From Bold Steps to Better Decisions: Risk literacy for leadership in turbulent times

Dr Sean Denson and Marieke van Weerden draw on insights from their recent research paper and discussions at the 2025 Brussels Forum to explore how the aid sector can move towards a more mature model of risk leadership.

Disruption continues to reshape the aid sector in ways that challenge even the most experienced humanitarian leaders. Trust in international organisations is under strain, donor expectations are shifting, political environments are becoming more polarised, and rapid technological change risks leaving the leaving those slower to adapt on the back foot. These pressures converge at the very point where security risk management (SRM) leaders in the sector are trying to gain traction with executives, creating a fraught space for decisions about access, safety, crisis preparedness, and organisational risk posture.

GISF members have first-hand knowledge of how this rising complexity makes an already difficult leadership challenge even harder. Aid sector executives are expected to interpret fast-moving risks, balance organisational credibility with operational reality, and hold moral purpose steady whilst navigating uncertainty that is deeper and more fragmented than before. In our research paper Bold Steps, Quiet Impact: Pathways to Influencing and Engaging Executive Leadership in Security Risk Management, we found that risk literacy is a key leadership capability for exactly this reason. This blog explores how SRM professionals can use risk literacy to help leaders make better, more grounded decisions in these turbulent times.

Understanding risk literacy in leadership

Risk literacy is not only a technical skill for risk specialists; it is an important leadership capability for understanding uncertainty, interpreting risk information with clarity, recognising trade-offs, and making decisions that remain grounded in organisational purpose when the pressure to act quickly intensifies. Our research showed that stronger risk literacy does not come from piling on tools or data. It comes from leaders learning how to make intelligent use of risk management, especially when things get unclear, so they can interpret uncertainty, shape their options, and connect risk insight to strategic intent.

This was reinforced in workshops and interviews, where leaders who were more effective in decision spaces tended to:

• Anchor decisions in organisational purpose, even in moments of pressure
• Interpret both hard data and contextual nuance
• Understand risk appetite as practical guidance on posture and trade-offs
• Work relationally with colleagues who carry risk responsibilities across the organisation

Put simply, risk literacy helps leaders stay oriented and remain aligned with their humanitarian purpose when uncertainty accelerates, rather than be swept along by the pressure of the moment.

The pressure to act and the risks of scarcity thinking

During the 2025 GISF Autumn Forum panel on governance and security champions, panellists reflected on the pressures that shape leadership decisions in volatile contexts. Alexandre Liebeskind, Regional Director for Francophone Africa at the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, described how, in rapidly deteriorating situations such as Gaza, operational leaders can find themselves confronting stark dilemmas with very few viable options, and how the weight of those choices can narrow decision spaces to the point where even experienced teams struggle to see alternatives that would normally be available.

Others highlighted how gaps in contextual information can complicate decisions at board level. Mark Grant, Vice President for Safety, Resilience and Security at the Associated Press and Trustee (Safety and Security Focal Point) at Mines Advisory Group, pointed to an example from MAG’s operations in Syria, where the absence of sufficient context led trustees to misread the organisation’s level of exposure until the situation was clarified in a subsequent meeting. These moments underline how easy it is for leaders to focus on the immediate pressure in front of them and miss wider strategic implications when information is incomplete or evolving quickly.

These perspectives align with the insights of leadership researcher Brené Brown, who, in a recent Harvard Business Review IdeaCast interview, discussed how leaders respond under conditions of scarcity. Brown highlighted that scarcity is not simply financial; it can include running out of time, losing room to manoeuvre, or feeling compelled to decide before the picture is clear. She distinguished between reactive urgency and what she calls productive urgency, a disciplined form of responsiveness that allows leaders to remain anchored in values, clarity, and proportionality even when the pressure to act feels intense.

This is exactly where risk literacy adds value because it helps leaders slow the moment down, interpret what is actually at stake, and choose actions that remain proportionate rather than reactive. Productive urgency channels attention towards what matters most and supports timely decisions that remain grounded in evidence and values, rather than reactive choices shaped by pressure or fear.

What organisational risk leaders bring to decision spaces

One of the strongest findings from Bold Steps, Quiet Impact is that organisational risk expertise strengthens decision making not through positional authority, but through the clarity and confidence it enables. Our survey data showed that influence rises sharply when risk leaders operate close to executive decision makers. Over eighty per cent of respondents who reported directly to executive teams rated their influence as high, compared with less than half among those positioned further away. Structural proximity supports earlier engagement, richer dialogue, and greater visibility of trade-offs.

The senior leaders we interviewed for the research consistently echoed this. Michelle Nunn, CEO of CARE International, noted that “the role of our security leaders is to help us see the full picture, not just the risks but also the opportunities and the human consequences. We make better decisions when they bring us that clarity”. Clarity also extends to risk appetite. Janti Soeripto, CEO of Save the Children US, reflected on a pivotal board discussion where the way risk appetite options were laid out enabled board members to understand choices more easily and to take a more confident decision.

Sean Callahan, President and CEO of Catholic Relief Services, highlighted the role of trust and steady communication in shaping informed decisions. He emphasised that clear, context-specific communication is essential in high-stress situations and noted that trust grows when risk leaders engage consistently and early.

What these leaders described is, in essence, the practice of risk literacy: bringing clarity to complex information, helping executives see trade-offs clearly, and enabling decisions that hold both risk and opportunity in view.

Reinforcing clarity through calm, alignment, and partnership

The focus group discussions we facilitated on this topic at the GISF forums in Edinburgh and Washington, D.C. in 2024, which were set up to explore how SRM professionals engage and influence senior leaders, reinforced these themes. Participants stressed that the most effective risk advisors pair clarity with calm, offering measured and non-alarmist guidance that supports leaders to navigate ambiguity without feeling overwhelmed.

They also highlighted the importance of aligning risk insight with organisational priorities, noting that senior leaders engage more readily when they understand how risk decisions support programme continuity, resource stewardship, and strategic outcomes. Taken together, these insights highlight that organisational risk leaders strengthen decision spaces not by pushing harder, but by helping leadership see more clearly.

Key takeaways

Across the research and the conversations at the GISF forums, a few practical lessons from the SRM community stood out:

• Risk insight is most powerful when it supports strategic alignment and decision clarity
• Trusted risk leaders bring calm, context, and clarity into executive spaces
• Risk appetite becomes meaningful when framed as practical choices and trade-offs
• Leaders respond better when risk information is connected to organisational purpose and priorities
• Strong relationships and steady communication enhance influence more than technical expertise alone

Towards a more mature model of risk leadership

The aid sector cannot remove the uncertainty it faces, but it can strengthen how leaders respond to it. The SRM community is already well positioned for this because these pressures are not new to us; they are simply becoming more acute. Our long experience in reading contexts, spotting patterns, and translating risk information into meaningful choices is itself a form of risk literacy, and it is already one of the sector’s strongest assets.

The clarity, proportionality, and steady influence that SRM professionals practise every day are the very qualities organisations now need in their leadership. Many of the answers are already in our hands, and the task is to bring that capability confidently into the spaces where decisions are made. As disruption becomes the norm rather than the exception, risk leadership will be shaped less by control and more by clarity, less by positional authority and more by influence, and less by reactive urgency and more by the kind of productive urgency that keeps leaders grounded, values-led, and focused on what matters most.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. They do not necessarily represent the views or position of GISF or the authors’ employers. 

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