Risk Management: 7 Leadership Skills That Every Risk Manager Should Have

Whether you are a business owner or a project manager, you must know how to manage risks. It does not matter whether you are in finance, e-commerce, or the SaaS industry.

No business is foolproof. Hence, you will need risk management.

Defining Risk Management

Risk management is being aware of unprecedented hiccups in your projects. It also includes discerning how the risks can affect your business, whether it is manageable, and taking action to avoid it or its consequences.

But oftentimes, risk management goes unseen. When everything is well, no one knows how everything goes in the background. But when something goes wrong, people will start asking what happened.

Nonetheless, risk management is an art and science. This means that you will need to hone in considerable leadership skills to be a successful risk manager.

7 Must-Have Leadership Skills for Every Risk Managers

So, you want to be excellent in risk management? Practice makes perfect, but not always. The quickest and most effective way to get your leaders to improve is to hire an executive coaching company to help your leaders grow, and make sure they have the following leadership skills:

1. Analytical Risk Assessment

As a risk manager, it would help if you have analytical skills. This could come in handy when assessing and predicting risks.

For one, it allows you to collect and evaluate data for any gaps. Doing so can prompt you to see a potential hazard and conduct further research.

But more than that, being analytical allows you to make fair use of the data you collected. That’s because risk management will require you to make strategic and tough decisions.

2. Problem-solving

If you can see potential risks in your project or business operations, you must know how and where to search for answers.

Doing so can help you find and create strategic answers to avoid any risks.

3. Strategic Thinking

Risks can affect various parts of a business. Hence, a risk manager should be someone who can look at all possibilities.

This is where strategic thinking comes into play.

A strategic person knows when to step back to look at the big picture. Aside from that, he also knows which part of the big picture he needs to break to see the problem’s root.

That way, it will be easier to look for solutions and opportunities to improve the system.

4. Financial Literacy

As mentioned earlier, a risk can affect various parts of the business ‒ including its finances. This includes overhead costs, employee salary, taxes, and revenue.

But why is it important for a risk manager to have financial literacy?

That’s because all businesses have financial risk. For instance, when a client made adjustment requests, it can affect their budget and completion schedule.

Although this is the only thing that most clients and business owners understand, the numbers can be frightening. But a good risk manager can identify, measure, and mitigate those risks.

5. Regulation Robustness

Implementing risk management strategies could mean changes in company regulations. But that does not mean you should do a happy dance whenever changes are made.

What we mean by “regulation robustness” is that you know how to stay abreast about regulation changes and updates. Plus, it would help if you can understand how these changes can affect various business parts.

For instance, how would a change in leadership affect project completions?

You need to assess immediately whether the changes can pose risks. Hence, you should be able to explain it to the affected party and think of ways to mitigate it.

Otherwise, people concerned will be “meh!” about it.

6. Relationship Building

Another essential quality of an excellent risk manager is his ability to build meaningful relationships.

Here’s the thing: You will need to connect with various people to look at and manage risks.

These can be your clients, project manager, department heads, the CEO, or the board of directors.

Thus, it would be handy if you also know how to produce risk reports for various audiences. That’s because priorities differ from one person to another.

To a project manager, that could be ensuring that his team is not overwhelmed with work. For the client, all he cares about is the completion of the project. As for your CEO, his priority might be the revenue.

7. Systematic Adaptability

In case you have not noticed, being a risk manager is a stressful job.

That’s because risk management includes looking for possible issues that may arise and figuring out a solution. Because it can be expensive and detrimental for the business if not contained.

But having a system in place can help you manage the stress involved in your job. And, lucky for you, creating a risk management system does not have to be stressful.

Importance of Risk Management

Risk management allows a leader to set up a system that can help avoid unfavorable events. It also fosters resiliency and helps in minimizing the impact or risks.

Plus, companies with risk management plans can reap the following benefits:

• Save valuable resources and assets
• Safe and secure environment for employees and clients
• More stable business operations
• Reduced legal liabilities

Simply put, risk management allows you to run your business without interruption. This also explains why you need to hone the following skills if you want to be a great risk manager:

1. Analytical risk assessment
2. Problem-solving
3. Strategic thinking
4. Financial literacy
5. Regulation robustness
6. Relationship building
7. Systematic adaptability

Doing so will allow you to support the business and its people. Moreover, you need these skills to help them accept and adapt to changes. That’s because changes in the business are inevitable, and it will only work if everyone is on board.