Understanding Risk and Making Better Decisions with Michele Wucker

Living a life in full is a conversation you always wanted to have with that person who gave an amazing TED Talk or the author of one of your favorite books, or that inspirational Olympian you always wanted to know more about. It's graduate level conversations with those making a difference in the world and in the lives of others. This show brings you new ideas and approaches so that you can live a life in full. I'm your host, Dr. Chris Stout and I hope you enjoy this episode. This episode is brought to you by the new fellowship and certificate programs now being offered by the center for Global Initiatives. As you may know, the center is an all volunteer organization and the same is true for the faculty in these programs. So all the tuition goes to support the work of the Center. It has always been our ethos to open source humanitarian intervention and these programs use the same approach in that all the materials we use are freely available all the time to anyone, everywhere, even if you don't take a course. We have built a world class faculty and contracts with other universities, medical schools and partnered NGOs. There are two fellowship tracks, one for those wishing to start their own nonprofit or non governmental organization and one for those seeking mentorship for career development and advancement in humanitarian work. Our initial certificate programs include humanitarian intervention, social entrepreneurship and global health practice. Please consider taking a world class masterclass with us. Visit a lifeinfull.org and click on the CourseWorks tab to learn more. Thanks welcome to another episode of Living Life in Full. I'm your host, Dr. Chris Stout. Michelle Woocker is the founder of the Chicago based strategy firm gray Rhino Co. Drawing on three decades of experience, first as a financial journalist and then media and think tank executive. She has been honored as a young global leader of the World Economic Forum and as a Guggenheim Fellow. Michelle was a journalist at the Milwaukee Sentinel and later at Dow Jones and International Financing Review. She has held leadership positions at the Chicago Council on Global affairs and the World Policy Institute. She has taught at Columbia University's School of International and Public affairs and her writing has appeared in publications around the world including the Economist, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal. She has been sought after as a media commentator on the COVID9 pandemic as well. She received her BA in French and in Policy Studies from Rice University, her Master of International affairs with a concentration in International Political Economy and a certificate in Latin American Studies from Columbia, and through the World Economic Forum. She studied global leadership and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School's Executive Education Program. She's the author of four highly acclaimed and best selling books that we'll be discussing. She coined the term gray rhino in reference to a highly probable, high impact yet neglected threat. This concept has been examined in her global bestseller the Gray Rhino how to Recognize and act on the Obvious Dangers We Ignore, which China's leadership has used to frame and communicate its crackdown on financial risk. The metaphor has moved markets, shaped financial policies and made headlines around the world and it is quite relevant in the ignored warnings ahead of the COVID 19 pandemic. And it even inspired the lyrics of the hit pop single Blue and Gray by the mega band BTS. And Michelle's 2019 TED talk on it attracted almost two and a half million views so far. Welcome to the show, Michelle. It's great to have you on.

I'm delighted to be here.

So you and I have a couple of shared lineages. Met with the World Economic Forum. We were joking before we hit record about global leaders back in the day. I think the group I was in was GLTs and then you were part of the Young Leaders and then also our Chicago connection. So maybe we could start off with telling us about your World Economic Forum years and the Global Leadership and Public Policy program.

Sure. Well, I think 2009, when I joined the Forum of Young Global Leader nominated before year 40, I got in just under the wire. I'm an alumna now, but still very, very involved with the community. And you know, in fact as we were talking this help a fellow YG who was recently arrested in Nicaragua, we to band together and help each other to do great, but also to try to get each other out of pickles that people often get into when they're trying to do great things. It certainly has been trying to do.

So I know that you have a bit of a complicated backstory. I mean I know bits and pieces of it, but maybe for context for our listeners, could you share it? Maybe born in Kansas City, Missouri, if I'm correct, and then Wisconsin and then maybe kind of pick us up from there in Milwaukee Sentinel.

Sure. So my greater family's from Wisconsin and from the Chicago area. My dad was in private education so we moved quite a bit and went to high school in Texas just to complicate it even further. And after I finished college at Rice, my folks moved back to to Wisconsin. First I spent a year in the Dominican Republic and I decided I really wanted to get to know my grandparents better. So I moved to Milwaukee and took a job at the Milwaukee Sentinel, which has since merged with the Journal and was. Was writing about police news, also writing about the Latino community in Milwaukee. And my last assignment there was the. The Jeffrey Dahmer serial.

Good God. Oh, my.

Which made me very. That was a great way to leave things behind.

Wow. No kidding.

But my great grandparents met in Chicago the beginning of the 20th century. They're from different parts of the Austro Hungarian Empire. And my great grandfather died in the great flu of 1918. They had just moved to Milwaukee. And he just opened his restaurant, his lifelong dream, when the pandemic came through and he died in the second wave. And so naturally also did the restaurant. So I've had a. A lot of sympathy for restaurant owners over the past year.

Oh my gosh. Wow. It's an interesting thing to think back about that era and people that have had family members involved in it. And then the stories that we'll tell to our lineage as time goes on and this hopefully becomes a bit more of a fluke and a distant memory. But I guess we'll talk about it as being a gray rhino event maybe as well too. So was post Dahmer then New York, or what happened after that?

I went to New York for graduate school at Columbia and master's advisor was actually an ant. I was working on the Dominican and Haitian communities in New York and I actually had been. I was working for a Dominican Spanish language newspaper, quote, unquote, part time, you know, 35 hours a week. And. And I had told the editor that I didn't be a reporter. I was just going to do pages. I didn't want to flunk out of graduate school. And he knew I was very trusted in Haiti. He knew that I had spent time there before. And so when President Aristide came to speak at the UN in 1991, he says, oh, Jules, do you want to go cover this? And of course, I got drawn into it. And then a week later was the couple against President Aristide and called me into his office and he says, michelle, what are you doing for a midterm break? So, of course, I end up marching into the dean's office with a list of my class saying, I'm going to Haiti to cover the coup. And I'm not entirely sure to be open when I want to come home. So show up. Can you tell my professors where I am?

