Your personality has a big impact on your ability to take risks and make risk decisions. In leadership, it’s imperative to make decisions at times when the way forward is unclear or where conditions could change quickly. You must assess your personal capacity for risk. This reveals if you need to put in work to better control your emotions. It may determine the level at which you lead. It could point you to a career change more suitable to your risk tolerance. Let’s analyze this using none other than me.
The External: What is seen
What people see forms their perception. Let’s take me, for example:
- Launched this blog to help others
- Resigned from a permanent job for a temporary one year assignment
- Introduces counter perspectives at board meetings
The perception? Risk taker
The Internal: What is unseen
Self-Doubt
The reality is we all have an internal voice that offers up questions when faced with making decisions. Here’s my voice behind the external that people see.
- Do people need another leadership opinion or think I’m qualified?
- Will taking this job hurt my career goals since it wasn’t in my vision?
- Do people think I’m being purposely contradictory?
That sounds like the internal voice of someone who wouldn’t take risk often.
Take control of your inner voice
Here is what I’m thinking when I make those external facing choices.
- I can provide a different take on Leadership
- I can learn outside of my competency and advocate for that community
- We should avoid group think and consider everything before we set our company on a given course
Envisioning how you can make an improvement (in others, yourself, or your organization) and the benefit if you act can help suppress self doubt and improve taking action when there is risk.
It is a critical skill for all leaders. Remember, though, that all leaders (read, all people) have doubts. Don’t let the external side of leaders fool you into thinking otherwise. It’s how you respond to them that defines your success.
Decide your future
Your approach to risk defines where you will go. It may change based on the situation, the anticipated payoff, and whether or not there is a personal stake. You define your tolerance.
If your risk tolerance is low, you aren’t excluded from leadership. There are opportunities where risk should be minimized such as contracting or legal fields but make no mistake, in all capacities, leaders must be comfortable making appropriate risk based decisions. How well you do is up to you!