Being a risk manager is a truly unique position within any organization. This specialized role requires specific technical and soft skills to be successful and to create a risk-aware culture that permeates at all levels of the business. A few of the most common skills related to risk management professionals include financial acumen, effective communication, and analytical thinking. Of course, these are simply requirements to be effective at the job, but this article wants to dive deeper into a collection of soft skills I truly believe can take a good risk manager and make them exceptional.
One disclaimer about the soft skills being discussed in this article is that they are not only inside every one of us, but they can also be improved, sharpened like an axe ready to create a mound of winter firewood. These skills exist in all of us, it simply is up to us to work to release them to create positive change in the world around us.
Let’s look at the five soft skills I believe all risk managers need to have in their arsenal in order to change the world.
Listening
Some listen more than others. We all know of work colleagues, friends, and family members who exude more air than they take in, nothing wrong with this. However, for risk managers listening is one of the greatest soft skills one can possess to be not only an effective leader but an exceptional one. Listening seems like a natural instinct instilled in us from our primitive days but it requires us to focus and work on capturing all relevant information being communicated to us.
For risk managers one of the biggest benefits of effective listening is the trust and respect built with our stakeholders which is a requirement to be successful in this position. Risk managers act as internal consultants helping multiple business divisions drive collaboration on risk-related decisions and creating an environment where risk- taking is fostered and encouraged. A risk leader with a high level of trust and respect among management and all other levels of an organization has the power to leverage relationships and disseminate collected knowledge, helping to develop strategies assisting the organization in meeting its objectives for the better.
“When you talk, you are only repeating what you already know. But if you listen, you may learn something new.” – Dalai Lama
Diplomacy
When we think of diplomacy, we probably think of Henry Kissinger smoking a pipe and pondering geopolitical strategies for global dominance or a main protagonist in a Tom Clancy’esque novel. However, diplomacy is basically getting the party across from you to do what you want without pissing them off. Now having said that, how many risk managers out there are trying to improve their company’s risk aware culture and need to use diplomacy to achieve it through meetings with certain internal stakeholders? I am sure quite a few!
Diplomacy is not just for international governments; it is also a key skill for risk professionals. We all must work with different teams or business leaders to achieve our goals of supporting the business in pursuing objectives within its risk appetite. This means we must battle with internal politics, dangerous legacy thinking, and other challenges which need a touch of diplomacy to steer the ship in the proper direction. If you would like to know more on what makes a great diplomat Robert Blackwill, a former U.S. diplomat and Harvard faculty member wrote a great piece that you can check out here. Think about how polishing your diplomatic skills could help you become a better risk leader within your organization, I am positive you will find a few strategies you can borrow from our political friends in D.C. and abroad.
“Diplomacy is the art of letting someone else have your way.” – Sir David Frost
Courage
Courage is something we should all strive for in life, even the cowardly Lion spent a couple cinematic hours searching for this soft skill (cue the flying monkeys on strings!). We see this word a lot on inspirational posters most the time with a scary, beautiful African lion out in the fields with eyes that could drive fear into any living creature. This type of courage is all well and great but for risk leaders when I think about courage, I like to pair it with the word ‘failure’.
Failure is a former taboo word that usually led to personal shame and embarrassment. However, in recent years it has been outlined as a showing of human strength and this is an amazing development for a word that has been viewed in a negative light for decades, even centuries. Failure in life is a necessity to achieve great things, if there is no great risk taken there can be no great reward. For risk managers, we must be courageous in how we strive for greatness using failures as learning lessons and stepping stones toward a better future for our organizations. If you are attempting to mitigate one risk with an innovative approach and something blows up, good! Learn from it and move on, this is what courage looks like. As risk managers, we cannot be risk-averse! It’s 2020, innovate or die, and this especially goes for how we identify, assess, and respond to risks that can adversely impact our organizations on the path to achieving objectives. Never be afraid to fail, only be afraid of doing nothing, that is what true failure resembles.
“It takes courage to be different, it takes courage to go where you have never gone before” – Pastor T.D. Jakes
Objectivity
Of all the soft skills discussed in this article, this one is my number one and a requirement for exceptional risk managers. Objectivity is the ability to make sound judgment in an objective manner with the absence of cognitive biases and/or prejudices. Decision making in business is littered with subjective reasoning injected with bias that can not only skew the intended objective but actually take a business into the corporate cemetery never to be seen again. From confirmation bias to the availability heuristic, the mind plays beautiful tricks on the reality around us. Objective reasoning is the only way risk managers can inject science into the art of how decisions are made.
Analytical thinking, quantitative measuring, and deep intelligence analysis are all strategies to ward off the subjective mind traps which cloud judgment and lead to less-optimal decisions, decisions which can severely derail an organization on its journey to healthy growth. If this soft skill is one you think could use some sharpening or one you would like to teach others, I can help with throwing out some leaders in this field. Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky, Dr. Richards Heuer, Carl Spetzler, Hans Rosling, Paul Slovic, and Pawel Motyl are just a few names that come to mind who are great resources for how to improve objective reasoning which leads to better decision-making. Remember risk management is a decision-based discipline, if we make poor decisions, we are nothing more than a piece of office furniture with little residual value to the organization.
“Life is a rare fantasy that can be made a reality by being objective.” – Janvier Chouteu-Chando
Persistence
Last but certainly not least is one of my top soft skills for a risk manager or even any working professional who wants to be the best in their respective field, or as the great urban poet, Ricky Rozay, would say, “Biggest in the game, biggest ever did it.” Persistence is the continuous pursuit of a goal with relentless effort in the face of adversity to accomplish the set objective. Basically, if you want something done it is going to get done, period. Now this may seem like I am about to go off on a sports-related rant filled with visuals of Kobe Bryant or Lebron James sweating after hours of practice but that is for another time. This persistence is solely focused on risk managers in their day-to-day duties.
Let’s be honest, as risk managers, it can be very challenging to accomplish goals when it comes to risk management, I am sure if I did a survey in a crowd, I would see quite a few risk professionals reaching for the sky. Sometimes it is downright excruciating to try and gather what is needed to make risk-related decisions or even get the right players to the table to get something done. This is where persistence is your six-shooter in an old Western movie. This soft skill is action-based, showing others that you will do whatever it takes to get the job done and to protect the organization on its way to getting where it wants to go in the future. Get turned down for a meeting with the Board, you get turned down a thousand more times, never stop. You send five emails with no response, you send a pleasant sixth. You are told something is just not possible, you say “Oh yeah, well sit back and watch this.” This ladies and gentlemen is what separates the “wanna-bes” from the “Bes”. Relentless persistence will come to define your character and establish a risk leader brand where others know they can rely on you when the storms are coming to be calm in your manner of getting things done no matter the obstacles ahead.
“Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries.” – James A. Michener
Wrapping Up
This article hits on a small list of critical soft skills that in my opinion, all risk professionals should carry with them. Working in risk management is a niche role and one that takes a specific skill set to be truly effective. The great thing about all the skills discussed here today is they are all attainable and can be improved on to separate yourself from the crowds. Fortune favors the bold, be bold and turn yourself into the risk leader your organization and your risk peers need you to be.
What other soft skills do you think are key to be a successful risk leader or professional? I would love to hear your own list on what it takes to do this truly special duty.
