Leadership: Willingness to Take Risks
Success January 16th, 2009Leadership always requires some level of risk taking. Risks are necessary to make changes happen and there will always be both personal risk, risk to followers as well as to the organization or group involved. The areas where risks are the most important to a leader are what I’ll outline below.
Comfort Zones
Comfort zones are really the perfect opposite or risks. They are the decisions and ways of doing things that have the least risks, the least unknowns and are easy for you to do. They do NOT have any risk. These are bad for leaders and a leader should never let these comfort zones dominate them. Having a willingness to take on risks means also to have a willingness to step outside your comfort zone . Anyone who is too afraid to step outside their comfort zone is also too afraid to take the risks that are often needed as a leader. This is an important point as at least in this aspect, leadership is something to easily test for and I think this is often missed when employers or groups look for leaders. If an individual is give up comforts and ease to move towards and tackle the next challenge, they surely show great signs of leadership.
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Comfort zones are everything from an individual’s daily routine, to their lifestyle, to their work environment and habits or roles in their life and job. All of these things that are repetitive and lasting become comfortable and only the new things in life really make things change over time.
Challenge
Challenge is the next component when examining how to take risks. Challenge is really the part of any risk that keeps us from it. It is what makes it difficult and what steers most people away from it. However, challenge is the whole point of taking risks. It’s the challenge itself that you learn from, develop skills from and improve not only yourself as a leader but all the people you lead through the challenge as well. There isn’t any point to making things a challenge for no good reason so it’s about taking on the right challenges and calculating risks to a point that justifies them when compared to the challenge that is faced to accomplish them. If there are ways to reduce the risk, avoid the risk or make the challenge less with the same outcome, then that is absolutely the path to lead people down. However, sometimes the willingness to take a risk even when the challenge is great, is exactly what a leader needs to do to show courage and ability to get through a difficult situation.

Taking Risks
These decisions by a leader as to when to take a challenge on or not and accept the risks is a cue that followers will carefully assess themselves. The emotions of the decision maker, the reasoning behind it and the considerations they take involving others are what followers are learning from when facing any challenge. A great leader makes these decisions transparent and does it with a moral basis, emotional attachment and passion to drive past the problem.
Innovation
Taking risks is done with some purpose in mind as well. There isn’t any point in taking risks that don’t pay off. There are however, hundreds of things that require risks in order to make them happen. Innovation is a big one of those. Innovation is when you look for new ways of doing things, building things or perhaps new ideas being realized as a product. This requires breaking new ground that no one has done before and so there are always risks involved. People and companies who are unwilling to take risks will become stagnant with no ability to innovate or change. In the forever changing world we live in today, innovation is required to lead people well. It enables change and opens opportunities that were impossible to see before the change occurred.
Innovation is not the job only of the leader. For innovation to happen at all levels and from followers as well, a leader must look to steer what is needed for a change or direction, but should never limit how to come about doing that. The adversity that exists in a team is far greater than any leader will ever have and so the possibilities and ideas generated from the whole group are always more than the leader could generate on their own. For this reason, it is especially important for a leader to not only allow innovation at all levels, but encourage and promote it as well. This will bring forth more ideas, more possibilities and enable more people amongst the followers to start having practice and interest in the decisions, risks and change as well. That personal interest that a leader generates among any followers is key to enabling a lasting improvement system or continuous change system.
Confidence
Confidence is huge for a leader to not only have but also to demonstrate. Building up confidence to make difficult decisions requires some history or track record of decision making as well. A great leader looks at all the decisions they have made and either learns from the ones that were mistakes or reinforces the factors that contributed to the good ones. This gives them confidence that they are making the best decision they can at the time. This fact alone that it is about the best decision possible at that time is what enables that confidence to be utilized. It is not that the decision has to turn out to be the best in the end. Often, more information or progress through a challenge, will reveal a different decision to be best and it’s not until this point that that can really be evaluated.
