Contextual Leadership (2) - priorities and risk

December 6, 2011 by Bert Verbeeke

Increased professionalism

Prioritizing is very important for everybody - but especially for leaders. When setting priorities and making decisions, risk analysis is done. A cross-cultural discussion is why something is seen as risk.

Why not taking more risk? The answer of young fellow why people don't take more risk: ‘people don't like the small change it might go wrong'. I like the word small here. If there was a big change it would go wrong, it wouldn’t be considered a risk but as a no-go.

But it is a fact that what seems to be a small change to one, to another it might be huge opportunity. In his chapter on priorities, John Maxwell in his book “Developing the leader within you”, shares that when people reflect on their lives, one of the things they would do different is taking more risk. So this morning in our leadership class we discussed: Why is risk-taking difficult? And what are cultural differences in risk taking?

Pains that might come with risk taken

After some discussion we came to the conclusion that it is for the ‘fear of pain’ things are seen as risk or not.

• Emotional pain when for example when your children not really want to see you anymore because you didn't take a certain responsibility you thought was an risk-full option.
• Physical pain might occur because you broke a leg or there was a fire in your home.
• Social pain when your self-esteem in the community is lowered to zero because of your action.
• Financial pain when you invested and lost assets rather than keeping what was or more ROI was made.

Social Pain

This is something we not really see in the west nowadays. I learned the aspect of social-pain from my Tibetan and Chinese friends. But I read somewhere that about 100 year ago social pain in the west was also normal. That time business activities and social status were linked with each other. Success in business meant success in social status. Failure in one or the other means you could likely not succeed in the other. If fired, for example, that time, that person really might have some issues.

But I remember a couple of years ago talking with a director of a construction company in The Netherlands. He shared his business went bankrupt. But because it was a limited business, he wasn’t affect personally. Of course he felt sorry for the whole situation, but it didn’t affect his social live or status. Very likely he would be able to find a director job later.

Shame culture – social pain in Asia

But for my colleagues here @ Global Nomad social pain is a much more serious one. Opening a shop with no guaranteed success is a no-no. If you fail, people talk about you and your self-esteem will be lowered. Put this in the context of karma and religious believe. In Tibetan Buddhism success is measured as results from good actions you did in your past. And bad results origin from your bad actions in the past. You don’t want to show your karma to other people, unless you are sure it will be proved good!

Fear as limitation for opportunity

So, I like to state that the reason people don’t like to take risk because of fear for bad results, what gives pain. If the risk might be only bad results and no pain, it can easily be done.

Risk, therefore, is factual but even so much a very subjective matter.

Other information

This is the second blog post related to contextual leadership. To see all posts relating to contextual leadership, click here. Or select an article from below:

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