You’re insurance team is probably familiar with Eeyore and Tigger, the two beloved characters from the Winnie-the-Pooh series. Eeyore, a gray donkey, is known for being gloomy and downtrodden, while Tigger is an energetic tiger. When we’re looking at members of an insurance team, you might be able to compare them to these two characters. Some members of your insurance team may come to mind as being more energetic and exuberant, while others can have a pessimistic attitude, treat nearly everything as a disaster, and are likely underperforming.
“But the bottom line is this: Attitude is definitely a choice. So when you choose your attitude in the morning, you can choose to wake up with gratitude and be thankful that you wake up.” (3:04)
Now, Eeyores can contribute a lot to a team, and may have amazing careers, and want to fuel genuine change. But sometimes, their negative energy can be hard to overcome. When it comes down to it, your insurance team is your agency’s biggest investment, and in order to be Ridiculously Amazing, you can’t afford to have the wrong people at your agency. Here’s what happens when we each stay focused on being Tiggers, or being fun, energetic, and excited about being an insurance agent.
We have the opportunity to reframe our day
Attitude is really a choice, and that starts from the moment we wake up. An Eeyore might wake up and start dreading their day, but a Tigger might wake up, grateful to even experience another day. When we start to reframe our attitude, we can start living our lives in a more energetic and positive way overall.
We can use our energy more efficiently
If you’ve ever watched or read Winnie-the-Pooh, you know that Eeyore is always pretty sleepy. That’s probably because being pessimistic and negative is a tiring activity, even in real life. When you’re using your energy to fight and push back, instead of listening and working through situations, you’re going to be expending a lot of energy, which could go towards something more productive.
We experience things instead of judging them
When going through the day-to-day, Eeyores are much more likely to stand back and judge something, instead of jumping in and experiencing it. This might look like somebody hearing a new idea, and deciding to sit back and “see how it goes,” instead of participating in it. What’s the problem with that? Well, most of the time, these ideas require collective involvement, and if the Eeyores sit things out, the whole insurance team will suffer.
We can keep the big picture in mind for our insurance team
Sometimes, the little things can pile up, and it makes sense that they feel like mountains, instead of molehills. But if we’re acting like Tiggers, we can keep the big picture in mind, and ask ourselves if this situation will matter in a year from now. We don’t want to lose our cool over tiny things that don’t really impact the big picture, and keeping that in mind can help us act with that Tigger-like energy.
As an insurance team we remember that almost nothing is uniform when it comes to clients
When we’re acting like Eeyores, it can be pretty common to make blanket statements about our clients. Saying things like “our clients don’t like being texted,” or “our clients are so price sensitive,” can put a damper on agent behavior, and truthfully, these statements probably aren’t true for every single one of your clients. Tiggers remember that not everybody is the same, and that these techniques might work great for some clients.
The bottom line is that an insurance team full of Tiggers is going to be more fun, energetic, and likely more successful, than an insurance team full of Eeyores. For a great example, you can listen to our recent podcasts, where we talked to two amazing agencies which divorced themselves from Eeyores, and are having a lot more fun now.
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