Many people fear making that initial decision with the fear that it may be wrong so they need to evaluate and attempt to consider all possible options without ever making a decision. There is always more information available and it is easy to get stuck in information paralysis where you do nothing and just continually analyze the possibilities. A leader needs to have confidence that an early decision can progress things faster, even if that decision is wrong or needs to be changed later on. The risks can still be minimized by having option, alternate paths and a reasonable level of consideration, but the decision does need to be made and a leader must be confident in it to lead others toward that path as well. Others will likely have their own doubts about an early decision and many would prefer to spend more time before deciding on a route to follow. A leader must show their confidence in an obvious way to convince these people who are still waffling about the decision that it is OK to proceed with it now. This is the kind of confidence necessary.
Confidence has it’s drawbacks as well so needs to be shown carefully. A leader definitely should not show confidence that comes across as arrogance. Be confident in the ability to get through problems, to make the change happen and in your ability to lead. Do not show the confidence that you are right about the decisions or that you will not fail. Failure is just a quick way to learn and so a leader should be quick to change when a decision is wrong, be open about it and abmit the mistake and then turn around and again be confident that you can immediately use that mistake to move forward in a better direction and that you will in fact still achieve the results desired. Great confidence in the process, your followers and your ability to change quickly are what will enable you to take on risks willingly and be a strong leader.
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January 16th, 2009 at 6:59 AM
A leader that isn’t willing to step outside his/her comfort zone is losing out on the most important aspect of leading. They need to be willing to push the envelope in every direction. I write about work happiness and the best leaders are the ones that enjoy feeling a little uncomfortable.
It’s hard to listen to other people and do what they say. It comes down to trust. If the leader trusts his/her people they will trust him/her.
January 16th, 2009 at 12:54 PM
Hi Mike,
I feel you cant lead from a comfort zone and truly be a leader.
Being a leader is a state of mind ” no holes bared” so to speak.You cant be closed minded and run a company or a team successfully.
Love the series,Mike.
Cheers
January 16th, 2009 at 2:41 PM
Hi Mike,
This series really is turning out to be a great one, filled with lots of practical information. Confidence is a huge part of being a successful leader – even when a decision is one that doesn’t work out – if we can still project confidence – the “troops” will still follow…
January 16th, 2009 at 8:57 PM
@Karl, thanks for those added thoughts. I always enjoy your writing where you definitely demonstrate putting yourself out there sometimes as a leader to make the work more enjoyable for yourself and others. That takes leadership, yes! The trust for some people will have to be earned but taking smart risks and risks that make a difference will definitely be a way to gain that trust as well if it ends well.
@Bunny, Thanks for that thought, I definitely agree you can’t lead from a comfortable stable place.
@Lance – thanks again and it’s great to see (yet again) how different people see the value in each of these areas of risks.
January 17th, 2009 at 2:16 AM
A good leader also recognises that there are some in his/her team that need to stay within their comfort zones in order to achieve to the limits of their own abilities. We should not decry these essential folk, for they are often the backbone of the organisation.
The only addition I would make to the excellent commentary in your article, is that all the great leaders, those within industry and even within politics, is that none failed to be superb communicators. It is said that he who commnicates, leads, and I believe this to be very accurate.
Regards.
Mike
http://www.makingdollars4u.com
January 17th, 2009 at 9:28 AM
Oh great point Mike. There are definitely people who need that comfort zone to achieve at their best and yes they are essential folks as you put it for an organization as well for a team but they are not going to be the leaders of a group if they don’t have the ability to work well in new outside-the-box situations. Thanks for the comments!
January 17th, 2009 at 4:03 PM
Love your writing, but being in a rush again, I will have to come back to really peruse this post. Right off the bat my thoughts are always to expand my comfort zone rather than go out of it. I dare say my connection with the life force is good enough that no opportunity or new door opening seems like a risk.
January 17th, 2009 at 6:11 PM
Discussing comfort zones is always interesting. You see, people want success in being leaders in careers. But don’t people want to live happily and comfortably? Don’t people want success because it gives them happiness and comfortableness? I will choose to live happily rather than live successful.
January 17th, 2009 at 10:47 PM
@Dhanamjaya, thanks for your thoughts and time to comment! If your comfort zone is expanding and no new doors seem risky, it’s either 2 things, 1: not taking BIG enough risks or new areas yet, or 2:You are starting to master discomfort and always willing to take on new things and risks. I hope it’s 2 and would love to hear some examples!
