What’s your tolerance for risk?

What’s your tolerance for risk as a leader?

Let me ask it another way…

• Do you tend to micro-manage other people?
• Do you find it difficult to accept or adapt to other people’s styles? 
• Do you avoid delegating because ‘they won’t do it properly’? 

I get it. I spent years doing those things. 

Because I was a perfectionist and therefore had NO tolerance for risk. 

I couldn’t risk mistakes. Because mistakes meant DISASTER. 

Not real disaster you understand…. just the ‘in my head’ variety. 

Unfortunately, that also meant that I was chronically overworking; not giving myself time next-level work; not training my team well…. and probably being quite annoying.  

A powerful shift for me, was accepting upfront that delegating to others would DEFINITLEY mean mistakes would happen on my watch. It was unavoidable. 

It was impossible for me to check everything AND progress in my own job.  

I factored in that risk as the price of success and moving into leadership roles. 

To my perfectionist brain, that meant that the (inevitable) mistakes and other people’s reactions to them, didn’t seem like such a catastrophe. 

Of course, part of the process is making sure you have the practical leadership tools and strategies to limit or mitigate those risks, but that’s the simple part. 

Working through our perfectionism or desire for control is the challenge. 

100% worth it though. For the sake of your sanity if nothing else!