I rode my first teeter-totter last week on my mountain bike. To me it felt like a well thought out and reasonable action to take. I have been practicing my “skinny” skills and my bike handling has improved over the past year. I have watched my brother ride teeter-totters and he has shared with me information on technique so I felt well prepared. Was I afraid? Yes! Was it scary? Yes! Was it a risk? Yes! (Did I make it? Yes!)
We all assess and take different types of risk. Leaders are asked to take “appropriate” risks and then make decisions. Your success depends on your ability to accurately understand, assess, judge and take risks.
Dylan Evans, a researcher on risk and author of Risk Intelligence, believes that we can develop our skills in this area and actually build our “risk quotient.” The starting point for increasing our risk intelligence is the ability to accurately understand and accept what we do know and what we don’t know. Research has shown that most of us are bad at estimating probabilities based on what is actually know or not known. We end up either overconfident or excessively uncertain, both of which lead to poor risk assessment and decisions.
Leaders can use the following checklist that Evans developed to better understand and improve their risk intelligence.
- Do you consciously review what you know before making a decision?
- How does what you know actually relate to the decision?
- How likely is each piece of information to be true and how does that likelihood influence your decision?
- What else do you know that might actually relate to the decision?
Purposely and consciously asking these questions and using the results will increase your ability to assess risks and then make better decisions about an uncertain future.
Good luck on your next teeter-tooter of leadership!
Todd Thorsgaard
Higher EDge 