Risk. For some people, the very thought sends chills down their spines, yet for others, the topic prompts a sense of thrill. Why is that the case? And what does that mean for how we think about risk in decision making?

To answer those questions and more, I turned to Michele Wucker, author of the books, The Gray Rhino, and You Are What You Risk. We chat about how the way we define risk matters, the layers of factors that make up our risk fingerprint, and things to keep in mind about risk when making group decisions. 

Topics Covered

03:11 What brought Michele to studying risk

08:12 The way you define risk, matters

12:26 Awareness is the first step in adjusting your natural tendency

13:14 Risk and group dynamics

16:06 Getting the right kind of diversity in the room to promote better decision making

18:02 The risk fingerprint concept

21:36 Optimizing your risk fingerprint given your personality and experiences

23:59 What feels risky depends on your values

25:13 How to build your risk muscle

25:31 Practice

26:32 Self-awareness

27:47 Surrounding yourself with the right people

28:56 Little hacks

30:14 How risk empathy can improve group decision making

31:25 Questions you can ask to better understand someone else's risk fingerprint

35:48 Thinking about risk in decisions that have broader impact

39:39 Me-here-now vs. Us-everywhere-forever

41:00 Final words of wisdom

Guest Bio

Strategist, speaker, and best-selling author Michele Wucker coined the term “gray rhino” as a call to take a fresh look at how we respond to obvious, probable, impactful risks. She founded the Chicago-based advisory firm Gray Rhino & Company and is a former media and think tank executive. Her four books include the influential global bestseller THE GRAY RHINO: How to Recognize and Act on the Obvious Dangers We Ignore and the recently released sequel, YOU ARE WHAT YOU RISK: The New Art and Science of Navigating an Uncertain World.

Resources

• THE GRAY RHINO: How to Recognize and Act on the Obvious Dangers We Ignore
• YOU ARE WHAT YOU RISK: The New Art and Science of Navigating an Uncertain World

To learn more from Michelle about decision making, check out

• The Ask A Decision Engineer website
• Her Stanford Continuing Studies course
• Her self-paced course Decision Toolkit for Personal Decisions
• Her Decision Toolkit for Coaches and Counselors virtual workshop on Maven

Michelle Florendo is a Stanford-trained decision engineer and executive coach who is on a mission to teach people how to make decisions with less stress and more clarity. Over the past decade, she has coached and taught hundreds of leaders across tech, healthcare, and financial services, in organizations ranging from pre-IPO startups to major tech companies like Amazon, Google, and Salesforce. 

She's been an adjunct lecturer at Stanford, helps train coaches as a faculty coach for Berkeley Executive Coaching Institute, and hosts the podcast, Ask A Decision Engineer. She earned her engineering degree from Stanford and her MBA from UC Berkeley.

For those interested in exploring Michelle's coaching and speaking services further, additional information can be found on her professional website at poweredbydecisions.com.