“As I’ve gained more insight into how intimately risk lies at the very core of our identities, it’s become apparent both how short most of us fall in thinking about it and how much opportunity lies in taking the time to look at our thoughts and behaviors through a risk lens… Which risks are worth taking? How good are you and others around you at recognizing risks and assessing their importance?”- Michele Wucker, You Are What You Risk, the New Art and Science of Navigating and Uncertain World

Awareness is the starting point of most of our leadership discussions within this community of conversation. Once aware, we need a framework to guide our thinking and do authentic discovery.

Michele Wucker deepens our awareness of the peril we face if we ignore risk, as well as the opportunity for success, happiness and fulfilment presented by learning to navigate risks more effectively. Her newest book examines evaluating risk from the highly personal reflection, to cultural and global implications.

You Are What You Risk builds on, and in many ways mirrors, Michele’s masterpiece The Gray Rhino, How to Recognize and Act on the Obvious Dangers We Ignore.

We are confident you will benefit from this thought-provoking and inspirational conversation. Michele has a gift in her ability to bring academic depth to life through the power of story.

Here are a few of the highlights:

  • The pandemic brought our relationship to risk to the forefront. Cultural concerns, local challenges, as well as individual behaviors all reflect our relationship to risk.
  • We can’t separate public policy or business strategy from personal risk decisions.
  • The fingerprint is an effective metaphor as well as an effective organizing principle for our new evaluation of risk. Like a real fingerprint, there are three parts to it: the unique and unchanging, the lived experience which is how your personality interacts with your experience, and lastly, your habits and processes as you decide how to navigate risk. The power to make real decisions in your response to risk.
  • Understanding your personality and innate risk type can help us understand our starting point and how to be more intentional in the choices we make around risk.
  • Crisis is about being at this tipping point, this moment of change.
  • Our vocabulary around the word “risk” surfaces our biases. The first thought may be peril, or adventure and many points between. Michele helps us expand and particularize this vocabulary with the question, “relative to what?”.
  • When we change our perspective, we change our perception of risk. You are what you risk helps us to examine risk from multiple perspectives enabling us to better make decisions based on who we are and what we are choosing to become.

We invite you to pick up a copy of the book and to share with us your thoughts on how understanding your relationship to risk is helpful to you in your quest to achieve A Leadership Beyond.

Tom & Adrienne

Links to Michele Wucker’s books:
https://www.thegrayrhino.com/the-gray-rhino-book/
https://www.thegrayrhino.com/you-are-what-you-risk/