The Executive Leadership Team once again gathered at the Woodstock Inn for a two-day intensive retreat, reestablishing a pre-Covid tradition of dedicating time for a strategic offsite. We focused on current trends, challenges facing our industry and company, and team building to better understand how we work together and within our own teams.
Day 1 focused on our investment strategy and continuing to grow our bottom line in a responsible and sustainable way. The executive team was joined by Mark Davidson (Head of Investment Risk Management), Mark Doehla (Credit Research Analyst) and Joe Heaslip (Head of Investment Strategy) from NLG Capital who led the discussion. We remain purpose built for growth—our performance over the last decade underscores this – and that is not changing.
Day 2 was split into two parts, the morning session focused on our talent. The executive team was joined by Catherine Edge (Head of Talent Acquisition & Operations), and our Business Partner team Amanda Cook, Michael Jordan, and Katie Sweda. Talent and Culture remain a key focus for National Life—they are an integral part of our growth strategy as we cannot succeed without the right people, in the right seats, with the right skills.
The retreat concluded with the afternoon session of Day 2 focused on “us” as an executive leadership team. We were joined by Dr. Merle Riepe, an executive psychologist with more than 18 years of experience in leadership development. We spent time going deep and continuing the work we began last year on emotional and social intelligence—how we can lead with empathy by better calibrating our intent with our impact.
We all agreed that the retreat was a success – with just the right amount of time focused on business, talent and culture strategies that will support our sales growth, along with our journey to 2 million+ delighted clients. Looking internally at ourselves as a team and mapping out what each of us needs to do to be the most effective team we can be is critical as we lead the organization on this continued growth journey.