Think about any great acheivement or influence accomplished by someone you know. Was risk involved? Most likely, in almost all of your examples, risk at some level was involved. Risk can be defined as undertaking some task to accomplish a goal with some level of uncertainty existing with the outcome. Or, risk taking can be defined as the attempt to accomplish something while a fear of failure exists. Risk taking may be the key ingredient that moves leaders from thought to action, comfort to new confidence, influence to impact and goal to accomplishment.
Why does risk taking exist? Fear arises when uncertainty enters our vision. Uncertainty arises when we consider attempting something never before attempted. Fear exists because of a lack of confidence, experience or solid advise to move forward. Simply put, risk creates fear because we simply cannot predict the future. However, without risk, our feet stay on the shore and we simply wonder what undiscovered oceans of dreams may contain.
It's not the venture of our dream that creates the risk but the personal belief of each of us trying to achieve it. In other words, the risk has more to do with what lies within us rather than the task at hand. What enables us to take risk?
We must have a perspective that failure is not a bad experience but a growing experience. Failure can be good! We must learn more about ourselves, our abilities and our skills from failure so we are better equipped to take on the next risk taking opportunity! It's only when we risk going too far that we might discover just how far we can go.
Leadership involves making difficult decisions to truly impact and influence the world. Will you take the risk? The benefits of the accomplishment far outweigh the possible consequences of failure as long as we live with the perspective that failure only helps us. Take the risk!