Oh, my gosh. War correspondent. Right off the bat.

War.

Wow.

Yeah. You know, the events that. My first book, why the Cox Fight, which was, you know, about the Dominican Republic and Haiti, which was actually inspired by Belgium. My mother and I'd spent some time there after high school with her relatives, and they lived in a Flemish speaking, even though they all spoke French. And there was all this. I was this moment when, you know, you go to buy bread where, you know, there's this before you speak, a little moment of hesitation about the language. I mean, my family spoke both Flemish and French, but fascinated by the politics of language and cultural differences. So when I came back to school, I studied French, but I also ended up being drawn to the Dominican Republic in Haiti, because here's one island with two countries speak different languages, different cultures, although more cultural overlap than either side probably would like to admit. So I started working on that in graduate school. Even after I finished, I went to work for Dow Jones, writing about emerging markets, debt, all the defaulted loans from the 1980s that had been sold off and chopped up and repackaged into bonds and were being relisted. So I was writing about all of that, about Latin American economies and really, really geeky debt stuff.

It's an interesting juxtaposition because you bring in the aspects of culture and the aspects of language and then how those insinuate themselves in economics and finance. I mean, you kind of have the perfect skill set to be able to, I would say, master those kinds of things. And if my research is correct, the why the Cox Fight was also a one book of the Year by Bronx Community College, is that right?

Yes. And that was just a couple years ago now, for almost 20 years at that time. They were very welcoming and everybody on campus read. And, you know, when I wrote it, I was thinking about the relevance to, you know, the former, you know, was kind of falling apart with the migration and thinking about how relevant all of these conflicts globally. And, you know, it's been kind of sad to see how. How newly relevant is with a lot of the. The culture wars and the silver trade and immigration that we're seeing conflict in the United States. So it's, It's. I mean, I'm. I'm glad that it's newly relevant.

Yeah. So you combined your expertise in economics and finance with your interest in immigration in the second book, why America Keeps Getting Immigration Wrong When Our Prosperity Depends on Getting It Right. And it was, I'm thinking, it looks like from my perspective, it was a shift from being a journalist into the policy world. And that, I believe, led you to the World Policy Institute. So could you tell us about that book and your work at the Institute?

Sure. Well, you know, it's funny, I'm not sure when I first heard the word Think tank. But it wasn't a career aspiration, because I didn't even know what it was until probably till I ended up at 1. But, you know, after. After I finished why the Cox Fight, I was working full time writing about finance and was very interested in this relationship between immigration and finance and politics. I'd actually started why the Cox Fight as a book about how cultural differences led to conflicts. And then I realized that the cultural differences were as a way to cover economic problems and political weaknesses and things like that. And so that thread sort of carried into lockout as well and went into much more depth on the policy ecosystem around immigration in the United States. But it also was the result of me setting out to write a very different book. When I was in the Dominican Republic in Haiti, I was so impressed by people's connections with the United States and with the US Community's connections back. And what I had always learned was, oh, my ancestors came to the United States and they forgot everything, and they learned English and they left everything behind. And so I started out to write a book about how with these new waves of immigrants, that was so different. Then I read the history and realized that all the stuff that we had been taught was completely wrong. I mean, like, my family went back to Austria multiple times, and that till the end of the 19th century, there was actually more German spoken in the US than. Than English. So so much for learned English right away and forgot everything else. The book ended up being about, you know, about these sort of, you know, cultural misinformation and how that affected policies that, in turn, were affecting our economy and how all these things moved, worked together. And, you know, it's funny, when I was in college, it was very hard to find a major because there wasn't anything I liked enough to want to jump into that one box and stay in that box. And I ended up with this funky major called Policy Studies, which was the courses that I happened to be taking that all went together. History, sociology, anthropology, economics, political science. All of these things work together. And that's the approach that I took to lockout and to my later books as well. And in fact, now sometimes reporters ask me, you know, what do I call you? Because those things are all there. And, you know, I pull in. You know, my latest book pulls in actually a bit of theology and etymology. My work, you know, with companies and governments is all about strategy. And certainly there's a big policy element to that. So I wouldn't call myself any one of those things. And even though I started out as A journalist. I certainly wouldn't call myself a journalist because I think the way I was trained about journalism, those people would be horrified if I called myself a journalist because I do a lot more influencing than just telling the story. And so I think lockout was really setting firmly that pattern of bringing together how economics works together with, you know, with culture, with politics, and how you can't look at any one of these things in isolation. You really need that multidisciplinary approach. And one of the things that I hope that I do is to amplify and to draw more attention to the good work that is being done in some of those disciplines because a lot of academics are not taught to write about the things they're doing in ways that are accessible to much broader audiences. So I hope that I'm playing a useful role in translating some of that for a broader audience.

I think that's great. I totally agree. I have this proclivity too towards integration and liking to see things cross disciplinarily in healthcare. Kind of my bailiwick was there's just so many silos and a lot of folks get very specialized to kind of the best way to get something published is to do something that's super, super specific. So it's very refreshing to see your books and I would offer maybe here's. Here's a career tip for you, Michelle, that to categorize you, we could call you as a best selling author. That might be a good way to kind of capture things because I think it also helps from thinking about how you did your graduate and undergraduate studies and then with your first two books that they very much teed you up for the best selling Gray Rhino, how to Recognize and act the Obvious Dangers We Ignored. You very much also adopted that to being the brand name for your consultancy. It's also your crazy popular TED Talk and I love the fact that it's also part of a pop songs lyric. That's probably the coolest part of that whole thing. But then also in my stalking you in the research, I also saw that a copy of it is on the bookshelf of the President of China. So I don't know which of any of these things is the most unique thing to say about a best selling book, but I think all of those combined is something hard to top. So congratulations, first of all. So I kind of want to talk about that and then I want to shift into your current book. But let's unpack this just a smidge to give context for what comes next for folks that aren't necessarily aware of what that metaphor represents. Can you talk to us about it and tell us its genesis, how you came up with it?

