The first thing you need to know when talking about a risk is why you are talking about it. The answer to this question impacts everything else you say. Without a clear reason for talking about a risk you can’t focus on the specific information your audience needs to hear. You also won’t get what you need from the conversation.

One of the worst things you can do with a risk is leave it to the last minute. If you need to talk to someone about a risk, don’t wait. Waiting reduces the amount of time available to prevent the risk becoming an issue.

Anyone listening to a risk wants to know the answer to three questions: What could happen? Why could it happen? And why do we care? If you answer these questions the audience will have a good understanding of what the risk is.

How do you know what to include when talking about a risk? The simplest method is to use an established risk format, something like an “If-Then” statement, or “There is a risk that <event> occurs leading to <outcome> that causes <impact> .” Using formats like these ensures you give a short description of the overall risk without missing important information. After giving the risk statement you can expand on the details if appropriate.

Risks must be specific if they are to be useful. Grouping risks together into categories is a common mistake. It makes it easier to talk about risks but at the same time it makes it harder to respond to individual risks. Working out how to deal with a risk like “Raj, our top sales person, might leave this month,” is easier than trying to plan for “Staff might leave”. The more specific the information in the risk the more specific you can make the response.

If you want someone to pay attention to your risk you need to explain how it impacts them. We care about things that impact us, our work, and our teams. We don’t care as much about abstract topics that impact other teams or people. So if you want someone to pay attention when you are talking about a risk, you must show how the risk connects to something they care about.

It is important to keep our emotional response to risks out of the descriptions. People react to the emotion in our message as well as the words we say. When we talk about something we feel is important we stress than with our tone and word choice. When talking about risks this can make a risk seem worse or more likely than it really is. By sticking to the facts we help our audience assess the information without being influenced by our feelings.

Risks often relate to potentially negative events connected to our work. People rarely like to think about the bad things that could happen. We are even less comfortable talking to other people about how our work may go badly. This leads us to underplay the impact or likelihood of risks on our work. Unfortunately, the more we downplay the risks the less likely we are to plan properly. When talking about risks never understate the impact or likelihood.

When talking about risks we need to be clear that we are not talking about issues. Risks are events that mayhappen in the future. If this isn’t clear in a conversation the audience may react as though there is a problem today. Not only does this cause confusion, it can result in unnecessary work or a knee jerk reaction to something that isn’t even a problem.

Help your audience by making it absolutely clear you want to talk about a risk and not an issue.

Whenever you talk to someone about a problem it helps to suggest a solution. This avoids the appearance of leaving the other person to fix whatever it is. Risks are a problem that has a chance of occurring in the future. Therefore, when talking about risks, you should try to propose what to do about the risk. Don’t’ leave it to the audience to come up with all the ideas.

Risks rarely stand alone. One risk can connect to many other risks in a chain. If the chance of one risk goes up the chance of other risks occurring may go up too. Whenever you talk about risks don’t forget to consider all the connected risks. If they are impacted, they should be part of the conversation too.

The longer you take to tell someone about an issue the worse the outcome is likely to be. The sooner you tell them about an issue the greater the chances of being able to stop the issue fast. You may also help make the impact smaller. Not only that, but people get frustrated when they hear about issues a long time after the issue happened. It’s always best to tell people quickly.

We write issues in logs, we might tell our teams, and we usually tell the people who have to fix the issue. But the first people to tell about an issue are the people it impacts. When communicating about issues, make sure the audience includes the people it impacts.

We describe things from our own perspective. It’s natural to consider issues from our own view point and how the issue impacts us. But when talking to other people we need to consider their perspective too. If you’re describing an issue that impacts a customer, focus on how they will experience the impact.

All too often we talk about what caused an issue, or the steps that led to a problem. We also spend time talking about the issue and what is happening now. What we should focus on is the impact of the issue. Who is impacted, how are they impacted, and for how long? Focusing on the impact helps people see the significance and urgency of the issue. This in turn gets people thinking about what to do about the issue. The sooner you can talk about the solution to an issue the faster the issue will be resolved.

Issues have time frames. They are not instantaneous events. The issue had or has a duration. The impact of the issue had a duration too. It may last 5 minutes or 5 years depending on the significance of the issue. And the work to fix or clean up after an issue takes time. All these time frames should be included in the description of an issue.

Some issues have impacts that last far into the future. A bad client interaction is an issue on that moment. But the bad reviews they give you could impact your company for years to come. Even issues that are caught and fixed quickly can have longer term implications. Always consider the long term impacts of issues.

People often like to complain about problems. Talking about a problem or issue can make it seem easier to deal with. When you talk about a project issue make it clear if you need the audience to take an action or if you are just venting. People need to know what’s expected of them in a conversation. The sooner you make it clear you need something from them the better.

If you talk about an issue many people will start thinking about ways to fix it. Similarly, if we think something isn’t important we won’t always react to an issue. When talking about issues make sure you are clear what happens if nothing is done. Will the problem solve itself? In which case no one needs to do anything. Will the problem get catastrophically worse if no one does anything? In which case people need to know the consequences of doing nothing.

If you describe a problem to someone and want to ask for help, make sure you have some options for what to do. It is flattering to be asked for help. But if it feels like we are being given a problem instead of being asked for advice the feeling is less good. Include options for what to do about an issue and the audience will appreciate it.

Having ideas for how to solve an issue is great. What’s even better is having a recommendation or a preferred option. If you describe an issue and give three options to fix it say which one you recommend. If you don’t you’re asking the other person to choose for you. Even if the final choice is theirs you can make it easier for them. Not only that, you can show your expertise by making an informed recommendation.

We all have times when we don’t know what to do about an issue. When this happens we have choices. We could ignore the issue and hope it goes away. We can try to work out the solution for ourselves – knowing the longer it takes the worse the issue could get. Or we could as for help. IF you don’t know what to do, ask for help. And ask sooner rather than later. Feeling silly for asking is better than having to deal with an issue that’s grown even bigger because you didn’t ask.

Fixing issues is important. So is cleaning up the consequences of an issue. But don’t stop there. A critical and often overlooked step is to find a way to stop the issue happening again. The things you learn from an issue are valuable to your future self, and to other people. Take time to identify the causes, warning signs, and steps that led up to the issue. Then do what you need to do to reduce or remove the chance of those things happening again.

Descriptions of issues should be short. People impacted by issues want to get to the point fast, and get the issue resolved even faster. This means your communication must be brief. You don’t have time to go into the full history of an issue. But you also can’t be sure what your audience wants to know. Instead of guessing what detail they want, give a short update and then ask what else they’d like to know. If the audience has questions about the history or the details they can ask. If they don’t, well, being brief will save everyone some time.