CEO Mehran Assadi urged the 151 applicants to National Life’s Strategic Thinking Initiative to embrace learning and vulnerability.
He said that companies that are learning organizations outperform those that are not. “Learning organizations succeed and show up differently,” he said.
Speaking Tuesday at a meeting in Vermont that was broadcast to the Texas campus and to remote employees who applied, he told the applicants that he was stunned and pleased that 151 colleagues had applied for the intensive Strategic Thinking Initiative developed with New York University. The program had 10 openings although Mehran has now expanded it to 16.
“I had people tell me we would get 5 applications or no applications,” he said. “You blew the doors out. We got 151. You were amazing.”
Mehran said his commitment to learning organizations grew out of the belief of his father and a lesson Mehran learned as a young leader.
“My father said that the learning process never ends until the day you die,” he said.
The lesson came when Mehran was a young leader: “As a 30-year-old executive I was wound up so tight. I had to be a perfect husband, a perfect father, I had to be a perfect friend.
“I was going nuts.”
But then his CEO sent him to a program in South Carolina that helped him better understand “why it is you are wired the way you are.”
“It was an awakening for me that, hey, guess what, you are not perfect and you are not a finished product,” he said. “You better lean in and start being comfortable with it.”
He called the lesson a blessing. “There are people who go through life without figuring out why it is they show up the way they do and that learning is not something they embrace.”
“That’s the foundation of vulnerability I am absolutely passionate about. Once you have figured out it is OK to be vulnerable you live your life differently.”
This is the second time the STI class has been offered at National Life.