Earning Trust with Mike Victorson, CEO M3 Insurance

All those are good qualities for a leader to have, but the answer is actually trustworthiness. The question, can I trust you, is always on our minds. Study suggests that in order to figure out whether or not someone is trustworthy, we analyze their words and their deeds to find out answers to two questions. Do you have good intentions towards me? Are you a friend or a foe, and do you have what it takes to act on those intentions?

Communication improves and ideas flow more freely. Increasing creativity and productivity like Stephen Covey says, the speed of trust, perhaps most important in the hands of a trusted leader. Employees are more comfortable with change and more willing to embrace a new vision. When your team doesn't trust you, you don't get their best effort and you'll find yourself unable to inspire, influence and create real change. So now getting to Mike.

Mike is responsible for the strategic direction and vision of M3 Insurance. Wisconsin's largest broker, ranked 55th largest in America and celebrating this year in 2018, their 50th anniversary. He is passionate about the community involvement and making an impact on a wide variety of industry and charitable organizations. Mike has been with M3 through his entire career.

He's worked his way up through eight positions in the company ranging from administration, mail to telemarketing to service to sales, and now management. Mike, while working your way up through M3, I'm sure you learned a lot about importance of gaining trust in others. So I'm excited to hear how the self proclaimed yooper becomes a CEO at M3. Welcome to the show.

And so, uh, I gave it a shot and uh, after he hired me, he basically gave me the chance to deliver the mail, uh, carry people's bags and learned the business from the ground up and the, the effort it takes to do that and hopefully modeling that type of humility, uh, and how you treat people like you treat yourself a was one of the things that allowed me to learn the business, grow, take on new assignments, have the trust of people who were seriously in considerably my elder at the time.

Uh, so that I could get an opportunity one day at leadership and started to work my way into leadership, uh, in my late twenties and we had some timing issues in our organization and our board thought that I would be the right person to succeed. Charlie Meldrum, our second CEO, and so in 2003 I became president in 2005 CEO.

So that was kind of an abridged version as you were reading all those descriptions though, man, I don't know if, uh, I was able to incorporate all those things on my write up, but maybe I got one or two of them. Right? So that I could earn enough trust to become CEO.

And myself at northwestern mutual and yourself at M3, what was it when you took over as CEO that you feel you did really well to earn the trust of whether it be elders, people that had come before you that are still there, people that you're bringing in and attracting to the business because as we know, those existing relationships you had that were just employee to employee or an employer or boss to employee, and at the moment your contract turned to ceo.

You're now the boss, so every relationship, every contracted, so what do you feel you did really well to earn the trust and for them to buy into your vision going forward?

Uh, it meant that and it means that in some ways, what you see is what you get. I'm not afraid and has and wasn't afraid to admit if I had ideas and literally involve you in making those things better, um, I wouldn't steal your ideas. I would promote them. Um, if I didn't know something out would admit it.

It's funny when you have a chance to tell somebody what you don't think you're good at or what you don't know, often it causes them to lean in a little bit because when they see that that's authentic, it's trustworthy. It helps build a relationship. I think also the other thing that I was willing to do early, and I still do it now in, in my leadership journey, is I like to share information and listen and involve people in the solution.

Um, I find that most people don't trust people who might have a God or savior complex or somebody who thinks that they have all of the ideas or all of the solutions they like to be included in where we're going or if it affects them. They like to be consulted with it, truly listened to have their feedback, reasoned and weighed and then cut straight. Hey, we included that in the solution, or I'm sorry, we can't make that happen, but here's why. Does that make any sense?

And basically telling us, okay,

They're going to follow you because they believe in the vision and the direction you're going.

Our subject today and it was I think we need to work on trust and part of the way that I challenged our group is, well, people don't trust you and trust is something that you'll be continuously earning throughout your journey. Even if you stack 10 or 15 really good decisions on top of one another. Understand that the 16th, you're still in the process of earning trust. All the things that you've done to show your competence, your ability to listen.