Well, if your listeners could close their eyes for a minute and imagine that there is a giant rhino in front of you on the road. It's got its horn pointed straight at you. It's snorting, it's pulling the ground. It's pretty angry at you. Like maybe you tried to mess with the baby rhino and it's getting ready to charge at you, and it gives you a choice. I've often used a video of a rhino doing just that, and people in the room just gasp. And so that's a metaphor for, you know, the big scary thing that's coming at you, and that gives you a choice of what to do. And it was. It was my way of answering this question. Why do some leaders or even individuals in a situation see the big scary thing coming at them and do something about it? And why do others see it and freeze like a deer in the headlights? And it's. It's gray. It's a bit of a. A joke. It started out as a joke, actually, but it's very serious. So at the time, this concept of the black swan was. Was very big. The black swans, the thing that the. The Europeans couldn't imagine because they'd only seen white ones. And they went to Australia and freaked out when they saw the black swan. That became a very popular but badly, badly abused metaphor during and after the financial crisis of 2008, 2009. And so when I came up with the rhino image, I was talking to a friend, and he said, no, you could call it a black rhino. And, you know, first of all, I didn't want to be derivative of badly used metaphor. I also had been to the zoo in grade school, and I had this vague idea that there actually is something called a black rhino and a white rhino. So I have to go to Wikipedia and look it up, because I didn't really remember. And that's when it struck me. All rhinos are gray, but we call them things that they're not. You know, the black ones are gray, the white ones are gray. And so although the idea of a color, you know, started as sort of a joke, a play on this whole black swan concept, the, you know, really, the gray rhino concept started with an entirely different question. You're coming out of my days writing about the debt crisis in Argentina, and 10 years later, the debt crisis in Greece. And so the gray, to me is strengthening the metaphor. The gray rhino is that we need to pay attention to the big scary things coming right at us because we're more likely than we think to get trampled by it. And so my work is really around these big scary crises that are coming at us. It started with policy and finance and corporate strategy. But when I was on book tour talking about the gray rhino, people always asked me, how do I apply this to my personal life? And people would blog about how they applied it in their personal life. I did some workshop, corporate workshops where career workshops ended up being very, very popular, which is, you know, it's a mix of work and personal. And so the gray rhino really became a much more universal concept. And it also to me was a way to distinguish from the elephant in the room, another animal that we're used to, which is the big, often embarrassing thing that just kind of stands there, but that normalized nothing. Whereas the gray rhino is coming at you and people, at least some people are saying things about it and some people are doing things about it. And what I'm really interested in is the difference between the people who are responding in a healthy and proactive way and the ones who are going to let themselves get trampled.

That's good. So it really kind of then puts the onus on the recognition and then the action that a person then takes subsequent to that to recognize that there is an issue, to have awareness and then to have recognition and then to take action. So that makes very good sense. And then is that a lot of the work then that Gray Rhino and company is involved with these days?

So I developed a five stage framework. I mean, the question I was trying to ask was, okay, you know, if it's in front of you and you're not dealing with it, then why. And it occurred to me that there are different stages of a gray rhino event. I mean, very much, you know, in homage to Elisabeth Kubler Ross and the grief. You start with denial, which is what it sounds like. Most of the people who I work with are past that. They've got something specific they want to work on. The second one is muddling. They know, they know what it is. And the muddling is when you're focused on the obstacles, the reasons why you can't deal with it. The third one is a diagnosing. And that's where you flip to, okay, what does it take to solve this? And that includes really a stakeholder analysis like which key people and groups and organizations get it and which ones don't and what is to going it it take to make them get it and get buy in for solving this problem. The fourth stage is panic. That's when everybody's running around screaming like that great Edvard Munch painting, don't do something, anything, just do something. And that's the time when you're more likely to actually do something, at least. But it's also the time when you're most likely to do the wrong thing. Or sometimes the thing you do is freeze. And so I try to get people to think about urgency instead of panic. And then the final one is action. And a big mistake that people do is, you know, they take an action, they say, okay, I did something, now I'm done. And action really needs to include tracking and adjusting. So I work work through a particular Gray Rhino event with it can be with a trade group, it can be with a, with a small group, in a company or a big group, or for issues that I care about a lot, whether it's, you know, macroeconomic issues, inequality, climate change is a big one. I'll do keynote speeches that will actually apply some of this framework to whatever the issue is at hand. And actually that's where I really am happiest is when I'm applying the framework to a policy issue where I can see that people are applying the ideas and the actionable ideas that come out of this process and actually doing something differently in their world. So it's, you know, the workshops in some ways are almost a hybrid of education, training and a certain amount of consulting as well, you know, particularly on the issues that I can bring some of my own background to.

Gotcha. Well, those things all seem to come together to be the result of you are what you risk. So let's shift in and talk about that. So again, it's kind of the current book, the latest from Michelle, you are what you the new art and science of Navigating an uncertain world. But before we get into it, I'm going to read some little excerpts of acclaim for it, if you don't mind. Laura Huang, the professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and author of Ed Turning Adversity to Advantage, said about your book. Whether you're an investor, entrepreneur, or simply trying to forge your career strategically in any field, you'll benefit from Michelle's innovative, clear eyed approach to taking wise risks and navigating uncertainty. This book will help you get from ordinary to extraordinary. And Danielle Harlan, author of the New Alpha, said about it, there's a huge need in the business world to better understand the human factors behind how we perceive and evaluate risks and there's no better guide than Michelle Shells. Drawing on the stories of compelling risk takers, practical research, and proven strategies, you are what you risk treads. Essential new territory for executives who want their organizations to be innovative, creative, and industry leaders. And it's also a spring 2021 next big idea book club nominee. And I think I. Gosh, I don't know if it's me stalking you or if I read about it, but it might have been. The first time I read about it was in the Wall Street Journal. So congratulations. I mean, all the acclaim is well deserved. It's really very terrific. And I wanted to. I got a lot from it, but nevertheless, I still had some questions that I wanted to look at and then also to share with our audience. For those that haven't seen the book or haven't picked it up yet, it's got a fingerprint on the COVID of it. And that's kind of an emblematic symbolism that you've used throughout the course of the book. Tell us about why you chose a fingerprint.

