A few decades ago, there was an ad in the print media released by a Life Insurance Company.

It was a family photograph. It covered members of three generations of a single family. Men and women of all ages were sitting and standing.

The caption under the ad was: “Find the Agent”.

One can easily imagine the picture perfect and draw many great thoughts about its caption and contents; conclusions may be difficult but conviction is certain.

Can an agent become and stay as a part of the family of his client, as suggested by the ad?

Let us consider a few nuances of human relationships.

Basically an individual is understood and accepted by others mainly by the individual’s behaviour – oral, physical and ethical. Ethical behaviour builds up certain types of relationships.

Perhaps the agent in the ad succeeded to become firstly and always to stay acceptable and affable to people and then, practice good and noble governance of all his activities, mainly normal and mostly ethical.

These are the necessary personal traits that would make any one lovable and affable to others – especially life insurance agents who want to grow successful professionals. These are also the same traits that would develop one’s own overall and individual personality.

Trust – borne:

Trust-worthiness is the basic trait that makes a person – especially an agent – acceptable to the other person / s.

It must be remembered that the material product that an agent sells is life insurance which also demands total trust in between the seller ( the insurer ) and the buyer ( the insured ) – utmost good faith in insurance parlance. But, in practice, the insurer becomes a distant seller to the insured where as the agent is  the proximate seller and naturally the buyer expects the said total trust in and from the agent – the real seller.

Further, the trait of “trust” in a person is mainly three-fold – personal,  professional and ethical. Professional trust-worthiness will certainly bind the agent with the customer more on business terms while his personal  trust-worthiness is likely to bind him with customer on a more friendly bond and the ethical trust-worthiness is more likely allow him into closer and confidential familial fold of the customer. I have seen many such instances in my forty-year long career in life insurance industry.

But it is rare.

It is rare because psychologists (on personality) say that an individual to posses the same level and degree of a trait on all the roles he plays in his life is difficult unless it is nurtured so. In other words, a person is likely to behave differently under different circumstances.

This is what Hurlock said: “An individual’s personality (personal behaviour) is assessed by the effectiveness with which he is able to elicit positive reactions from a variety of persons under different circumstances.”1

Modern psychologists say that the required levels of “effectiveness” can be achieved by individuals by nurturing the required traits, through proper education (both formal and  informal education) and training (both self and imparted training).

Interestingly, it may be remembered that the very word – persona – means “mask” and refers to the ancient Greek stage drama. An individual wears the persona (face mask) of a character in the drama and gives an effective performance that we believe the person is the personality of the character of the drama. The level of effectiveness of the performance of the person (the actor) depends up on the degree of education (knowledge) about the character in the drama and training taken by him to portray it.

In personality development theory, the nurturing can be so internalized that a person can turn the required personality into his own individuality. The two words personality and individuality used here do indeed differ in their meaning. Scientifically, there is a distinction drawn by psychologists between – character, personality and the individuality of a person.

Character, according to psychologists, is a trait that implies certain moral standards and is normally measurable in comparison. Personality is said to be a universal phenomenon and .not specific to any one person only, where as individuality is a phenomenon specific to a person.

Individuality is the owning of the acquired personality in unique style; and it is an individual’s uniqueness. It is said that one can see two or more persons with the same character, two or more persons with the same personality but it is difficult to see  more than one person with the same individuality. It is this individuality that makes people different from one another.

Therefore, every professional – especially those for whom people are the ‘raw material’, Like life insurance agents – should know the nuances of the effect of personality traits affecting the individuality of theirs, choose and nurture and cultivate such of them to define their own individual personality – in a way to be in the close confidence of their clientele, as the one in the ad mentioned earlier.

Let us now consider the various nuances of an individual’s personality, remembering that “an individual’s personality is assessed by the effectiveness with which he is able to elicit positive reactions from a variety of persons under different circumstances.”

Personality Nuances:

It is our common knowledge and experience that each one of us meet and interact – either temporarily or constantly – with a variety of persons under different circumstances, in the course of our life’s routine chores – personal, domestic, social, official and professional.

These interactions with variety of persons make us behave in differing patterns at different situations and with the same different persons. In fact, the sum total effect of these differing patterns of behaviour in an individual defines his total personality.

These different patterns of behaviour are referred to the behaviour of the several alternative persons that exist and manifest in every personal self. The combined effect of these alternative persons derives the total personality of the person. Interestingly the proportions of these alternative persons’ manifestation in the person – either in dormancy  or otherwise – also derives the totality of what we call the personality.

The most important alternative persons in an individual, who reflect in his normal life, are:

• the natural person
• the domestic person
• the social person
• the organizational person
• the professional person
• the peer person – and
• the political person.

It is our common experience that the behaviour of persons changes as they change their roles from one alternative person to another alternative person – during the course of their interactions with others. As simple examples, an individual may be labeled as a kind ‘father’ in his family – as domestic person – while he might behave as a cruel ‘boss’ in his office, a bigger family – as an organizational person.  The same person may be plain and naïve in his neighbourhood, as a social person but may behave like cunning and cursing person with his peers – as a peer person.

Thus, just as any other person, every agent has his (her) own natural person in him surrounded by his family and domestic relationships, his own small world and society around him, and his official, professional and peer contacts. These are the personality nuances with which he confronts every moment and he has to relate them to his own self and behaviour, and react in a suitable style which will be able to elicit positive reactions from all this variety of persons under different circumstances.

In other words, every agent has to “identify the Agent” of the ad in himself and nurture him in the face of all the personality nuances which he confronts in his life and activities so as to  elicit positive reactions from all such variety of persons under different circumstances.

Experts say that this can be achieved by proper nurturing through education and training, as explained below.

The natural or native person is the original self of the person as born – or in other words before any inputs of education or training are inducted. Education is not merely the formal education through schooling or tutoring – it is also the informal education by observation and understanding of the world around, which is, in fact, said to be more effective in building up one’s personality.

The natural person is mostly genetic in nature and is imbibed with his / her own in-born qualities and characteristics like natural skills, intelligence, talents, general character and other genetic qualities which are begotten from his parents and fore-parents. This aspect is the in-born and basic person, where as all the other alternative persons mentioned above are nurtured and improvised versions of the basic or natural or native person by education – both formal and informal – and training – both imbibed (self-learnt) and imported (tutored).

In other words, the basic person is a natural person while all other alternative persons are nurtured persons which again means that we can mould ourselves into ‘lovable’, ‘affable’ and ‘acceptable’ shades of all the other alternative persons from negative shades – if any.

In fact, it is believed that the natural person in all individuals is basically made of tolerably good qualities and characteristics, where as their behaviour pattern derived from their alternative persons – as nurtured by their individual education (formal and informal, mostly informal) and imbibed and imported ‘training’ – is what the world sees and labels adjectively and objectively.

Therefore, it becomes incumbent for any person who desires to be in the lime light of public life – or any person who is related to public positions or relations – or who is in constant contact with people – like life insurance agents – and desires to become an intimate part of his client community  should strive to ‘cultivate’  the requisite education and training so as to make all his or her alternative persons to synchronize with as many positive qualities and traits as possible in moulding the right individuality of the person.

More than professionalism of the occupation and calling – though very important – every agent should aim at individualization of an affable and trust-worthy personality.

In short, the suggestive personality development is, after all, the overall nurturing of all the alternative persons of oneself into admirable and affable ones.

By : G. N. BHASKAR RAU, Former Research Associate and Faculty, NIA, Pune, Published in Life Insurance Today, July, 2011