Not your average actuary...

“Well, I’ve never exactly been your average actuary”, I said as I had many times before. My colleague looked at me and chuckled. “Oh Jen, I’ve yet to meet an actuary who hasn’t told me that they’re not your average actuary!”

This conversation got me thinking, why is it that so many actuaries are so determined to convince people we’re ‘not your average actuary’? 

Now I know, as I’m sure all actuaries do, that as a profession the stereotypes about us aren’t always exactly complimentary. We are, apparently, all excessively introverted, overly technical and probably just a little bit odd. You just need to hear the old joke about the difference between an extroverted and introverted actuary to realise how bad some of the old stereotypes are. (An extroverted actuary looks at your shoes when he’s talking to you, an introverted one looks at his own. And yes, every time I’ve heard that joke it was told as ‘he’ so it's definitely a little dated!). So maybe it is understandable in some way that we want to convince people that personally we do not fall within those stereotypes.

But does that actually work? Does it change other peoples views of us? Does it change our views of ourselves?

Personally, I think for many actuaries the need to try to prove that we aren’t an ‘average actuary’ is tied up with our beliefs about ourselves. Many of us believe (consciously or unconsciously) some of those stereotypes - there is a small part of us that worries that maybe we are ‘just numbers people’ or that we ‘can’t do people’ or that ‘people won’t like me’. We don’t necessarily realise we have these beliefs but they are often there and they simply reflect the journey that many of us have had. Certainly for myself, growing up as the ‘maths geek’ in my year in an all girls school I was seen as the ‘numbers person’ and weird because of that and it’s taken a long time to unlearn those beliefs. So, many of us feel the need to speak out against being an ‘average actuary’, even though maybe unconsciously we don’t fully believe what we are claiming.

The trouble is that in claiming that we are different to all those other actuaries because we’re not like that, we are effectively pointing the finger at the rest of our profession and saying ‘they are like that’. Which doesn’t help any of us! Because the truth of the matter is that I don’t think many of those stereotypical actuaries actually exist any more. The profession these days is diverse and talented far beyond actuarial skills. There isn’t such a thing as that ‘average actuary’ we’re claiming not to be.

So what do we do instead?

I think the answer is simple and yet also challenging. We show up as ourselves.

It sounds simple, it should be simple, but being able to show up authentically is a challenge for many of us. We feel there are expectations on how we ‘should’ be and it feels dangerous to step outside of those ‘should’s so we set ourselves a box in which we can stay. A ‘numbers person’ box or an ‘introvert’ box or a ‘just an actuary’ box. And we stop ourselves from taking the risk of stepping outside of those boxes because we fear what other people might think and how that might make us feel.

Breaking out of those boxes can be the first step on the road to feeling truly fulfilled in your work and in your whole life. Recognising what the whole of you can look like and how life can feel when you bring all of that into what you do every day is a powerful change. And in addition, when we show up as ourselves, we show everyone else that we certainly aren't that 'average actuary' without needing to say it. We shift our perceptions of ourselves and we shift others perceptions of us as a profession.

If you would like help in identifying and breaking down your boxes then drop me a message.