I'm so glad you asked that because it was a really cool process and a wonderful illustration of how design and narrative work together. I had just finished the first draft of the book when the publisher sent me a draft cover. And it's really hard to illustrate risk. I mean, I don't want to put like a roulette wheel or dice. I mean, that's kind of cheesy. I didn't want to go there.

Good point.

Not my style.

Yeah, yeah.

And so the designer had found a symbol of chaos which people in the gaming world will recognize. It's basically four double ended arrows pointing in eight directions. It looks kind of like an asterisk. And to me, intuitively, that made sense. There are all these possible directions that you can take. So I got it, but I gave it to my best friend, who was a librarian, and another close friend who's a designer, and they both went, huh, I don't get it. Not what I was going for. So I talked about it some more with my editor and we decided that we wanted to use a maze image of some kind because that, like the symbol of chaos, represented possible directions, possible choices. You could end up at a dead end. You could end up in a room full of treasure. I mean, so we went back to the designer and they came back with a really cool design. We were going to do it in like a minute. Metallic gold, a maze that went behind the COVID But of course, this was still in the depths of the pandemic. And we thought that it wasn't going to show up very well as a thumbnail on screens, so you just wouldn't get the full artistic glory of it. But one of my friends said, and the designer had come back with another version of the Symbol of Chaos as a little icon underneath the title. And one of my friends said, oh, how about you do a maze as an icon? So we went back and there was a round one that a bunch of people said they'd seen on Chinese restaurant menus. That wasn't what I was going for, but someone then said, it looks like a fingerprint. And that was my face palm moment. Because there were maybe two paragraphs in the book where I talked about risk as a fingerprint. You know, both, you know, the imprint that you leave, you know, the choices that are visible to the world being kind of like the, you know, the imprint on the glass of the crime scene.

Right.

But also the, you know, the things that created that fingerprint are things that are unique to everyone and they're a combination of genetics, you know, your innate personality, you know, like the actual, you know, the actual fingerprint, the physical fingerprint, but they're also a product of your habits, of experiences of the people around you, the environment. And so I went, that's what it is. I mean, it's a maze in the shape of a fingerprint. And then when I went back to the next draft of the book, that metaphor just became so much more powerful throughout the course of the book. And I was so glad for that design process, the way it had really brought out a metaphor that was just so powerful. And, you know, as you know, my book titles tend to be all about metaphors, and this one wasn't, wasn't an animal metaphor like the other ones, but it really was a great way of talking about what my central point, which is that once you understand your risk fingerprint, the influences behind why you're making the risk choices that you are, you get just so much power, really, really amazing insights into yourself. And then once you understand your own risk fingerprint, you can understand other people's behaviors in completely new ways by thinking about what goes into their risk fingerprint. And that became the fingerprint of the book, if you will.

That's great. That's great. So how does one assess their risk fingerprint?

Well, there are a couple different ways. There are tools. I talk in the book about something called the Risk Type Compass, which was developed in, in the UK by a group called the Psychological Consultancy and actually went to, to visit them. They're about an hour's train ride south of London when I was in. In Europe. But there are also things that you can just ask questions of yourself that really start revealing it. One of the ones I love to ask is, what's the biggest risk you've ever taken? And then journalists started turning that back and asking me what the biggest risk that I had ever taken. And as I explained it to them, I realized that I needed to add another question, which is, what's the biggest risk you decided not to take? Because I realized that this risk I was describing to them was part of a decision process, you know, sort of career decisions. And I realized that I had thought that what seems risky to other people was actually less risky than, you know, doing something that didn't feel authentic to me. So I asked people, you know, what's the biggest risk you've taken? What's the biggest risk you haven't taken? And then look at your upbringing. Look at the kinds of risks that your parents made or didn't, the kind of things you were encouraged to do or not, whether you have a safety net around you or not. Look at the career you've taken, the career choice you've taken. It's interesting. Jeff Trickey, who created Risk Type Compass, said that a lot of careers tend to have people with very similar risk types that attract people in a certain way. And you can ask yourself if your risk preferences really align with the career you've chosen, with your relationships with the decisions you're making in life, and why. So you need to ask yourself about the people around you. One of the best things to do to reduce risk is to make sure you've got an inner circle of trusted advisors who can tell you the things that you don't really want to hear and who can give you the information can help to guide you through decisions. Do you have a financial cushion? Do you take certain risks in your career that you wouldn't take with your health or relationship? You know, think that the most fun in the world is to go bungee jumping, or would you rather pass on that one, I'm jumper or a skydiver or anything like that? So, you know, and it also goes into looking at the risk decisions that you've made, you know, the imprints that your risk fingerprint has left, and, you know, asking yourself why you've made the risk decisions that, that you did. That's. That's a great way to see how your risk fingerprint was. Was formed.

Gotcha. So you, in the book have, I think, over 60 different interviews. And a lot of the people that you spoke with were, are really varied and diverse. I mean, it's, it's, it's. It was sort of amazing. How did you, how did you find them? I mean, it wasn't like you just went all to, you know, down to the, you know, the Fortune 60 companies or something. How did, how did you find those that you did the interviews for?

