Taking Risks

Taking Risks: How to Make it Feel Safer (and Less Lonely) For Your Team to Try New Things

by | Apr 7, 2023 | Asking For a Friend Featured, By Karin Hurt |

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Make Taking Risks a Team Sport

Taking risks at work can feel remarkably lonely. Especially if you’re the only one trying new things, or experimenting with new approaches. This week on #AskingforaFriend I share practical approaches to making taking risks a team sport.

In this video, I share three leadership best practices to help your team work together to strategize, analyze and execute appropriate risks. If you build risk-taking into your organization’s culture, you can normalize risk, so everyone feels like they are on the same team even when they are trying something new.

These ideas and approaches came from teams in one of our long-term Courageous Cultures programs. They were focused on practical ways to operationalize their important value of risking taking.

3 Leadership Best Practices for Taking Risks

taking risks

1. Mini Masterminds for Taking Risks

Carve out a few minutes at the beginning of a staff meeting for a mini mastermind. Anyone can get on the agenda and say, “I have a risk that I’d like to take, but before I do, I could use your help in vetting it.” The team can work together to dissect the risk and identify what’s really at stake. What effect does the risk have on the rest of the team? Weigh the costs and benefits. Is it really worth it?

When the person makes the decision, they’ll feel like they have a whole group of people at their back who have thought it through with them. They won’t feel alone when they’re taking risks.

2. Find Time to Share About Risky Business

Give people time to talk about a risk they took (or that’s in progress) and the outcome. Then celebrate the act of trying something new with one another! Also, acknowledge when someone considers taking a risk, and then decides not to. This will help people feel more confident sharing their ideas and vetting them with the team.

3. Hold Regular “Post-Project Celebrations”

Celebrate the work. Celebrate what worked and the contributions. AND celebrate the learning. You get more of what you encourage and celebrate and less of what you ignore. Naturally, when your team sees you as a leader celebrating those who are taking risks, they will be more likely to do the same. The result will be a courageous culture with more innovative thinking and more willingness to try something new.

What would you add? How do you help your team feel supported (and less alone) when taking risks at work?

Team Accelerator Team Development Program

See Also:

Post-Mortem Meeting: How to Make Yours Better

 

Workplace conflict

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  Want more human-centered leaders in the workplace? Share this today!

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Karin Hurt

Karin Hurt helps human-centered leaders find clarity in uncertainty, drive innovation, and achieve breakthrough results.  She’s the founder and CEO of Let’s Grow Leaders, an international leadership development and training firm known for practical tools and leadership development programs that stick. She’s the award-winning author of four books including Courageous Cultures: How to Build Teams of Micro-Innovators, Problem Solvers, and Customer Advocates and Powerful Phrases for Dealing with Workplace Conflict, and a hosts the popular Asking For a Friend Vlog on LinkedIn. A former Verizon Wireless executive, Karin was named to Inc. Magazine’s list of great leadership speakers. Karin and her husband and business partner, David Dye, are committed to their philanthropic initiative, Winning Wells – building clean water wells for the people of Cambodia.

Be More Daring

BUILD CONFIDENCE, TRUST AND CONNECTION WITH CONSISTENT ACTS OF MANAGERIAL COURAGE

Get the free Courageous Cultures E-Book to learn how

7 Practical Ways to be a Bit More Daring

Be More Daring

BUILD CONFIDENCE, TRUST AND CONNECTION WITH CONSISTENT ACTS OF MANAGERIAL COURAGE

Get the FREE Courageous Cultures E-Book to learn how

7 Practical Ways to be a Bit More Daring

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