YOU are a Risk

Each day you bring strengths and weaknesses to work. You walk into the room (virtual or otherwise) with what makes you unique. Or as the saying goes, wherever you go, there you are. That is a good thing. It is all of the elements that make you, well you; that differentiate you from others. You cannot escape yourself, but you can GROW yourself. Remember that the definition of a risk includes both positive and negative events that impact the success of your project. Let’s update that in terms of what it means to you: Your risks as a leader include both the positive and the negative behaviors or tendencies that are part of who you are and how you behave. Your goal is to enhance or take advantage of the positive behaviors as they are opportunities for you to become a stronger leader and to minimize the impact of the negative behaviors that could threaten your success. Acknowledging that you have strengths and weaknesses does not imply that you are a threat. It is recognizing that you like any other human being possess positive and negative characteristics. I ask you to recognize all of these risks – the threats and the opportunities and decide how to mitigate them. Your goal is to minimize the threats and maximize the opportunities. To do this you must conduct risk analysis and assessment on yourself. An important first step in this process is for you to get to know YOU. The basis of your risk identification and analysis is to understand who you are and what makes you tick. You also want to understand what makes you ticked off. Who you are is the basis for how you lead. Who you are now is the as-is in your development. In order to plan for the to-be version of yourself, you need the as-is and then you need to do a gap analysis. HONESTY is critical to the success of your risk identification and analysis. We are really talking about self-discovery. There are many areas for you to consider for example; how you like to think, how you like to speak, how you like to communicate to others, how you like others to communicate with you, how do you behave when faced with conflict, and are you aware of how your behavior impacts others? Basically you are taking a detailed inventory of YOU. You are embarking on a significant risk identification and analysis project. This is not a four hour brainstorming session. I invite you to look at this as a long term project and proceed accordingly. Think about the areas mentioned above (and more) and consider why they matter and how you can identify your related behaviors. THEN you want to determine if your behaviors are strengths, weaknesses and what opportunities do they bring (or prohibit). It is a lot to think about right? But you are not alone, I am on this jou ey with you and you can look for more guidance on this process very soon.