Why Insurance Professionals Should Say What They Actually Think

"Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist." Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

Insurance runs on judgment shared across many people. Underwriters, actuaries, brokers, claims professionals and executives each hold a piece of the picture, and the quality of the decision depends on how much of that picture reaches the table. When people keep their real view to themselves, the organization prices, reserves and plans with less information than it believes it has.

Arthur C. Brooks examines this problem in his Atlantic column, "The Happiness of Choosing to Walk Alone." His subject is well-being, but the mechanism he describes applies directly to how we work.

Brooks draws on the idea of a collective illusion, a term used by the author and scientist Todd Rose. It describes a situation where an opinion is widely shared but each person believes it is theirs alone, so everyone stays quiet. Rose's think tank, Populace, surveyed more than 19,000 Americans. 58 percent said most people cannot share their honest opinions about sensitive topics, and 61 percent admitted to self-silencing. The gap between public statements and private views appeared in every demographic group.

Brooks adds a personal cost. Saying one thing while believing another creates dissonance, which is associated with anxiety and a sense of inauthenticity. Staying silent avoids the pain of social rejection, but it invites the discomfort of dishonesty. People end up in a trap of their own making.

For insurance professionals, the first cost is professional. Consider a pricing meeting where the model output looks wrong to several people, yet no one says so because the senior view is settled. Consider an underwriting committee where a concern about an accumulation is held back because the account is a relationship the firm values. Consider a claims team that sees a pattern in litigation but does not raise it because the reserve is already approved. In each case the dissent exists. It just never becomes data.

The second cost is personal. A career spent managing risk on behalf of others is a poor fit with a habit of managing your own opinions to avoid friction. Brooks argues that the habit wears down well-being over time.

His guide is Emerson, who offers three steps.

First, stop lying. There is a difference between withholding a comment out of politeness and stating something you do not believe for advancement or out of fear. Emerson called the second a self-betrayal.

Second, reframe independence. Fear of breaking from the group usually shows up as fear of exile. Emerson recasts it as solitude kept "with perfect sweetness" in the middle of a crowd. Disagreement becomes a position you hold rather than a punishment you receive.

Third, walk away without drama. Brooks stresses that this does not require confrontation. You do not have to refute every view you doubt. You can stop giving your attention and energy to claims you do not accept, and spend time with people who welcome honest exchange.

A practical exercise follows from this. List the opinions you hold privately about your work that differ from what you say in meetings. Pricing assumptions, model limitations, reinsurance terms, claims handling, strategy. Then decide which ones you will raise, to whom, and how. Some will turn out to be shared by more of your colleagues than you expected, and saying them aloud will end the illusion. Others will leave you in the minority. Brooks's answer to that is brief: so be it.

Leaders have a role as well. If candid disagreement is costly in your organization, you will get fewer of the views you need, and the ones you do get will arrive late. Asking for the contrary case, and responding to it without penalty, is a low-cost way to improve decisions.

This is part of an ongoing series that translates Arthur C. Brooks's happiness column for the insurance profession. You can read the original piece at The Atlantic.