Executive instincts: a conversation series on how leaders navigate risk
Mirea Raaijmakers talks to senior executives about how they experience and navigate risk, and about the shift from risk management as a defensive function to a strategic enabler.
Risk is deeply human. It is about uncertainty, judgement and the choices we make when outcomes are never completely clear.
In Executive instincts: how leaders navigate risk, an interview series published on FT.com as partner content from AXA XL, organisational psychologist Mirea Raaijmakers speaks with senior executives about how they experience and navigate risk, both professionally and personally.
The conversations explore how leaders balance data with instinct, make decisions without perfect information, create psychological safety and encourage people to step beyond what feels comfortable. They also reflect on the personal risks that have shaped their own careers.
A central theme is the changing role of risk management: from a largely defensive function to a strategic enabler that helps organisations build confidence, resilience and the capacity to innovate and grow. The challenge is not to eliminate risk, but to understand it, engage with it consciously and create the conditions to act with confidence.
That is the ground Elderlake works on: risk and regulation read together with leadership, governance and culture, because the decision in the room is rarely only technical.