Again, things that would be a review if I just started talking about them. Now, you have to continuously do in how you lead and engage and interact with people so that you have their trust. It's fragile because in that 16th or that 20th initiative you lead on or decision that you make, if you go it alone, if you betray confidence, if you steal an idea, if you don't consult with people, if you don't bring them along with you, they don't trust your decision and their trust in you starts to erode.

This is one of those things where earning trust

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Whether it's an opinion you need to express an observation, you need to make something that you're struggling with. I love the expression, can we clear the air uh, because often there's air that needs to be cleared between people and it's not whether it's at home or at work for whatever reason, the way that I've been knit together uh, I've been able to do that from a very young age and um, that attribute, maybe if you'd call it that, is something that I lean on a lot.

I still lean on to this day that if, if something is amiss or I, uh, then it's time for some authentic, candid conversation about what it is we're either working on or what's getting in the way and the ability to talk about what's hard. Again, these words keep coming up. It involves being humble. It involves the ability to listen. Sometimes it involves, you know, extreme confidentiality. Um, but if you can stay true to those things, you can earn people's trust and they'll give it to you.

Now gossip and trying to as the no gossip thing is really hard to control, but it because there's always that, there's always conversation, there's always water cooler talk where you can control is expecting from your leadership team to not talk behind other's backs and if there is an issue, if I come to you and Mike and say, you know what, this, this Chad guy, yeah.

I, you know, I just don't know about him and uh, you know, whatever, whatever comes out of my mouth next doesn't matter because what should be happening as me having a conversation with Chad not with you and you as another leader in my organization saying to me, Hey, have you talked to Chad about that yet? Amen. Because once we can come to each other and address what you said, whether clear the air address, the elephant in the room or whatever it may be, things are going much more smoothly.

You're engaging those trigger conversations and behind each other's back and trust or erode real quick.

And I think what it shows again is for most people a real difficulty confronting someone in a good way, in a kind way, and some of the words you used in the intro, Josh, so that people can literally put defenses down and have the kind of conversation they need to have, um, so that they can move forward. Um, you know, it's interesting when you were talking about that example too, I think what happens to leaders a lot is we want to help [inaudible] leaders saying it in a different way.

We want to fix problems and oftentimes people come to us with relationship type issues, uh, that would involve trust and they want us to fix them. I think one of the most powerful things we can do as leaders is ask questions. Absolutely. And in the process of asking questions, I think it helps people with self discovery and I havent thought about that. I haven't had that conversation, you know, that's a different way to think about it.

I think sometimes in our questions we can actually put the better construction on the person who may be being talked about or triangulated in that moment. I didn't think that Josh would have thought about it that way. You know, I think Julie wasn't, oh, I should have given her the benefit of the doubt. Um, in a way that doesn't necessarily mean that we're cheerleading unnecessarily for our colleague or sticking up for them unnecessarily. Just causing the

And he goes and it just didn't or kind of shakes his head because he knew exactly what he should've done and hadn't done it yet. And uh and did, but didn't appreciate me calling them out about it because we have that culture and we know that the. And he knows they're both very busy. They know they should have had this conversation. I haven't had it yet.

We have to constantly challenge our awareness so that we can model the type of behavior, especially as leaders, that allows other people to say, yeah, I trust him. Mike may not do everything right. Mike may not be the smartest guy in the room. Mike may take risks that doesn't work out. Mike sometimes may have to do things that he can't bring me completely along with due to confidentiality or other business reasons, but I trust them. I trust that he cares about me.

I'm very comfortable with who I am, uh and I am genuinely interested in people and getting to know them, uh, what makes them tick. And I have almost a fatal flaw of wanting to help. I was joking before about, you know, I can be absolutely a yes man. Well, if someone doesn't know me very well, that can be misconstrued, it can be taken the wrong way. And so I've had to literally learn to slow my roll to pick spots, to not necessarily be as radically authentic as might be my personality.

Hey Mike, that's not an appropriate subject to bring up with somebody the first time you meet them, see where I'm going. And I, I literally as a kid and when I was a younger professional, I struggled with that and, and I gave people sometimes the wrong impression that would get in the way of potentially being able to trust me. And so I had to learn and isn't very self-effacing thing to talk about, but there's a big learning component tree for me in my leadership. Slow down, vic.

