To the uninitiated, the word “insurance” might induce yawns faster than a bottle of sleeping pills. But as Gary Coleman demonstrates, the industry offers interesting career opportunities spanning as far and wide as the globe itself. He’s spent his 34 years in the business working in Nigeria, Turkey, South Korea and now Russia, among other places. Currently, as vice chairman of AIG Russia, he explains a little about how his company finds employees and the kind of training they are generally given.

The Leader: When did AIG Russia first begin operations here and what are the criteria for opening a branch?

Mr. Coleman: The company has had a representative office here since 1991, and we received our license to transact insurance business in 1994. Interestingly, though the name of our company is American International Group, it did not start in the United States. The company was actually founded in China in 1919 and has always been an international company.

We opened a representative office in Russia for the same reasons we decided to do work in China and India. These countries will be enormous markets in the future, they have great potential. Many of our clients are major multinational corporations, and wherever our clients do business, we want to be nearby so we can give them continuous service on a global basis. We have representative offices in St. Petersburg and in Perm and we are looking very carefully at potential operations in Samara and Nizhny-Novgorod.

The Leader: How does AIG Russia’s work differ from, say, that of the Japanese branch?

Mr. Coleman: The basic nature of the business is similar worldwide. The biggest challenge in Russia is to help create a climate where more people understand and trust the insurance business. Unfortunately, Russia has a history of citizens not being very trusting of banking or insurance, and so a low percentage of people buy insurance. This is changing very rapidly. We are having tremendous successes in the insurance business here, very rapid growth. The life-insurance business increased 300 percent last year. Non-life-insurance business has grown 35 percent so far this year.

The Leader: How long have you been with the company?

Mr. Coleman: I have over 34 years experience in insurance and I have been working for AIG for the past 26 1/2 years. I have traveled extensively worldwide and have lived in Nigeria, Turkey, Kenya and South Korea at different times over the past 17 years. I have been in Russia since late 1998.

The Leader: What kind of educational background do you have?

Mr. Coleman: My educational background doesn’t seem to fit with what I am doing now. I graduated as a Dean’s List Scholar at California State University San Jose in 1966 with a degree in African Studies and International Relations.

The Leader: What are your responsibilities?

Mr. Coleman: As the chief representative of AIG, I am responsible for all the company’s activities in Russia. We have two divisions. One is the life-insurance division and the other includes farm insurance, automobile insurance and so on. We also have a separate entity, called AIG Investment Bank. I’m not responsible for it’s operations, but we spend a lot of time working together.

The Leader: What does your average working-day look like?

Mr. Coleman: I come to the office at 7:45 a.m. and normally I work until about 7:30 p.m. AIG headquarters is in New York. Quite often I am on the telephone talking to people there. I’m usually in the office on Saturdays and stay there until 2 or 3 p.m. Beyond my AIG responsibilities, I am also involved with the American Chamber of Commerce, where I am vice chairman. I’m also on the board of trustees of the Russian National Orchestra. I spend my spare time getting directly involved with things like that. My mother used to tell me: If you want something done, ask a busy person to do it. In other words, if you want to make something happen, ask someone who is already busy to do it for you, because they will find the way to do it. I’m usually pretty busy.

The Leader: Does AIG Russia consider job applications coming from Russian universities?

Mr. Coleman: Yes, in fact, we’ve established a nice working relationship with Moscow State University (MGU). We have given lectures and seminars there. The university has a well-grounded base for insurance education. Last year, we took four students from MGU and gave them jobs at AIG as summer interns. We liked one of them so much that he is now working with us on a full-time basis. We will take some more students from MGU and give them summer jobs so that they will have the chance to see whether they would like to work in the insurance business. We have quite a few employees who graduated from MGU.

The Leader: How often does the company look for employees?

Mr. Coleman: As the company is growing rapidly, we often look for new employees. And it’s not hard for us to find high-quality, intelligent people.

We have many different ways of recruiting people. Whenever we have a vacancy, we advertise it on our Website; we’ve found a number of people through this method. Occasionally we put ads in newspapers. Often, we use professional recruitment companies. We sponsor a program to give awards to people on our staff who refer new employees. That’s because we find that employee referrals are a very effective way to find high-quality staff. We also sometimes go directly to universities to find interns.

But it is difficult to find people who have experience in the insurance business, so we find ourselves doing a great deal of training. The business of training staff and keeping them completely up-to-date on technical developments is very important to us. We often have people visiting Russia for training and we frequently send staff out of Russia. We have a number of staff presently taking MBA correspondence courses from the Chartered Insurance Institute in the U.K. and we subsidize these courses.

The Leader: How do you assess the level of your staff?

Mr. Coleman: We have a formal written performance evaluation, which is completed every year for every staff member. At that time, employees are given the opportunity to discuss the evaluation and fully understand what is expected of them — what their manager wants to see accomplished and what their manager is going to do to help them accomplish their goals in the future.

There are also informal evaluations going on all the time. If I have a manager who I don’t think is performing at the level I would like to see, I will ask him or her to come to my office and discuss what progress has been made and make suggestions. I don’t tell people exactly what to do; I ask them what they think they should do. It gives them confidence. There is a constant feedback on performance.

The Leader: What management style gets the best out of your staff?

Mr. Coleman: I consider myself a reasonably good leader and motivator. I delegate a great deal of responsibility and authority as soon as I am confident that my staff is capable handling it. Once I delegate responsibility, I leave my people alone. I do not bother them with the details. It gives them an opportunity to challenge themselves and understand the process. I tell someone what the objective is and I give him or her some ideas as to what I think is necessary to accomplish the objective. I call this "management by objective."