July 2013 Actuaries 47. SCEnarIo 1. The tutor asks a question, and looks
expectantly around the room for an answer. As usual, everyone else is eyes-
down ...
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Gae Robinson
[email protected] Gae answers serious and not-so-serious questions about life in the office, career, study and coping as an actuary in the real world
Feel the Fear and Say it Anyway Scenario 1
T
he tutor asks a question, and looks expectantly around the room for an answer. As usual, everyone else is eyes-down – staring at desks and desperately hoping they won’t be singled out. But you decide to have a go, even though you don’t know whether your answer is correct. As you raise your hand, sharp intakes of breath are heard around the tutorial room – someone has SPOKEN UP! It turns out you’re wrong. The tutor slaps her forehead in frustration, and the other students titter behind their hands. As you leave at the end of the tutorial, face burning with embarrassment, a couple of the students jostle against you aggressively. It’s lunchtime, and none of your usual buddies are available – uncharacteristically, they have to go to the library to study. Later, no one’s interested in a quick beer at the bar. You realise… you’ve been shunned!
Scenario 2 Your boss is giving a presentation in the office on the new APRA capital rules. He puts up a slide with a very complicated graph, and you’re perplexed. What variable has he plotted on the y axis? And why does the inflation risk not need to be modelled? You’d really like to know what’s going on, so you stop him and ask for clarification. Your question is answered courteously, but it’s quickly obvious that you have made a fool of yourself. Everyone else knew that the unlabelled axis had to be the CoV of the liabilities. There are unrestrained guffaws at the back of the room. After each subsequent slide, the presenter glares at you, daring you to reveal your ignorance again. The next day, you are unceremoniously fired. Your boss explains that your question brought to light a serious cognitive deficit that will prevent you progressing further with the company. Months later, you remain unemployed – it’s a small profession, and word has got around. Your wife leaves you, shamed; this is the last straw for her. You will be allowed to meet the children in a public park – under supervision – once a month.
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Scenario 3 At an Institute Insights session, the Q&A is lively and everyone has similar thoughts about the big issues raised in the presentation. However, work you’ve done recently points to a different conclusion, and you politely challenge the group’s interpretation. Instantly, the room falls silent. Distressed actuaries begin to make their way towards the exit, and you are caught up in the rush. During the trip down in the lift, all eyes are awkwardly turned towards the door. When you arrive at the office the next morning, a voice message from Institute CEO Melinda Howes informs you that your Institute membership has been revoked, with immediate effect. Within a year you have left the country to take up a new identity in the hills of Thailand. You find work as an itinerant elephant keeper.
WELL… None of these scenarios will ever be realised. Why, then, are so many actuaries so worried about speaking up? What is it that causes so much anxiety about being wrong, looking foolish? It might be genetics, it might be the environment (the Curse of 4 Unit Maths?) – it’s hard to say. But whatever the cause, The Fear is a common and unfortunate affliction. If you’ve got through an actuarial degree, maybe even passed a Part III exam – or if, like me, you did it tough in the old days (ha!) – you’ve made it through one of the most stringent ‘smart person filters’ yet invented. You are patently not an idiot. It’s very unlikely that your intellect, having got you this far, will escape you without warning. So… when you’re in a room full of people looking at a complex graph that hasn’t been explained fully, chances are that everyone there is wondering the same thing. So speak up with your comments, your questions – at presentations, at meetings with CEOs, in hallway discussions. You’ll learn something, and others might too. Even if you were to say something misguided, obvious, off-topic, or plain wrong – what IS the worst that can happen? I dream of a future when all actuaries talk, question and challenge without fear of embarrassing themselves. If you’re a sufferer – please take my advice: ‘feel the fear and say it anyway’. At the next presentation I want you in the front row, I want you interrupting speakers with comments, and I want you to be the first up with questions afterwards. Once you’re through that safely, we’ll step it up for Phase 2: making deliberately erroneous remarks, and asking obviously silly questions. You will be impervious to any criticism (verbalised or implied) from peers and superiors. You JUST WON’T WORRY.
July 2013 Actuaries
47