That's my nickname, sir. Slow down. Um, they may not be ready from a relationship standpoint for that. Yeah. So that's probably one of the, a big kind of mia culpa. What I've learned about our interests are actually identify a lot with that. I have been accused of similar things. I think one of the things I was thinking about as you were bringing that up was how, how well our spouses can know us and really mirror for us in.

One of the things I was thinking as you were talking about that is as a fixer, which I am as well, um, people don't always want you to fix. Sometimes they'll just want you to listen. And uh, and so I've learned to ask the question with my spouse Jenna, like, uh, you know, when she says something and I almost want to jump to fix that actually slow down and say, is this a situation where you want me to listen or fix?

Amen. Just pause and then and then be able to go because I need to know which mode I'm in because my natural inclination, my bias is to fix, which it sounds like yours is, but sometimes people just don't. They don't want that. They want us to listen well and to take it back to a working example of where you can earn people's trust and they can want to come back to you potentially is if you.

If you're a good listener and you ask good questions and you can keep confidences and you can refrain from taking credit for their work, then they'll see themselves move forward in their career, move forward in a really natural way and if they get a chance to experience that with you as a part of their team, they trust that and then when they want you to stay in their team and they'll bring more things to you in future. Hey, can I bounce this off you?

Hey, I was thinking about and what they can trust is Josh will shoot me straight. Josh won't steal my ideas. Josh won't take credit for my work. Josh will helped me make it better. Joshua will support me when I'm not around and when those things start to happen on a regular basis. You earn trust.

Can you think of an example in that route where you were really successful or maybe even one where you really failed?

And um, the, the outgoing president, CEO at the time, Charlie Meldrum was a wonderful mentor to me and he absolutely for me and others on our team a propped us up and supported us in our dream to grow the company. Well, uh, we red line the car. We spent way too much money. Uh, we made way too many changes. Um, we reorganized the business, rebranded it. Um spent money to the point that it impacted things like our retirement plan contribution and our bonuses.

I turned over the entire board of directors, restructured the company, so I woke up one day and I literally had the one and only anxiety attack I've ever had in my life and I still remember it. It was in 2007 and we're a privately held company and had to go before our shareholders and talk about where we were going.

And it wasn't pretty and I still remember it Carin was getting ready for bed and I literally walked in and I put my hand on the sink and I was trying to catch my breath and she thought I was goofing around and it was a wonderful wake up call for me of Mike. Uh, you need to trust your colleagues more and when you trust, you will earn trust. When you give trust, you'll receive it back.

The other one that was uh, um, we recovered fine and all that ended up being a great investment to propel our business. Uh, but in 2008 Hubris probably bit me the most as a senior leader in the organization, we had expanded our company and we thought, you know what, why don't we go to Denver, great city. We've done it three or four other times in Wisconsin in places like Wausau. Why couldn't we make it in Denver? I made a few states away, seems natural.

And, uh, you know, being that it's almost perfectly 10 years ago, there was this little thing in October of 2008 that, you know, they made movies about and written about and literally we opened our doors on October, first of 2008, well, three years later, uh, after losing millions of dollars, uh, we shut down our Denver office and something that really was I think a part of me earning trust with our team was not being afraid to admit mistakes, not being afraid to shut something down and talking

very candidly and authentic leaders. That word again about what I and what our organization had learned. um now in that case, I had brought people with me. I didn't make that decision by myself. Um, but I think a key part of my leadership journey and how people could come to trust me is it was my job as the CEO at the time to lead on why we were leaving Denver. And um, I had to do that. That was a big moment.

Or whether it's any relationship you have, whether it's your spouse, your kids, your employees, colleagues, the other leaders, you have to trust them first.

Fill in the blank gets kinda like what you were talking about with a performing jazz, you think about this workforce now and what's happening in American business, how much more and how much more quickly people are productive on teams as a part of our millennial generation that's in the workforce they don't care that you're the CEO.

They care about, hey man, we make music together or not because if you're going to walk over time and take my instrument from me or if you're not going to give me opportunities for the Solo, wow, why don't want be on your team. And so it's a, we're preparing for a meeting. And uh, sometimes they like to look back and use it to make points around the future.