Well, you know, I'm, I'm really, really lucky to know amazing people all around the world. You know, the opening story, which is about, you know, woman who. The first woman to. The first person, actually a woman who jumped over Niagara Falls, was a story I'd heard at a Christmas. It was at a Christmas Eve party, actually. The hosts of Cooking With Drag Queens were there and they had just come back, and that's how I got that story. Other people were people, just people I happen to know. I like hanging out with entrepreneurs, particularly social entrepreneurs, people doing very, very cool things. There's, There's a college friend interviewed. He's, he's an entrepreneur in, you know, trying to turn, you know, waste waste wood into fuel pellets. And we used to call him random terror in college for the obvious reason. I mean, he was a big risk taker, what the biggest risk he ever took was. And he's like, seriously, you're asking me? So it's just that I've been really lucky and I, you know, a lot of people tend to move in circles of the same people, and I really love that. My world includes people from all different walks of life. You know, the most senior business and government people to just the really cool people I meet in the neighborhood, you know, all ages. And I think that actually that process is important for any sort of decision making. Is it make sure you've got different points of view from, from different ethnicities, different genders, different generations, different careers. Because they're all going to see risk very differently. They're all going to have very different ideas about the choices that you're making. And by diversifying the set of influences on you, you're actually reducing risk. I mean, much like your financial advisor will tell you to diversify your investments. Well, diversify your investments of time with other human beings, and it opens up a whole new world to you.

That's good. You also introduce what I think of as almost like a new vocabulary about thinking about and talking about risk. You say there's a quote in there of when risk savvy is a more appropriate term than risk aversion. How risk empathy can improve teamwork and relationships and why risk literacy is essential to healthy risk ecosystems. Can you unpack all that?

Well, the risk savvy thing came up when I was doing some research for the column that I write for Strategy and Business magazine, one about women, another one about millennials, where you see all these headlines going, they're risk averse. They're risk averse. And you go and you look at the choices, you know, the logic that goes into the choices that they make, and it's actually very sensible. There's some research that shows that in hindsight, women are better at judging decisions that they made in the past. Or you look at millennials and Gen Z and you look at their financial circumstances, and those are very, very different from earlier generations. They're much more likely to have more debt. They've lived through a lot of uncertainty and they likely will see being down debt, paying down that student loan, making sure that they have a reserve fund or, you know, a rainy day fund. Those are things that they want to do before investing in a stock market that's, you know, gone up four times over the past 10 years. And that's not necessarily risk averse. They, the technical definition of risk averse is that you take less risk, all other things being equal. And all things are rarely equal, even for a woman, five foot two woman walking down a dark alley at 3am versus a six foot three man. Not the same risk. And the interesting part is around social risks, that there is some research showing that women are more likely to take social risks than men are. Like, you know, speaking up in a meeting. But again, I think women have more experience taking those kinds of risks because speaking up in a meeting might be much less risky for a man. You know, a woman comes in and you risk being, you risk being told you're too bossy. You risk people ignoring what you said and then the guy three seats down coming up and he peeding what you said and getting credit for the idea and everybody applauding the guy. So, you know, it's a very different risk. And you know, risk is like a muscle. I mean, it involves practice. And the more times that you take a risk, the better you get at it. And I think that's the case with women and social risks. So I try to avoid using the word risk averse, except when I'm criticizing it here. I'm going to stop a minute. There's a, a siren that you can probably hear.

Welcome to Chicago.

Let them cut it out and post. Yeah, I'm on the 23rd floor. You would think it would stop, but it's right in front.

Echoes must be just right. So. And I'm not hearing it, so it's. That's, that's fine. It's probably more of a bother for you.

Oh, you're not. Oh, man. Well, I have all the, you know, the adjustment settings to the highest, but maybe an extra little cut that your producer has. Okay, it's gone. Risk empathy is a concept that my editor picked up on and asked me to do more on after the first draft. And I'm so glad she did because that's really resonated with a lot of audiences. And risk empathy is the ability to, once you understand your own risk fingerprint, to really try to understand the risk fingerprints of the people around you, why they're making the risk decisions that they do, and in turn, what makes them feel more comfortable taking a good risk or to step back from the ledge when they're about to take a really bad risk. When you understand why people around you are making the choices that they are and the reasons behind that, you've got a very powerful tool for teamwork, for strategy, for making sure that you've got a balanced set of opinions as your make decision. I mean, if you've got a bunch of daredevils, then maybe you should bring a grown up into the room or if you've got a bunch of shrinking violets, bring in somebody to kind of shake it up. So this risk empathy is, is so important. So we have the risk savvy. Risk empathy and risk literacy has been so important we've seen during the pandemic, because people evaluate risks in completely different ways. As you've seen between the people who wear three masks to go to the grocery stores and those kids who were running down the alley, running down the aisle of a store singing we're not gonna take it and you know, no math and, you know, your, your ability to assess the probability of something happening. And also the balance between this sort of rational approach and emotional approach. I've found that policy people who tend to like the rational approach much more often build account aspect of risk decisions. And the people who make decisions much more emotionally need to pay more attention to the exact. Well, probabilities are never exact. That's a whole other, that's a whole other soapbox that we often assign probabilities to. Things that come straight out of the air, just feel like we've got control over it. But really, to have a better idea of how risky is something really. We saw those infographics during the pandemic of, you know, if somebody else has the virus, this is how risky it is. If nobody's wearing a mask, if they're wearing a mask, if you're wearing a mask, if you're both wearing a mask. And, you know, you see different probabilities for that. And there was some research also, and I cite this in the book by the Risk Policy Working Group, they went to different states and asked people how likely they thought it was that they were going to catch the virus and how likely they thought it was that they would die if they caught it. And in all of those cases, they way overestimated it. The interesting part was the correlation between how risky you thought something was and how likely you were to social distance or use the mask or stay at home was not really there. The big thing that made the difference between whether people wore the mask or not or did other things to keep themselves safe was the kind of messaging they got. And it was messaging having to do with a sense of personal agency. It was, is there something that you can do every day that is effective and that is simple and reasonable to do? If people got that information and believed it, they were more likely to be safer. And that, in turn, kept everyone around them safe. So having people really think much more systematically about the risks around them, what the actual risks are, about their responses to those risks. And the other part is how the reactions of the people around them affect them. Remember, I went downtown on public transportation last year, several months after, after the pandemic started, and I took the bus down. There's this wonderful express bus near me that goes down Lakeshore Drive. It's just a beautiful ride, and it's very fast. So I got on the bus. Everybody's wearing masks. It wasn't too crowded. Everybody was respectful and polite. I was like, hey, I can do this. And then I took the train back. You know, we call it the L in Chicago, as you know, which I was explaining. So I don't know if everybody knows that I got on the train and I had to change cars four times because people would crowd in, like the mask on the chin, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They're getting too close. And, you know, it took another six months before I would even try to get on the train again. And so other people's attitudes towards risk, whether they care not just about risk to themselves, but risk to other people, that's going to affect your behavior. And we've seen changes all around the world. You know, countries have completely different approaches to that.

