Develop Your Risk Muscle at Work
I recently facilitated a panel of six women Managing Directors from large financial services firms who shared their experiences. The audience was young women who are in Forté Foundation's Fast Track Program which means that they have been accepted into top MBA programs. The Forté foundation is dedicated to increasing the number of women in business. At the end of the formal panel, during Q& A; A young woman asked, "You have all succeeded in a very competitive industry where everyone has a good education, is smart, and works hard. What differentiates you from the other top people?”Silence enveloped the room. The panelists looked dumbfounded. It felt like a game of hot potato with the panelists looking at each other and saying I don't want it, do you? Then Susan, a seasoned MD, grabbed the microphone and said I will take this one. She looked at the eager young woman and said, “You are going to screw up. Yes all of you out there are going to mess up." Everyone laughed and then Susan said, "It is how you handle your mistakes. How you manage it and recover is what matters most.” The energy in the room changed with everyone laughing and raising their hands with more questions. This was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up since it is an issue near and dear to me. In my work as a leadership coach, managing risks is a common fear that I help women overcome. And, I gave a shameless plug for my book, Collaborative Competition: A Woman's Guide to Succeeding by Competing, as it will teach you how to get comfortable taking smart risks. During the cocktail party that followed the panel discussion I was bombarded with questions from these young women. This experience demonstrates risk taking doesn’t get addressed enough and these women instinctively know that it could hold them back.It took me 25 years to learn how to manage risk taking. I was a highly ranked competitive tennis player as a child because I was a skilled serve and volleyer. When I turned 13, my tennis coach said to advance to the next level you are going to need to round out your skills which means that you are going to have to go through a period of losing before you will get better and begin winning again. I chose not to follow my coach’s advice because as a perfectionist I couldn’t comprehend the idea of losing to win in the long-term. But after getting a Master’s Degree in cognitive psychology and reading Tim Gallwey's book, The Inner Game of Tennis, I realized that I could change my thinking to get beyond my perfectionist approach. I knew it would take time, so I decided to immerse myself and attend Jim Loehr's tennis camp in my early 30s. He was working with top ranked professional tennis players like Monica Seles and others. Jim is a psychologist who loves research and he has studied hundreds of tennis players and found that those who managed the 16 seconds between points by having some sort of ritual were able to lower their heart rate and be more relaxed and effective in every point versus those that didn't have any type of recovery ritual. Jim's approach involves teaching you what he calls a "Between the Points" strategy to managing mistakes. In other words, after making a mistake many players tend to belabor it, swear at themselves, or break their racket. Jim's approach involves developing a ritual that involves three steps: letting go of what has happened, visualizing success, and returning to the game in a positive mood. Jim's research from his book, Stress for Success has been backed up by Martin Seligman who is a psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania and author of Authentic Happiness. Martin has found that those who tend to be more optimistic and recover faster from bad events were those who attributed negative outcomes to something temporary and specific versus permanent and universal assessments of themselves. In other words, people who bounce back more quickly from troubles say something like, "I missed that ball because I temporarily lost my concentration versus I have a terrible serve."I have used these ideas from tennis and positive psychology to help me increase my comfort in taking smart risks in my career. As Susan the savvy MD said who answered the question, the differentiator is how you recover from your mistakes that will set you apart. I don’t think it has to take 25 years but if you are like me and have perfectionist tendencies or are risk averse, then you need to develop a practice early in your career. It is like learning something new - you need to do it consistently to improve. Research on the brain demonstrates that even doing something for two-minutes a day can build a new skill. These are three steps that will build your risk taking muscle.
Take small risks in a supportive environment. At work, this might mean speaking up in small meetings with familiar colleagues and asking them for feedback or joining the company's Toastmaster's group and practicing your public speaking on a regular basis. The keys to success involve starting small, doing something consistently even for just a few minutes every day and every week in a safe environment.
Observe yourself and notice what happens when you make a mistake. Do you beat yourself up? Do you have a process of letting go and moving on? How long does it take you to get over your losses? Being an astute observer of yourself is critical to being effective. Be curious without judgment.
Experiment with the PIE approach to recover from mistakes and learn from successes. This approach incorporates ideas from Jim Loehr and Martin Seligman.
(P)Process what has happened. Get quiet. Take some time be it a few minutes or longer if possible to think. Develop a healthy inner dialogue to identify specific reasons that X happened and identify possible solutions. "My presentation didn’t go well because I didn't get enough sleep last night therefore I just need to go to bed earlier.” Or, it went well because I got my boss involved before the meeting.
(I)Identify possible actions to take to remedy or attempt to resolve the situation. If a presentation didn’t go well because you misread the audience, then you may need to get a mentor; ask a peer or friend for feedback or advice on your analysis of the situation; or if you are really upset wait 24 hours before doing anything.
(E)Energize yourself and get back in positive mood. Do something to break your energy or your bad mood like make a cup a tea, breathe deeply for 5 minutes, go sit and talk with someone, or take a walk and begin again! Or, take a few minutes, and do a two-minute celebration dance!
*Illustration and image from Fotosearch and Wikipedia under the Creative Commons license.