And it's again, because it's the fall of 2018 when, when you do the kind of perfect symmetry of a decade, the October, November, December timeframe of 2008 was historic in America. This upstart, Barack Obama becomes president and we have the worst financial crisis since 1929.

Um, when you look demographically, we're having these big shifts of boomers and xers and the economy and um, it, it's, uh, it's a great moment because I heard last week, you probably know this better be given your business, Josh. We've either been on the longest bull market run or close to it. We are okay on March ninth of 2009, I think with the Wall Street Journal wrote a week or so ago. These are unprecedented times. And so how do we look at these?

Uh, I loved your, topic for today because to me it's kind of like a back to basics for leadership. How do we look at these back-to-basics things to help make sure that we don't waste the opportunity that this market is providing to us with this awesome new workforce?

I mean, we lost trust in our government officials and what happened with the mortgage crisis and then are they going to build this all built? I mean all this stuff and now we look where we're at and I mean, can you imagine taking ourselves back to '08? Could we possibly even imagine this day today? I mean everyone thought that was the end of the world, the financials at the end of the dollar, every, every.

I mean every commercial, every other commercial we saw was about gold and precious metals because the end of the dollar was near. Do you remember this Josh?

Um, and I think my guess is if I get a chance to hang out with you and look and talk to you about your practice and in the businesses and the business owners that you work with, similar to ours, uh, we're just watching them do great things and try great things, but you know, if you're in an advisory role, if you're in a supplier role, people are putting trust in you that you will be the person that they think you are going to be.

Um, and we're talking about family businesses where this is their baby, this is personal to them, and to hear about what they did and, and things that they did for the people that work there, the customers that they had to supply product to the promises that they made the trust that they earned with all of those constituencies because of, again, what I would think of is their authenticity, willingness to admit what they were afraid of, what they thought they could deliver on.

I think it's going to propel their businesses forward in a really dramatic way.

One of the things I've found about the transparency and earning trust is just whether you're giving positive feedback or negative feedback, they know where you stand and so because there are times as a leader, you're going to deliver negative feedback. It's an unfortunate part of our roles. So the transparency and not telling people what they want to hear but what they actually need to hear because I think we're all just part of part of that growth in our human nature.

We want to know what you think. wnd What's interesting is, uh, I've done reviewed review, review after review with plenty of people throughout my career, even as a young leader, as a sales manager at best buy way back when was, uh, is really, people want to know if they're doing a good job or a bad job and what they can improve on in general. Um, how has that helped you in, in building trust.

And I know right now at a high level you're probably doing that more with leaders than someone in the mailroom that as you started with. But, but how does, how do your leaders appreciate that transparency and authenticity from you?

If, as a leader we're willing to have that also come back to us and we can set up an environment that's safe enough for people to communicate directly with us as well because they're the best people to comment on our leadership and people then get a chance to experience the wholeness of that conversation and relationship. And so I think they can trust it.

Um, we do CEO round tables at M3, something that the board pushed me to do and I took the role back in '05 was to treat the business like I'd never been there. So for the first one, hundred days, hundred and 20 days it was meet with every person that worked at m. three, go see customers, talked to our insurance companies that we represent, talk to community partners, um, and you know, good, bad, ugly, right up, down, all those different kinds of things. What do I need to know about M3?

We've kept that practice going and so now it's somewhere between 10 and 12 of those round tables a year for me with small groups of M3ers. Um, and what's great about it is they get an opportunity to give me very direct feedback. It's a one question. Meaning if I were the CEO of M3, this is what I, what would you focus on and why?

And they just get to comment from their perspective and the ability as the leader of the organization to accept what they have to say and take notes and distribute them back to them and talk about it in an, in a briefing to the organization. Uh, it's been really transformative for our business when people come into M3 now. It's kind of funny. They chuckle. Sometimes they scratch their head. Sometimes it's a pain in their butt.

