Help

BI’s Article search uses Boolean search capabilities. If you are not familiar with these principles, here are some quick tips.

To search specifically for more than one word, put the search term in quotation marks. For example, “workers compensation”. This will limit your search to that combination of words.

To search for a combination of terms, use quotations and the & symbol. For example, “hurricane” & “loss”.

Login Register Subscribe

Young people need to learn social skills: Abernathy

Reprints

Neal Abernathy, CEO of Swett & Crawford Group in Atlanta, spoke last week at NAPSLO's mid-year leadership forum and gave what I thought was some sound advice for the insurance industry.

Specifically, Mr. Abernathy spoke about the challenges wholesalers and others face today in determining how best to utilize technology without disenfranchising the more successful and “seasoned” producers.

What I found most interesting, however, was his take on the younger, more tech savvy, generation who will be entering the insurance industry.

They have no social skills, Mr. Abernathy said.

He recalled a conversation he had with a retail broker who told him that while you can hire the best college graduates today who know all about insurance, risk management and loss control, “you put them in a dinner party setting and they can't carry on a dinner conversation.”

“Texting and emailing are not communicating,” Mr. Abernathy said. “Young adults will sit next to each other and text. They don't talk. But when these people get into the business environment, they're not going to know how to carry on a conversation,” he said.

In addition to teaching young adults how to communicate, Mr. Abernathy said young people also need to be taught empathy.

Today's kids are being raised by parents who make sure every need is being met, he said. In the business world, however, “part of our job is to know what the other person's needs are and help them achieve what they need to achieve (together). If all we're doing is meeting our own goals, that doesn't work too well long term…And kids today just don't understand that,” he said.

Lastly, Mr. Abernathy challenged the industry to become more informed.

“Read the Wall Street Journal; learn something about politics; learn something about business. You can't just know what your property form says or about what your account is or what your book of business is and be effective in what you do. You have to be rounded and you have to know what's going on in the industry and what's going on in business in general and in the world in general,” he said.