Why Insurance Professionals Should Practice Being Bad at Something

"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." Samuel Beckett

Insurance rewards competence. Underwriters are promoted for sound judgment, brokers for relationships that hold, claims professionals for accurate calls under pressure. The industry is built to reduce error, and its people are trained to avoid it. That habit has a cost when it extends to a person's own development.

In a recent column in The Atlantic, Arthur C. Brooks makes a counterintuitive case. Doing something you are bad at can make you better at what you already do well. He gives a personal example. He lectures in Spanish and Catalan, languages he learned as an adult, and finds the discomfort of working without full fluency improves his public speaking in English.

The mechanism is worth understanding. When goal-directed effort is blocked, the brain registers it in circuitry associated with pain, the same region involved in social rejection. That pain is useful because it creates motivation to succeed, if not at the task at hand then at another one. In one study, skilled pitchers who were given batting practice performed poorly as hitters, and the frustration made them more driven to improve their pitching. A 2018 study of employees found the same pattern. People frustrated by incompetence at one task were more motivated to show competence at something they already did well.

Brooks offers two ways to make failure productive. The first is to treat discomfort as an indicator of growth rather than a threat. In a 2022 experiment with amateur improvisers, the group told to seek out awkwardness engaged more fully than the group that was not. The second is action rumination. Ordinary rumination asks what a failure says about you. Action rumination asks what exactly went wrong and how to correct it next time. The first is a waste of time. The second produces learning.

For insurance professionals, three applications follow.

First, build a deliberate stretch into your development. An underwriter might spend a quarter learning claims handling. A broker might sit with the actuarial team and work through a pricing model. A claims adjuster might learn how reinsurance recoveries are structured. The early weeks will feel slow and exposed. That friction is the point, and it tends to carry back into the core role as sharper motivation and a wider view of how risk moves through the chain.

Second, review mistakes the way a good claims file is reviewed. Identify the sequence of decisions, locate where the outcome diverged from the plan, and write down what would change next time. Keep the review about the task and not about the person. Teams that do this well learn faster than teams that either ignore errors or assign blame for them.

Third, leaders can structure the exposure. Brooks favors a 75/25 rule, in which employees spend three quarters of their time on their assigned work and one quarter helping others outside their area. The short-term cost is friction. The long-term return is better motivation in the core assignment and a freer flow of knowledge and skills across the organization. Insurance carriers and brokerages are often siloed by function, and this is a practical way to reduce that. It only works if managers resist punishing the awkwardness it produces.

The same logic applies to the industry's own discomforts. Emerging perils, parametric structures, new data sources and automated underwriting all put experienced professionals back in the position of beginners. Those who accept that position and analyze their early errors will adapt faster than those who wait until they feel competent.

Brooks closes with a Catalan proverb, Qui no s'arrisca, no pisca. He who does not take a risk catches no fish. Insurance professionals understand risk better than most. The same discipline applies to a career: a measured, deliberate exposure to failure is a sound investment.

This article is part of our Happiness series, inspired by Arthur C. Brooks and his Atlantic column, "The Benefit of Doing Things You're Bad At."