@Isaac: happiness doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with success or comfortableness. Each of these will depend on each individual on how they relate them. For a leader to be great though, (successful from the leadership sense) they will have to break their comfort zones and take on some risks.
January 18th, 2009 at 10:23 AM
Hi Mike,
I can relate to the challenge aspect more, [confidence being the natural gain therefrom] from personal experience. For me challenge has been accepting offers to work in unfamiliar environs and off-basic-skill assignments. The outcome every time has been rewarding, two fold: enhancement of confidence for me and acceptance by members of the team I lead. It has reinforced a core belief in me that I deliver my best in such setting than I would have in something more homely. The last point reinforcing your suggestion to step out of comfort zone to embark on leadership. So, I see the collective strength of each one propounded here in their value for a leader.
As always, enjoyed.
January 18th, 2009 at 10:21 PM
Mike, eliminating discomfort so that it is easier to take on new things best describes my experience. For example, today I ran my first half marathon and was able to stay relatively comfortable favoring (keeping my attention on) the quality of my running instead of feeling concerned with how fast others were running. It is very easy to feel anxious in a race if you are not winning and in the Phoenix marathon there was tens of thousands of people ahead of me. So the first 10 miles of the 13.1 mile half marathon I was walk/running in a crowd of people, with not much elbow room or even space to breath. I started out very slow but finished very strong because my strategy of favoring quality paid off to make me feel relatively good the last few miles.
And that is how I live in general, always trying to stay in touch with quality. And as I said in my first comment here I have a great connection with the life force, which we could describe as pure happiness or good feeling. I basically culture happiness and expand my comfort zone through meditation.
January 19th, 2009 at 7:45 AM
Hi Mike, great points here and I like your thoughts. Many people don’t want to come out from their comfort zone.
Oftentimes, I saw many leaders did not dare to take a risk. I wonder how could they be a leader.
January 20th, 2009 at 5:26 PM
@Pushhyarag, thanks for your thoughts here on what impact it has on you and the key points of interest.
@Dhanamjaya, WOW, great job on the 1/2 marathon. That is impressive on its own, regardless of position. Your point on quality is excellent, I hope more people will look on focusing on that available quality.
@Arswino, thanks for your thoughts and I’d say that hiding in a comfort zone is definitely limiting for a leader. They can still be a leader of course, but a limited one.
January 26th, 2009 at 2:21 AM
It;s easy to say but hard to actually step out of one’s comfort zone. Are you willing to change your job because the company needs you for another role? Are you willing to be the first to volunteer for cost cutting measures in your company? Are you willing to adapt to the trends and to what is needed to take success to the next level?
February 8th, 2009 at 11:03 PM
Change is the key to life not just for leaders. I really like this article. Change is definitely necessary but isn’t always easy. But it seems that when we resist change things get worse. But if you keep resisting there’s a possibility of becoming extinct, depending on the type of change. Very insightful article Mike.
February 9th, 2009 at 7:16 PM
@Start Blogging – you are right, it is of course harder to actually put into practice! Stepping out of your comfort zone though enables you to lead into new ventures and risky areas that others would never dare. That willingness can be developed by stepping outside your zone….
@Omar – Definitely change is bigger than just for leaders, but obviously an important one in this areas as well. Thanks for your comments!
February 17th, 2009 at 11:25 PM
Mike,
Your thoughts are wonderful and I love it. That’s why I spend time to give same comment about it. I’m a leader too in my university. I represent all the faculty students. You may know how hard it is. ïŠ . Risk. Challenge, Motivation, innovation, practically implementation every thing was there. All of them are looking at us. So first we have to act as a responsible way. If we destroyed our self in front of others we can’t be a good leader. Have take risk, challenge and every thing first then they will follow us. Thank you for your wonderful thoughts.
October 25th, 2009 at 8:24 AM
I definetly agree that leading people in comfort zone will not bring any change people and the organization desire. Jesus did not lead through comfort zone.He always come out of his comfort zone. That is the way today’s leaders should follow.
September 16th, 2010 at 2:50 PM
I can strongly say that a good Leader will not look for his/here benefits but for the benefits of his/here people or the organization he is representing.