We have a culture that is massively participatory if, uh, if they don't like the hot chocolate, they're going to tell you that they don't like the hot chocolate. Um, people feel like it's an environment, uh, and they feel, I think candidly comfortable enough and trusted enough that they don't like something or if they think something can get better or if we should be thinking about something they'll say it.

get fired and they have this like a fear of retaliation or something like. And I hear that and see that in some leaders out there is the security of their, their lack of self confidence isn't there yet to receive sometimes tough feedback. Uh, and they really shut their people down and then they wonder why they lost that person.

People at M3 would tell you I love the challenge. I love to push. I love the question. Um, sometimes I know it drives them crazy, but, uh, the, the ability to do what you described has gotten better for me. The longer I've been in the role it would be, it would be disingenuous of me to say that, you know, I came out of the womb, you know, with that type of ability. So do you think a young leader can do that right away? Or is it something or are there ways that they can do that?

Or does it have to be developed over a seasoning? No, I do think it's both because I think I had some of it for sure.

Um, I think if young leaders, one of the things I would encourage any younger leader or an organization that was going to be promoting somebody who was younger maybe going to be leading people who are significantly older than them, um, or had significantly more experience is to provide them a coach to provide them somebody that can literally talk with them about things that they're leading on and how they're leading. It's one of my favorite expressions.

It's not what, but how and it, it absolutely crashes into this concept of trust. You know, when, when you peel apart relationships that are broken, at least at M3 that need to be repaired or with an insurance company or with a client, usually like vast, vast majority of the time, there is not a fundamental disagreement over what's happening. It almost always comes back to how [inaudible], how it was being handled, how it was communicated, how it was rolled out. How did you involve people in it?

How did you give them a voice to make it better, etc. Etc. Etc. And I think that's where a younger person or it doesn't have to be younger, even newer in a, in a leadership role. If they, my encouragement would be to have that type of coach and candidly we got some people now coming up in some leadership at M3 and where I was just in a meeting recently where we're talking about giving them some coaching in 2019. I'm not because they're dumb not because they don't get it.

Not becAuse they've got no potential. It's exactly the opposite. I believe everyone needs a coach. So I'm on the same wavelength. A PGA golfer's got a swing, coach rogers as a quarterback coach. He's making a couple of bucks now. So I mean it's, I just think it's something that would be really good for a younger leader to have. And one of the things we've touched on there that, I mean what you said is such a knowledge bomb, like

What is ways that you've, maybe some ways that your organization or you personally have worked to build trust in the community to make M3 such a strong brand?

Sometimes they become our customers. Um, we spend our time with them, we try to work on solutions in the community that we live in. So our Wausau, our green bay, our eau claire, our milwaukee our madison locations, each have different budgets and they have different community partners that they work with.

And uh, one of the things that our community partners can come to trust then is that we're in it with them and if a little bit like what we've already talked about, if we're not going to be, we tell them and most often we give them notice so that if they need to replace monetary philanthropy or time philanthropy from our organization, they have a chance to backfill that.

And so I think what people have seen is that we, we try to so very generously, uh, something that lauren mortenson really imparted upon our organization was that we take so many withdrawals when you're in a service business, uh, we just have to make deposits. And when people see us do that through our communIties and through our partnerships there, they trust that we're in it for the right reasons. Not the wrong ones. That's great. So

Um, one is, uh, actually our marketing department does a terrific job with social media and our website and julie retters is our director of marketing and so she's somebody that I would encourage you to, to, to contact and in leverage as a way to get into the organization for in terms of making contact with us or me, um, or if people feel comfortable contacting me directly, you know, they can find me on linkedin or twitter or my email address, you know, [email protected].

And if I can help, I help. If I can't, I can't. Um, sometimes they can get to things quickly. Sometimes not, but you know, one of the things for me that I've always felt as you know, we all have had so many people pour into us. I'm very, very few complete meritocracy stories. I'm not trying to suggest people listening aren't working hard and having earned what they have. Yeah. Um, but, but we all get where we get with the help of so many and I'm included in that.

And so because I'm so grateful of all the help that I received along the way, I just feel like it's important to pay that forward with somebody who wants to help networking or finding a role or working on a project lets' talk and we already know you're be transparent.