My Leadership Vision

 

In the future, I want to be able to affect change. In the corporate world, that can sometimes be hard to do. People may feel like their job consists of doing trivial tasks and that their efforts are unappreciated. They don't believe they have a say in things or that they can make a difference. With a little dedication in the actuarial field, you actually have a chance to make a difference if you stay on the exam track.

For an actuarial student the exam track can be one of the worst things about the profession, but it can also be one of the best. After college, transitioning from actuarial student to credentialed actuary requires you to pass nine grueling professional exams. It's a process that takes nine years on average, though it can range anywhere from five to fifteen years. If you think life at the university is tough, imagine raising a family and working forty hours a week while trying to squeeze in four-hundred study hours per exam session.

The process can be draining, to say the least, but as exhausting as the exam track is, it can be refreshing to know that you have a great deal of control over your future. If you pass exams you're guaranteed pay raises and promotions. If you fail exams, however, you're likely to be fired -- or at least moved to another department within the company -- since most employers have strict policies restricting the number of times you can consecutively fail any given exam.

My internships have taught me that the job requires dedication and determination. You have to be willing to put in the hours to study for your exams, but should you fail you can't become discouraged. It's always disappointing not to pass, but the exams are structured so that fewer than forty percent of test-takers pass during any given sitting so it all comes with the territory.

So much of the actuarial profession is based off these exams. Once I pass all your exams and attain fellowship, I'll be in a position that will allow me to lead others, but it makes me question what leadership means. To me, leadership is many things. Great leaders must command respect. Respect isn't something that's given; it's earned, and without it, people aren't likely to take to heart what you have to say. Leaders must be teachers, passing on the knowledge they've gathered. The world can often be a crazy place, so leaders must be focused, directing others when they've lost their bearings. A good leader is genuine. Dass defines genuineness: "We don't have to be anybody in particular. We don't have to be 'this' or 'that.' We are free simply to be."[1] Dass also describes another characteristic of a good leader: "The ability to remain quiet and open -- simply to observe, never to judge."[2] But I think most importantly a leader must be able to motivate people. Sometimes people just don't understand why their tasks are important or just aren't interested in what they're doing. If that's the case when a team gets stuck, a leader can tell the people where to go or teach them what to do, but if they're not properly motivated it's a much harder issue to deal with. Every person is different, so knowing how to push each person to the fullest is an indispensable skill that great leaders possess.

What does this all mean to me? It means that I've got much work to do to become a great leader. I'm a very technical person, and like many other technical people, I don't have strong people skills, though it's something I'm always trying to improve. In today's world, both technical skills and people skills are necessary to excel. With only my actuarial training I'd be fit to crunch numbers in a cubicle all day long, but by learning about what makes a great leader I can use my technical skills to make important decisions that affect many people in positive ways.

Looking forward, it's hard for me to see the future because there are just so many variables. One thing that I know for sure is that I'll be living in a big city; the market for actuaries demands it. After that, it gets hazy. There are a lot of different things I could do. I could work in pension, life, or property and casualty. I could work for an insurance company or a consulting firm. I don't have much of a preference, so my future will most likely be dependent on where I get my first job. Wherever I get hired, that's probably the specialization I'll end up in.

After graduation, things can get confusing. Life is a continual process of learning. At each new step we learn more about the world and about ourselves. College is a time when we learn to become more independent, but there's still a lot of guidance. I've had a lot of personal freedom, but I've never been financially independent. I'll be the first person in my family to graduate from college, so my parents are proud of me and help to support me financially in any way possible. After college, though, things get tougher, so I want to take things in slowly. I'll be adapting to new surroundings, learning all kinds of new job functions, studying for exams, and getting used to life after college. I'll be paying back loans and paying back my parents for everything they've done. I'll be buying my first car and my first house. Sometimes it can be intimidating, but if there's one thing I learned in college, it's that you have to adapt to survive. It's as if Darwin was speaking of college students when he wrote that "changes in the conditions of life give a tendency to increase variability."[3] Nothing is ever constant. From week to week things can change dramatically. Some days I may only get four hours of sleep while on others I can get away with fourteen hours of sleep. Whatever it takes, that's what I'll do, however chaotic it may be. I only wish I had learned better time management skills before this semester. After college there are more adjustments to be made, and it's almost like starting life anew. Buckley writes about this perpetual cycle: "Surely the life of the Phoenix, the life through death and change, was 'the law of all things.'"[4]

