Vision and action

Some say great leaders are born, not made. We say great leaders are born and made. Our leaders carry tremendous responsibility to ingrain our vision, motivate their teams and drive our business forward. So we prepare and empower them to do all these things and more, such as identifying and mentoring our next leaders.

Through formal mentoring relationships, leaders create open dialogue, encourage learning and teaching moments, and carve new pathways for success. Those involved often see the relationships as mutually beneficial, with some reverse mentoring taking place. In 2010, we had 128 formal mentoring relationships along with many informal relationships.

 “People in varying roles and backgrounds, who otherwise might never interact, come together in mentoring relationships,” says Commercial Lines Business Process Manager Neil Miklovic. “As a mentor of someone in our Marketing group, I saw myself as an outside observer who could provide an unbiased perspective. The relationship also gave me new perspective on myself and the pleasure of learning about an area I hadn’t been part of in the past.”

Process Consultant Chad McCann has participated and benefitted from both aspects of the program. “As a mentee, my mentor helped me assess my skills and gave me ideas on how to improve my marketability as an employee to advance to the next level of my career. As a mentor, I have the opportunity to reciprocate what I learned from my mentor, along with my own experiences here at Progressive, to guide and support my mentee to the next level.”

As part of our 2010 efforts to develop current and future leaders, we also added specific leadership behaviors to job objectives and a 360-degree feedback process—both designed to measure the example leaders set as well as the results they achieve.

To be consumers’ #1 choice for auto insurance, we need to lead with vision and action. And daily we continue to support our current and future leaders in doing just that.