It's interesting also in the context. I mean, I appreciate because you also bring in cultures and circumstance into decision making and risk taking or risk aversions. And there's also an aspect that makes me think of cognitive dissonance that oftentimes people may, you know, strong beliefs loosely held or strong beliefs, you know, strongly held. It seems like for some people that are maybe a little bit more stubborn, it's a fantasy of mine that people are rational or maybe I give people more rational credit than what's there. But there is a frustration then for people like me where the thinking of a cognitive dissonance circumstance could make someone, you know, change their behavior or change their actions, be it around a public health issue in a pandemic or being about a business decision in a boardroom. So it's. I think your book opens up alternative ways or perhaps even better ways and approaches to be able to think about the differences between oneself and others or oneself in a group or oneself in a situation. I really like that. You also talk about. You made a point about Ulrich Beck's vision of the mind shift of social structures and the David versus not having a David versus Goliath, but rather a David plus Goliath and how some people might view risk as a danger and other people might view it as an opportunity. It reminds me of like the Ryan Holiday, you know, the obstacle is the way or something like that, or a stoic kind of perspective. And that risk is always on kind of a spectrum. Can you say a little bit more about that, what your thoughts are about that?

I'm really glad you brought up the danger, danger versus opportunity part in some of the events I've been doing recently. I ask right up front, you know, how do you define risk? And about a half of the half of. Well, a third of the people say danger, peril, something scary, possibility of loss. And another third talks about opportunity and risk, asset fear of missing out. Actually a little bit less than 30% in the middle. It's like, well, it depends. And that's really what I'm going for, you know, wanting people to realize that when you start a conversation about risk, you're automatically bringing that bias with you. And once you recognize that you tend to think of it in a more negative way, or you tend to think about it in a little bit too positive way, then you can correct for that. And Ulrich Baek, his work is amazing. I discovered it when I was in South Korea, in Seoul a few years ago to give a speech. And I took advantage to go and catch up with a professor from graduate school who taught about democratic transitions and political economy and stuff. When I was at Columbia and I hadn't seen him, and I don't know, I probably even shouldn't say how many years. And he had actually worked closely with Ulrich Back, who died a few years ago, unfortunately, but who's absolutely revered in academic circles. His book Risk society sold over 50,000 copies in the first few years. And I mean, even for a non academic author, that would be impressive, right? But particularly this very, very dense academic prose that I don't think benefited from being translated into English. It was like even more dense and it's amazing and it's just like full of flashes of brilliance. But he talks about the kind of risks that humans face that, you know, long time ago it was all risks from nature. It was, you know, is a mountain lion gonna eat you, or is a boulder gonna fall on your head, or you need to get washed away from a flood, We've got floods again. But he said that we enter the modern world where humans actually conquered a lot of those race, then we were able to protect ourselves from certain risks. And then he talks about a second modernity, which is the time when the success of modernity in reducing certain risks created unintentional consequences, you know, other risks that were actually directly created by humans. So, you know, like climate change, you know, the new floods are direct, direct results of human activity or, or potential nuclear accidents or things like that. And so he calls for a sort of global, cosmopolitan approach, because a lot of these risks are global and they're existential. And so I think that he, you know, he really argued for people to be aware of the contribution of their activities, their daily activities, to a bigger global problem. But I think you really need to be aware of what people in other countries are doing, because that gives you a sense of being part of something greater than yourself and also gives you a better sense that you'll have some possibility to succeed. Years ago, I used to have arguments with a friend where he'd say, look, I don't want to give up my SUV because they're building new coal power plants in China, so it doesn't matter what I do because we're screwed no matter what. And that's not super helpful. So that goes to your point about David and Goliath and a sort of narrative in press talking about climate issues that drives me bonkers. You'll see a set of things where people are asking, what can I do? I eat less meat, take shorter showers, turn down the Thermostat in winter and turn it up in the summer, you know, public transportation, all these sort of things. And there is another subset of journalists writing about climate who say, you know, don't, don't do that because that takes the onus off of governments and corporations and they've got the biggest responsibility. And I always think, why is this mutually exclusive? And actually the more individual people are asking for sustainable things, the more likely companies are to provide them and the more likely policymakers are to help that. So it should be self reinforcing David and Goliath instead of David versus Goliath. And you know, the climate problem is so big that I can't imagine any reason why anyone who's got the ability to do something to reduce that risk, you know, if they have the opportunity to contribute to solving it, it and everything, you know, the world comes to an end and they didn't do everything they could, you know, how would they feel? Well, I mean, the world be ended so they, they wouldn't feel anything. Kind of beside the point.

You know what I. Yeah, I got it. Well, it's. You may you raise an interesting point because it also isn't to me that I hear in that, you know, people taking personal agency and personal advocacy for, you know, the planet that we, that they're a part of or that we all share as well as, you know, modeling. I mean, there's a certain hypocrisy, you know, saying, you know, big corp, you know, whatever corp that is big coal or big industry or big whatever it is that you see as the key bad guy in that scenario. But I will continue to drive my SUV and I will continue to crank it up or down on the thermostat or let my water run all the time, or have a very green chemical filled front yard or what have you. So I don't see them as being diagnosed, separated at all. And that again, maybe it's trivial, but it's still important, I think philosophically and in terms of not being hypocritical too. So you also talk about, and maybe this is a good segue into it, of big risks and climate change and the Davids and the Goliaths. But you also write about how maybe atrogenically we can create bigger risks than the risks that we're trying to avoid. Can you talk about that or give some examples?

