Until now very little research has been carried out into the definition of the personality traits that make a great risk manager and whether their skills need to change to meet emerging challenges. We have surveyed risk managers from a wide range of industries and areas. The survey results showed that, though the majority of today’s risk managers have characteristics that conform to the stereotype, there are many more dimensions to risk managers than first thought.
The research itself was straightforward. We invited risk professionals from around the world to take part by completing an online confidential psychometric survey.
We based it on the well-established DISC profiling methodology, which classifies individuals on two axes—proactive/reactive and introvert/extrovert—and places people into one of the four resulting personality quadrants: proactive introverts, proactive extroverts, reactive introverts and reactive extroverts.
Over 1,000 risk managers sent back responses.
The traditional view of risk managers is that they must be analytical and cautious, numerate, precise and principled. They must show good judgment and be capable of collecting, recording and processing large amounts of data in a methodical way. Risk managers should be able to present risk data in the context of corporate governance, risk and compliance needs. Often they have been unkindly viewed as the “guys from the department of no,” who sat somewhat separately from the rest of the business.