By: Zachary Gleason
Most agency presidents assume leadership is something people either have or don’t — a natural trait of sorts, sharpened by experience over time. That assumption is wrong. Leadership is not intuitive, and it isn’t learned simply by surviving the school of hard knocks. It must be studied, practiced, and developed with the same intentionality as insurance knowledge or sales skills. A major blind spot in many agencies is that leaders spend thousands of hours mastering coverage, underwriting, and client service while investing almost nothing in leadership itself. Yet the truth is clear: leadership skills determine the pace of agency growth, the health of culture, and the long-term profitability of the business.
The Financial Weight of Leadership
Every leader has an outsized financial impact. A million dollars of revenue usually corresponds to roughly $500,000 of payroll. A skilled leader can easily have an impact of 5% per million of revenue while also increasing payroll efficiency by 10% or more. Do the math across an entire agency — leadership skill is one of the most valuable assets you can invest in. When leaders lack these skills, everything slows down: change initiatives take longer, employee engagement drags, and opportunities are missed.
The False Divide Between “Good” and “Bad” Leaders
We tend to think of leaders as “good” or “bad,” but that misses the point. The real divide is between skilled and unskilled. A leader with the right mindset but without training is ineffective — they aren’t harmful, but they’re not creating value either. An unskilled leader can be developed with training, coaching, and mentoring. A bad leader, however, is toxic. They resist transparency, mask their work, build fiefdoms, deflect blame, and strain collaboration. The cost of tolerating a bad leader is staggering and yet often delayed. Removing or repositioning them may feel painful, but agencies will experience an immediate lift in culture, focus, and momentum.
What Skilled Leaders Actually Do
The mindset of a leader may be natural, but the skills are not. Agency presidents need to stop assuming leadership will emerge and start intentionally building the following:
Strategic thinking — synthesizing variables, data, and trends to anticipate the future more accurately.
Process thinking — seeing systems end-to-end, understanding how early steps drive outcomes and how constraints, or bottlenecks have to be identified and solved for.
Psychology — grasping human motivation, incentives, and confidence; diagnosing human motivation and performance at its root.
Financial literacy — knowing how money is truly made in an agency, both short and long term. Also, understanding what drives the valuation of an agency.
Training and development — equipping others to succeed, not just solving problems for them.
Team building — creating environments where collaboration produces outcomes better than any one person’s plan.
Most presidents can recognize in minutes how many thousands of hours their people have spent on insurance expertise. In contrast, consider how few hours have been spent sharpening these six leadership and management skills. The gap is staggering, and the cost is felt every day.
A Story of Missed Development
One agency promoted a bright Account Manager into a leadership role. He was given encouragement, outside coaches, and pressure to “step up.” The problem was twofold: he received pep talks instead of skill training, and he wasn’t given the practical space to grow. The president wanted “more” but couldn’t define what more looked like. Leadership gaps were acknowledged vaguely but never addressed directly. The result? Stalled growth, a frustrated team, and an exhausted new leader. Sadly, after years of stress and missed opportunities they parted ways. Contrast this with presidents who define the needed skills, bring in education, and free their leaders from excessive client work. Those agencies move faster, develop talent deeper, and grow stronger.
The Trap of Client Work
Leaders must stay close enough to client and prospect work to stay sharp and grounded, but not so close they’re consumed by it. Every hour a leader spends beyond the “right amount” of client work is a lost hour that could have multiplied impact across the whole team. Agency presidents have to get this balance right.
Leadership Cannot Be Left to Chance
Agency presidents must own leadership development. No one else will do it. That doesn’t mean presidents must personally teach every skill, but they must create the environment, the systems, and the support. Senior leaders can mentor emerging leaders. Outside training, schools, and coaches can help. The quality varies, and not every attempt works — but presidents must “fail forward,” continuing to invest until the right systems and people are in place. Leadership development is too critical to put on the back burner or ignore.
The Paradigm Shift
The biggest shift is this: leaders are not “born” — they are built. Hire, fire, and promote based on mindset, then train relentlessly for skills. With the right mindset, training is fast and transformative. With the wrong mindset, training is impossible.
Your agency’s growth, culture, and profitability rise or fall on leadership skill. Leadership is not the byproduct of experience; it is the byproduct of intentional development.
A Note to Leaders
If you are a president, your leaders will never grow past the effort you put into them. Support their development with the same intensity you expect them to support clients. Measure your leadership investment in the same way you measure production and revenue.
A Note on the Atlante Sales Tool
Systems accelerate leadership impact. The Atlante Sales Tool was designed for sales leaders who are managing growth and sales. It provides the data and insights leaders need while eliminating much of the organizational burden that consumes their time. Tools like this are force multipliers — they let leaders spend less time on administration and more time on the skills and strategy that drives growth.