There are a lot of personal examples of this, of, you know, people for whom like sitting still, you know, you don't want to take the risk of, you know, leaving your job or asking your boss for a raise or any of that. But the bigger risk is to actually not. Not reach for something bigger. So many people are in jobs that they're just kind of getting by in. They don't get much fulfillment and they don't like it. And, you know, with the pandemic, we've seen all of a sudden that people are quitting their jobs because they hated them and they are thinking differently about priorities or. One of my favorite stories in the book is a young couple who, in their 20s, were entrepreneurs. They were in real estate development here in Chicago, and. And they had bought a house that was really more than they could afford. Sort of like their parents pressured them into it, and they almost lost everything in the financial crisis 2008. They sort of clawed back. They were, you know, they were getting better again, and, you know, they didn't go bankrupt, but they were very concerned with what was going on in the States, and they were just feeling like they needed to do more. And at this point, they had young twins, and so they. They sold that house that was the albatross on their back, and they. They both were able to work from anywhere, and they had it out around the world in. I forget it was February, March of 2020, which was a really interesting time to start a trip around the world.

No kidding.

And all of their family had said, what do you do? What are you going to do about schooling for the kids? Aren't you worried about that? Well, they ended up in New Zealand, the safest place to be in the world during most of last year.

Right.

And the kids were in school the entire time. So they were a great example of, you know, staying still, being the biggest risk and the, you know, by seeking out, you know, new directions, you find new ways. But it kind of goes through a lot of. A lot of the people I interviewed in the book who faced a choice between, you know, following your purpose, which might seem risky to other people. I mean, my dad always says to me, I could never do what you do. I could never be an entrepreneur. I'm like, well, I could never have four kids and raise them on an educator salary.

Touche.

Know. Yeah, exactly. It's, you know, the risk is so personal to each one of us. And that also is part of why I titled the book the Way I Did and used that. That fingerprint. But I think that everyone who tries to reduce risk too much is going to end up creating risks that they didn't intend to create and that we're. We're sitting still really is the biggest, is the biggest risk that you can take.

That's, that's really a good point. So in these different kinds of aspects, I can't remember, I think it was Frank Farley, he was a psychologist and he had something, what he did a lot of research in called the type T personality and was sort of like a thrill seeking. So, and maybe not. It's not a good tr. You know, thrills do not necessarily equal risk and, and risk did not necessarily equal thrills. But I think, and it's been a while since I've looked at that research, but it was sort of like it was kind of a permeated a person's approach to living and how they acted and what they did for you. It seems like from the book that you talk about a risk portfolio and, you know, there's certain areas where we might have more risk aversion or more risk taking or, you know, it's not like, you know, if you're the bungee jumping person, it doesn't mean that necessarily that you're also the person that's going to, you know, be taking a lot of risks necessarily in the stock market or take a lot of risks in breathing fire. I don't know, you know, whatever other kinds of things there are that people can kind of, you know, have this certain areas where they maybe have more risk and other areas where they maybe have more safety. Can you talk about what a risk portfolio is or how people create them?

Absolutely. Well, you know, in, in chapter three, where I talk about your risk personality and I talk about the risk type compass that I mentioned before, some of the questions, I mean, there, you know, many, many questions, over 100 questions on the, on the test. But some of the questions are in different areas of your life. You know, your health or ethnic or recreation or finance or career relationships and those, you know, your risk profile in each of those areas, your risk type is often quite different. And there certainly are people who are, you know, they've got it dialed all the way up in all of those areas. And I don't think that's necessarily healthy, but I think if you have safety in some of those areas of your life, it allows you to take some of the bigger positive risks that you need to, you know, if you, if you've got the rainy day fund financially, it allows you to go and try something entrepreneurial. If you need, you know, it allows you, if you're between jobs, to not take the first job that you're offered and instead hold out for one that's really? Right. Which is going to be more productive. And it's, you know, it's very much like an investment portfolio where, you know, you want some parts of it to be riskier and other parts less risky. And you can look at increasing or decreasing the risk in those areas. I mean, you know, financial, you know, obviously you put more money in the rainy day fund and, you know, you maybe don't put all your savings into some Robinhood stock, you know, on your relationship, it means you put some time to nurture it. You know, it used to be with careers like, you know, the idea was that if you wanted to succeed in your career, you've just got to forget your personal life.

Right.

And people now realize that having a supportive spouse and having that strong nurtured relationship and partnership is something that actually makes you more successful career wise. So looking at all the areas of your life and saying where you tolerate more risk and where you tolerate less, you know, if you need more safety in one area, you know, boost it up. If you want to take more risks in another area, then find ways to create safety in other parts of your life. So, you know, it's okay to have different risk preferences in different areas. I mean, I will never skydive, but I'm pretty adventurous when it comes to, you know, trying new foods or, you know, not working for the man. You know, having my own company right there. You know, they're different things. Like, you know, with, with friends. I've got a wonderful, wonderful network of friends from all different points of view. And that network is sort of my. My safety net. Like, if I need good advice on something, whether it's on a, you know, personal thing or a professional thing, I know where I can go. And having those resources materially reduce the risk of some of the decisions that I make, because the ability to evaluate it better, to better judge if this is a smart risk to take or not. And then also to know that if I take a risk and it doesn't go the way I want, I've got people who will pick me up.

That's good. You sort of channeled what my last question was, which was about your own risk fingerprint. And it certainly speaks to who you are with the cadre of friends that you have and the diversity that they have, because I would imagine you get a much richer set of perspectives and variation in perspectives. And not everybody's all looking at the circumstance the same way because they have such various backgrounds and different perspectives and points of view. And I could certainly see that being a good Translation to the corporate boardroom or entrepreneurs and startups, or just about any professional or personal kind of area.

