3. Tap into Your Potential for Growth Through Self-Awareness
Ultimately, emotional intelligence isn’t just about managing others; it’s about managing yourself. Harvard Business Review suggests that emotional intelligence can be an indicator for growth potential. Possessing emotional intelligence can mean that you are also curious, motivated, and engaged, with capacity for insight. These are traits that suggest openness to change and learning—useful for a risk manager dealing with constant change.
The varied, often unpredictable nature of a risk manager’s job can be its biggest attraction, but it can also be a great challenge. Fostering a certain amount of self-awareness can allow you to navigate this challenge. To be self-aware and self-reflective is to be able to identify your values, strengths, and weaknesses, regulate your emotions when dealing with non-ideal circumstances, and communicate with others in a way that will be productive. Just as risk is dynamic, so are you. Thus, an ongoing process of self-awareness –playing to your strengths, sticking to your core principles, recognising where your blind spots are—is critical for adapting to and taking advantage of new information and circumstances.
The Takeaway
Skills, experience, and IQ levels are not guarantees for a successful career in any field of business, let alone enterprise risk management. The corporate world often prioritises ‘hard’ skills and measurable results, but at the same time, organisations are made of human beings who think, feel, change, and relate.
And at the core of ERM is the recognition that an organisation is made of dynamic parts: risk factors are always changing, and all levels of an organisation have to adopt a mindset of continuous improvement in order to stay ahead. Similarly, at the level of the individual, developing emotional intelligence is vital not only for managing your relationships, but also for growing in your career and capabilities.
11 The IERP® Monthly Newsletter July 2018