Being visible comes with being a heretic. Challenging the status quo is noisy and, sometimes messy. This will always draw attention. It takes courage to do significant things. This is because there is always the unknown. You will need to be intentional to always have courage to take risks.
With people watching failure seems and feels bigger than it would have been without any audience. The challenge is that you need the attention of the world for the change you want to bring to gain traction.
Change, rather leading change is risky business. Failure causes many to lose courage to take risks. No heretic leader will be effective in their cause with courage to take risks. How can you ensure that you always have courage to take risks?
Small
Nothing great starts off great. It starts small and grows. Risk itself is not going to be an issue as you lead. The issue is what is behind it. When you take a risk the magnitude of what may be lost may vary, but the process in deciding on taking risk hardly changes much.
Heretic leaders, pursue their cause because they place a greater value on what can be gained and not what they could lose.
There is always possibility of something being lost. Be intentional to create opportunities for risk taking practices. Go into challenges where possibility for success is obviously narrow. Challenge yourself and team to salvage success out of that. You may even want to create a ‘risk budget’.
Aware
To ensure that you don’t become risk averse always take small risks. This makes the risks that have more lose behind them a little easier to handle. This, of course, has to do with how we process whether we should take risks. Remember, the process it the same.
Always practicing taking risks means you when you have to make the big decisions your energy and attention will be focused on other pertinent issues that may be unique to that decision or opportunity.
You also need to identify risks in your mundane. You take more risks than you realize. Being aware of the risks that you already will en-courage the risk taker in you. Engage with yourself and team on what risks you are already taking. You will be surprised.
Having courage to take risks is about repeatedly taking risks; how you manage that is what determines your readiness for risk, always.
Be bold. Be /ˈherətik/.courage to take risks is about repeatedly taki