Yeah, it's, it's so true. And you're going back to that question about, you know, what's the biggest risk you, you ever took? And the sort of thought process. As I was answering that question, I was going back to the, the 1990s where I was, you know, a few years out of graduate school and I, I'd been, you know, aggressively funding my 401k and paying down my student loans and, and you know, I had a salary that, for, for a journalist at that time was quite good, but it only took me so far. There was a point where I was outgrowing both the job that I was doing in terms of what I could learn, but also what I was, quote, unquote, supposed to be doing. And I actually became very ill and had to take a six week medical leave for chronic fatigue syndrome. And I was trying to decide what I was going to do. And there were some very attractive potential career paths going back to my job. But I also just had this feeling and I had a friend, a very, very successful journalist at the Wall Street Journal who said to me, you know, Michelle, you could be doing so much more than you are in that sort of scolding way. And he was right. And I also realized that if I, if I kind of continued on the path in front, I was health again. And so I quit my job and I went back to the Dominican Republic and finished my first book. And to a lot of people, that was a very risky, very scary thing to do, but for me. So that was the first answer that came to me when I said, what's the biggest risk that you've taken? But then I look back and realize my logic was an even bigger risk would have been to just to stay there and risk my health. When I knew that if I didn't take care of my health first, then it didn't matter what else I did because I was going to lose it. I would lose the career, I would lose my savings, I would lose everything. And so that goes to another message that I really want people to take away from the book is that risk is a choice. When you're evaluating a risk, the question should be, okay, riskier than what? That goes down really to what's most important to you. Your values, your purpose in life, you know, what you're willing to let fall by the wayside and what you're not. And that's who you are. That says the most important things about you and maybe those little daily risks that you take. I've read that we make 35,000 decisions a day. Maybe the smallest risk risks and the smallest choices don't necessarily say that, but the big choices and the sum of the choices and the areas of your life that you take, choices that you take risks in are really the meat of what you're about. And it's as a person or as a society, which actually reminds me, I'm so happy that you brought up why the Cox fight? Because, you know, when I went to Bronx Community College to talk about it a couple years ago, I pulled the book out again. I hadn't looked at it in quite some time, and I actually realized that my books had come full circle in a way that I didn't expect. And there's a quote I want to read from you. It's from Clifford Geertz, who wrote this very, very famous essay called Deep Play that, you know, every first year anthropology student reads. But he said what the cockfight says, it says in a vocabulary of sentiment, the thrill of risk, the despair of loss, the pleasure of triumph. Yet what it says is not merely that risk is exciting, loss depressing, or triumph, gratifying, but that it is of those emotions thus exampled that society is built and individual put together.

Wow. That. I can certainly see how that was channeled into this current book. Michelle. Wow.

It's amazing. It's like the opening quote at the beginning of my first book, and when I looked at that, my jaw just about hit the floor. I said, you know, I've been working on this the whole time. And, you know, that first book was much more about cultural criticism. And, and this book includes a lot of those elements as well. So I was so happy to see the way that although I've got a very varied set of interests and set of career paths that are sometimes hard to see as a whole, if you don't see the thread running through them, it's very much there.

It's very consistent and consonant. That's good. Your voice is. You continue to, I guess, refine that kind of messaging, regardless of whatever the focus is. And it's almost goosebumpy with the aspect of going back and seeing that now after having gotten. You are what you risk out. That's great. Well, Michelle, I just. I want to thank you. You have been so generous with your time for our conversation today. There's lots of questions that I'm sure you've been asked a million times before, but it was just nice to go in and be able to find out about some of your other books and a little bit more about Gray Rhino and the work that you've done and the ways that you've been able to, you know, apply these things and get to where you are today. What are some of the best ways for listeners to get your books to learn more about you, your work through Gray Rhino Co. To connect those kinds of things?

Sure. Well, I've got two sites. There's wooker.com w c k-e r.com which includes information about all four books. And then there's thegreyrhino.com, the G R-A-Rhino.com which is focused on the Gray Rhino and you are what you risk. And some of the workshops that I do, there's where I put a lot of the media. There are other podcasts, articles about the book, other articles that I write. I run a blog, I've got guest posts there. So either of those that and on Twitter you can find me at Wooker and I'm on LinkedIn michellewooker obviously and write semi regularly there. So you can subscribe to my newsletter on LinkedIn as well if you like.

And I would highly encourage listeners to do that. I am a subscriber and very much enjoy your work. I'm also envious because you write so well, Michelle. You're an inspiration that way as well too. And the fact of trying to you probably don't see it as a grind, but to me it would be grinding out a newsletter like that that would not be any small task or effort and it's just nice that you do that in such a sharing in public way of your skill set and the work that you do to construct those. So thank you for that. And it was just, it was personally it was just a kick to catch up with you. I know that we periodically would see each other around Chicago and things, so it's nice to just do a little bit more sit down and in depth with this. So I look forward to what comes next and keeping track of you. And thanks again for the time today.

Thank you for such a thoughtful conversation and looking forward to bumping into you around the city again now that we can.

Yes, likewise, take care. Living a Life in Full is a production of Stout Media, a subsidiary of of Gordian Knot LLC assistant producer Gracie Wong Music Dan O' Brien executive producer and host Dr. Chris Stout to learn more, stop by our website at lifeinfull for show notes and please recommend us to your friends and subscribe on your favorite platform. And as for the obligatory disclaimer, this podcast is for general information uses only and does not constitute the practice of psychology, medicine, nutrition or other professional healthcare services, including the giving of medical or psychological advice. No doctor patient relationship is formed. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I take conflicts of interest seriously. For all of my disclosures as well as show notes, please see livingalifeinfull.org podcast and my LinkedIn profile. Thanks and until next time.