What are the best ways to encourage proactive risk reporting from your team?

If team members don't feel comfortable sharing their concerns, your first step is building psychological safety. You can dig deeper through an anonymous survey and focus groups. There might be specific root causes that need to be addressed, including: ?? The Team Leader's leadership style. A fear driven leader may have the tendency to overreact. Working on self-awareness through feedback sharing would be helpful in this scenario. ?? Conflict Avoidance. Sharing risks and mistakes can cause conflicts. In a conflict avoidant culture, risks and mistakes are swept under the rug. ?? Cultural Differences. In some cultures voicing concerns openly can get you in trouble. Make sure everyone is included in the conversation.

It's like giving our team a superpower - spotting potential hurdles before they become roadblocks. Defining what counts as a risk is key, isn't it? Making sure everyone's on the same page about what could impact our goals. I've found that when the team knows exactly what to look for, they're more confident in raising their hands when something seems off. When the reporting process is smooth, it encourages the team to share without hesitation. In my experience, emphasizing the positive impact of reporting risks is crucial. It's not about pointing fingers but about steering the ship collectively. We're all in this together, learning and growing.

During your kickoff, conduct a project pre-mortem. In this exercise, you will announce that you've traveled into the future and the project has failed miserably. You then ask the participants to independently generate as many reasons they can think of to explain the failure. These reasons are then shared with the group, prioritized, and addressed. Project pre-mortems are an example of prospective hindsight, a technique for generating explanations for hypothetical future events.

There's an exercise I learned from Cy Wakeman called Negative Brainstorm. It is a tool to redirect your team’s energy away from resistance and into value-creating solutions, even in challenging circumstances. In this exercise the team members are invited to share the risks they see coming with the change as well as their suggested risk mitigation strategies. I recommend it to my clients and it's very effective.

The Jay-Z song "Can't Knock the Hustle" can metaphorically represent encouraging proactive risk reporting from your team. The song's title, "Can't Knock the Hustle," conveys the idea that hard work and perseverance are unstoppable. As a leader, you should inspire your team with a similar ethos, encouraging them to approach risk reporting with resilience and an unwavering work ethic. Just like the hustle highlighted in the song, leaders should cultivate a team culture that embraces a proactive approach to risk management with determination and persistence.