The Risk Playbook: Why Psychosocial Hazards Keep Coming Back
Drawing on neuroscience, leadership psychology, and psychosocial risk research, The Risk Playbook reframes why hazards persist despite policies, audits, and action plans. This keynote shows how psychosocial risk is generated not by bad leaders, but by predictable emotional distortions that emerge under pressure — and what leaders can do to prevent harm before it escalates.
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key topics:
1
The Dangers of Emotional Intoxication
Under sustained pressure, even excellent leaders can become emotionally impaired. Stress distorts perception, decision-making, and behaviour — regardless of whether a leader typically operates in a pacesetting, visionary, commanding, laissez-faire, transactional, or servant style. Psychosocial risk doesn’t begin when policies or processes fail; it begins when emotionally intoxicated leadership becomes normalised.
2
Identifying the Six Hazardous Leadership States
The Risk Playbook identifies six hazardous leadership states that emerge under stress — Desperate, Delusional, Dominant, Distant, Dreary, and Dependent. While no state is fixed, each one reliably generates specific psychosocial risks across jobs, systems, and people. When leaders over-identify with one emotional state under pressure, the same hazards recur again and again.
3
A New Playbook for Psychosocial Risk
Psychosocial hazards are not the root cause — they are symptoms of unmet emotional capacity under load. The Risk Playbook shifts organisations from compliance-based control to competency-based prevention, helping leaders notice impairment early and regulate before harm spreads. When leaders develop emotional sobriety, risks are addressed sooner, teams feel safer, and hazards stop cycling back year after year.