Practice makes perfect when it comes to building resiliency as a female leader in the Canadian property and casualty insurance industry, Hub International Canada president Tina Osen shared during a panel discussion at the recent RIMS Canada Conference in Vancouver.
Describing herself as a ‘social introvert,’ Osen recalled the early days of her career when she would attend sales and networking events with hundreds of people in a room.
She found it difficult to ‘work the room,’ rather than have conversations at much smaller tables. So she would go to the bathroom and tell herself to have short, five-minute conversations to start. That then increased to 10-minute conversations, she said during the session, Clearing the Path: Top Female Executives Share Their Experiences Navigating the Insurance Industry.
“There is something about resiliency that is really around, just practice and don’t expect the world out of the gate,” she said.
“Just do a little. And if you do a little today, and you do a little bit more the next day, you get stronger and stronger.”
It’s also important to prioritize self-care. On June 22, 2005, Osen woke up with migraine that she described as “an eight to 12” on a pain scale of one to 10, with 10 being the most painful. “That migraine lasted 24/7, for three years, three months, non-stop,” Osen told the conference session.
“That taught me the super valuable lesson [that] we have to prioritize ourselves and you cannot be resilient and you cannot be effective for anyone unless you take care of yourself…I really think for us to be effective in business, to be resilient in business, you have to take care of yourself; otherwise, the rest doesn’t work.”
Self-care first
In an interview with Canadian Underwriter after the panel discussion, Osen talked about a variety of topics, including self-care and workplace culture and support.
Nowadays, Osen does a monthly check-in with herself to gauge where she’s at from a personal and business perspective. She uses a scale of one to 10, with five being normal and anything below that indicating an issue that needs to be addressed. “I use that as a monthly check-in to say, ‘Where are the low points and are there strategies I can employ now to make those better?’”
Osen also stressed the power of telling somebody if there’s a problem, and asking for help.
“Some vulnerability actually breeds trust,” she says. “If you don’t have the basis of trust and connection and alignment, when things get hard, you can’t get followership of them.”
Alignment of vision and goals is important for Hub Canada’s senior team.
“We need to be very clear about what are we trying to accomplish, where are we focusing our efforts, in terms of prioritization of strategies, and then over-communicate that,” Osen says. “If you ask any of my senior leadership team in Canada, they can all tell you what our strategies are, where we’re focusing and what our goal is.”
The other side of culture is genuine care for your team, which includes taking the time to connect, spend time together, meet one-on-one and even to “write a handwritten note of appreciation…,” Osen says.
“It’s also about having fun,” she adds. “Who wants to be in a job where they don’t have some fun?”
Feature image by iStock.com/Parradee Kietsirikul
