AmeriLife President Brian Peterson On The Art Of The Successful Leadership ‘Merge’

Leave it to a commuter to compare stepping into a new leadership role with merging onto a freeway, but that’s where Brian Peterson’s mind goes when asked how he views the transitions he’s made from companies such as Allianz Life and TruChoice Financial to his current position as president of Accumulation and Retirement Income Distribution for AmeriLife.

“When you are coming into a new business or new company, I think you have to merge,” Peterson explains in the podcast. “I don’t think it’s everybody else’s job to make sure that you merge. I think it’s your job.”

Peterson is thinking specifically of the New York City Freeway, a driving experience where truly, to paraphrase the late crooner Frank Sinatra, if you can merge there, you can merge anywhere. “Nobody cares that you’re merging in,” he added. Nor, he says, are any two onramps or companies the same when it comes to the art of successful matriculation.

“You have to either speed up or slow down, or maybe the same speed is fine,” Peterson continued. “You really don’t know until you get to the freeway as to how fast you need to go to merge. So I think that the number one mindset you need as a new leader is to size up what’s going on around you, determine your speed, and find a way to merge with the rest of the employees and the company.”

Merging isn’t a one-and-done deal, says Peterson, but an activity you perform regularly every day. In a company, merging involves reading the room to see what speed seems to be prevailing on a given day or in a given meeting. Effective leaders don’t come to the drive with a one-speed-fits-all or it’s-my-way-or-the-highway mindset.

“They say the best coaches make adjustments at halftime,” he noted. “I think as you come into a new business, a new company, you have to make adjustments all along the way.”

A former baseball and basketball player and coach, Peterson shares his thoughts on how sports teach us to build high-performing teams based on solid fundamentals, including:

• Using relationship building inside and outside work to create emotional momentum within your team.

• Thinking about your leadership team as a well-balanced starting five in basketball, with defensive and offensive specialists and a deep bench of talent.

• Being intentional in hiring people who not only have different skills from you but think differently too.

“Of course, you want your leaders to feel unafraid to speak up when they disagree with you,” said Peterson, who coached basketball. “But you want more than that in business: you want them to think differently than everyone else on the team. If we all think exactly the same, I don’t think we’re going to be very successful.”