I hope to take things slowly in the beginning, but as time goes by, I want to take on more responsibility at my job and assume leadership roles. I want to be the kind of person that people can turn to when they need help. When I interned at USAA in San Antonio this past summer, all of the actuaries in the department took on a form of leadership. Every person was required to learn all there is to know about one aspect of the computer system that they used. There were dozens of programs and databases, but they weren't all used on a daily basis so not everyone was an expert on them all. Normally, the systems were intuitive enough that with just a little knowledge you could get by, but if something ever went wrong you could find the expert and they would be able to help you. Individually, everyone learned a small amount, but collectively they amassed a wide array of knowledge.

One of my manageable goals is to pass another exam before I graduate from college. I passed my first exam on the first try, but I took the second this past May and didn't pass. I took it again in early November and I feel very confident that I'll pass. There's still time to take an exam in May of next year, so if I pass the exam I just took I can begin to start the third one. If not, I can still retake the second. Either way, passing one or two more exams would put me in a great position to land a job after college. One of my other manageable goals is to pass exams quickly. The average amount of time spent on the exam track is nine years, and since exams are offered twice a year, it means people usually pass on the second attempt. By passing exams on the first attempt I can cut that time down. The less time spent taking exams, the faster I can advance down the career path. Passing all the exams grants you fellowship in either of the two major actuarial associations, meaning executive leadership positions won't be far off. All of this information on the subject of exams can be overwhelming and possibly boring, but it is too important to actuaries to neglect.

By passing exams quickly, it leads into my stretch goal, which I hope to have achieved within ten to twelve years: to attain fellowship by passing all of the actuarial exams and be in an executive position. The higher up the corporate ladder you are, the more leverage you have to make an impact on your peers. My other stretch goal is to stay motivated. As a leader, I not only have to motivate others, but   I have to motivate myself as well. Walter Pater wrote: "To burn always with this hard, gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life."[5]  People who love what they do tend to be happier in life while those who don't end up suffering through the daily grind, only doing the minimum necessary to get by. These people are lost, and Miller embodies them: "I stick my finger into existence -- it smells of nothing. Where am I? Who am I?"[6] To these people, I have one recommendation that I relay from Mill, and that is to find "a source of inward joy, of sympathetic and imaginative pleasure, which could be shared by all human beings."[7]

http://webspace.utexas.edu/cbh57/victorian_lit/p2b/index.htm

Word Count: 1,798

Quote Count: 239

Net Word Count: 1,559

Added Words (Accounting for Deleted Words): 367

Notes

1. Ram Dass, "How Can I Help?" in Victorian Literature, ed. Jerome Bump (Austin: Jenn's Copy & Binding, 2006), 155.

2. Ibid., 159.

3. Charles Darwin, "The Origin of Species," in Victorian Literature, ed. Jerome Bump (Austin: Jenn's Copy & Binding, 2006), 612.

4. Jerome H. Buckley, "The Pattern of Conversion," in Victorian Literature, ed. Jerome Bump (Austin: Jenn's Copy & Binding, 2006), 354.

5. Walter Pater, "The Renaissance," in Victorian Literature, ed. Jerome Bump (Austin: Jenn's Copy & Binding, 2006), 346.

6. J. Hillis Miller, "The Disappearance of God," in Victorian Literature, ed. Jerome Bump (Austin: Jenn's Copy & Binding, 2006), 705.

7. John Stuart Mill, "Autobiography," in Victorian Literature, ed. Jerome Bump (Austin: Jenn's Copy & Binding, 2006), 365.