Of the many differences in approach, mindset, and strategic focus that separate leaders, perhaps none is more impactful than how they view risk and opportunity.
In their landmark book Focus, psychologists Heidi Grant Halvorson and Tory Higgins make the case that leaders and people operate from one of two distinct orientations.
The first is a promotion or opportunity focus.
The orientation is driven by the pursuit of advancement, growth, and gain. Leaders who operate this way are energized by what could be achieved.
They move eagerly toward ideals, think creatively, act quickly, and are most alive when chasing what is possible.
The second is a preservation or stability focus.
This orientation is anchored in security, responsibility, and the avoidance of loss.
Leaders with a preservation focus are energized by what must be protected. They move carefully, remain vigilant, attend to risk, and are most engaged when they sense something important is at stake.
While leaders typically have a strong preference for one approach or the other, they often adopt the orientation that best fits the time, place, and needs of the organization. Either approach can be the right one, depending on the circumstances.
That said, emerging data suggest that organizations with senior leaders who maintain an opportunity focus generally outperform those whose senior leaders focus on preservation and stability. The research helps to explain why this performance advantage exists.
Studies consistently link opportunity-focused leadership to transformational leadership behaviors, while prevention-focused leadership tends to manifest as transactional leadership. This distinction matters enormously at the organizational level.
When a promotion or opportunity focus becomes part of the organization’s culture and strategic lens, it is linked to greater creativity, adaptability, and original thinking.
The creative responses to problems and opportunities this mindset generates often give organizations the clarity, momentum, and urgency to drive performance beyond that of their peers.
Unless the context requires a focus on preservation, leaders and cultures with an opportunity focus innovate their way to success, often challenging the industry’s status quo in the process.
None of this is to dismiss the vigilance, discipline, and risk mitigation of a preservation focus that are essential at times, especially in moments of organizational peril.
The two orientations need not be in opposition. Good organizations cultivate both, deploying leaders with a preservation focus in functions and in roles where protecting what has been earned is critical. This frees senior leaders to unleash their opportunity focus on what is possible.
What leaders cannot do, according to the research on high-performing organizations, is to allow a default orientation toward caution and loss avoidance to dictate their most consequential decisions.
In a world that now clearly rewards those who move toward opportunity, the greatest risk of all may be not taking enough of it.
Which of the two approaches drives the top of your organization? Do the leaders responsible for protecting consistency and stability hold a preservation focus? Are the most senior leaders energized by chasing opportunities?
The answers to those questions won’t describe your organization’s current performance. But they are likely to predict its future.
