation, it’s very much to do with the culture how you do that. At A-Plan we have a very lean structure, so we’re constantly passing each other in the corridor, we’re constantly talking to each other and we have a very open, transparent relationship within our office. I think that feedback process just naturally happens because we’re such a small, close-knit team.

Q14. From a leadership perspective, are there any key mistakes that you’ve made that you’ve particularly learnt from?

Everyone makes mistakes and I think over the years I’ve probably made loads of them. The ones that I recall clearly were both at earlier points in my military and my commercial career. There were times when you’ve got something which might not feel right to you or there’s just some aspect to it which you’re not comfortable with, but you might have some strong characters who are convinced it’s the right thing to do.

There’s something in there that you think “this isn’t right, it just doesn’t feel right” and because it’s been early in my career, on a couple of occasions I’ve gone with the flow and retrospectively looked back and thought, “actually there was a decision point there. I kind of knew, I felt it, I should have done something, and I didn’t do it”. I think what I learned from those relatively small number of instances, is when you feel like that you’ve got to make decisions quickly and early rather than letting things drift.

I’d like to think that the time spent in the military and in the commercial environment tunes you quite well to problems and people, and as a result I think you do get intuitively a sense of when something isn’t right or working. Now you learn to take it head on and tackle it as quickly as possible rather than letting it drift.

Q15. If everyone says this is how we normally do it or most people aren’t agreeing with what your decision is, you’re putting your head out on the block, aren’t you? It must take bravery if your gut is saying one thing, but the rest are saying it’s not the right thing to do.

I remember two instances of this perfectly. One was in the military, joining the Parachute regiment, my first platoon and we still had one or two Falklands veterans in it. One or two instances of people saying we do things this way and you automatically assume they are right when that wasn’t necessarily the case. It was having the moral courage to take that situation on but not do it in a way where you lose any respect but do it in a certain way where you get the right result.

The second instance in a commercial environment was making a decision about a restructure, where the prevailing thought was to keep one individual in their current role. I remember thinking change was needed but being influenced by a senior member of the business which swayed me not to do anything. Subsequently when mentioning that issue to the CEO at the time his response was “Mike, always follow your intuition!” I always remember that and ever since then when the alarm bells start ringing it’s generally a sign you have got to do something.

Q16. For anyone who aspires to a leadership position or leading a business or business unit, is there any particular advice you would give to that individual?

I think it depends what scenario and what environment they’re in, and whether they’re moving into a new area or if they know that area well. You’ve got to understand the detail because even the bigger more strategic decisions are ones that in some way, shape or form, there’s some detail behind it which will influence.

Typically I think where you have good leaders, they are people who can make quick decisions. Because they understand the detail, where there is a sticking point in that problem, they are able to address it and can dip down into that detail, understand it and fix it. I think you’ve always got to have that ability as a leader. You can’t be divorced from the detail.

The second thing is surround yourself by really good people and a good team. Then you have got to be prepared to give clarity and direction because people need and want that. I always say that every message will get diluted in the way it’s conveyed. So if you have a hierarchical structure and the messages are being cascaded, by the time it’s gone down two or three levels it’s probably lost its impact in some way, shape or form. So you really need to be able to reach that message straight down to the audience, and it’s got to be clear, succinct and simple.

And then the final point is, there needs to be a degree of decisiveness. It’s something that you’re paid for, to make those decisions, which decide which direction your business is going.

Q17. Is there anything else you’d like to touch on in terms of leadership?

I think you’ve got to be decisive, but you’ve also perversely got to be somebody who’s quite introspective. Someone who can listen, review how you’re operating and as a result, adjust to the situation.

Ultimately, in a rather simplistic answer, it goes back to those three John Adair circles – the task, the team and the individual. It always amazes me how good leaders might be having to work at the strategic level at one point, making decisions, but they still need to have the ability to understand the detail.

Fundamentally they then need to create the time to allow their personality to influence how their team and their people are working. When you see good leaders, it’s surprising to see how they manage their time and still get out of the office actually interacting, visiting, influencing. That to me is an organisational skill set you’ve got to have, otherwise you can get trapped in your office just coming up and making decisions whereas you’ve got to go out onto the ground and understand the problem. Meet the people who are dealing with the problem, and once you understand that, I think you’re in a much better place to make those decisions

Q18. Although the principles are the same, do you think the challenges are different within an SME sized business as opposed to a corporate PLC type environment?

Yes, I think they all have their different challenges. In a hierarchical corporate environment, you’ve got more people around you to lean on, but at the same time, I think it has the danger potentially of just creating work and slowing you down. Whereas an SME firm which may have more of a leaner structure, you tend to find that you can implement things very quickly. You’ve got to be very organised about how you do it, otherwise you’re just doing so many things, you could potentially drown if you’re not careful.

Q19. There is more awareness today on mental health issues inside the workplace. How do you personally deal with the inevitable stresses involved in running a business and family life? How do you handle that?

People talk about stresses at work but I think it depends how you see it. If you’re expecting a busy job not to have some form of friction or stress then that’s just not going to be the case. In my mind, where there is stress or friction it is normally because you’re getting behind the power curve. And normally that’s because the problem isn’t being tackled effectively and often that is because it hasn’t been clearly articulated and delegated. So if you have enough people or the right people working in a very focused manner on what you’re trying to achieve and there is delegation, then the size of the problem is still there, but effectively you’ve shared it to some extent. I think where there’s too much stress, it’s quite often where people are holding onto work, they’re not sharing it, they’re not delegating it, or they’re just not talking about it.

There has also got to be a sense of humour. We’re asking people to spend so much time at work so just not losing sight of the fact that we’re here for reasons other than just delivering advancement for our individual businesses. We spend a lot of our time here so actually having really good positive interactions at work, making sure there’s the correct culture, the right behaviour is absolutely critical because that means it’s an enjoyable environment.

I think at A-Plan we’re very fortunate because we have a very lean structure, but we actively push as much responsibility down the line as we possibly can. Our branch managers are in our eyes, the most important function within the group and we empower and delegate a lot of responsibility to them. Consequently, there’s a lot of horsepower to solve issues and problems without lots of hierarchy and layers of structure.

And then lastly, I think you need to remember that you’re doing it for a reason. So if you have in the back of your mind that it’s helping you create a better lifestyle for your family, it helps to improve your resilience to stress because there’s a higher purpose – you are fortunate that your role is providing a lifestyle for your family. I think that if you look at it from that perspective, when you get into the tough times, you think it is still all worth it because it’s the right thing to do for the business, but also your family are benefiting from it. It helps put it all into perspective.

Right International have a proven track record of identifying and sourcing the top talent across various niches of the insurance market. If you are looking to add to your team now or in the near future, I would welcome the opportunity to help – please contact me.

If you have any ideas for future articles and would like to be involved, please let me know and I would welcome any feedback.

For part 1 of this blog, please click here. Look out for more blogs coming soon!

All the best,

Gary Pike

Founder & MD

Right International Insurance Headhunters