Are You a Crisis-Ready Leader?
What is Crisis-Ready Leadership?
In the pandemic and post-pandemic era, volatility may be the new norm. A crisis-ready leader and culture empowers teams and strengthens a company within its industry. Crisis leadership is the process by which a company recovers from an event, the strategies it implements, and the ability of its employees to weather the situation.
Crises can range from natural disasters to technical issues to organizational or human issues or a combination of events. There are three types of crises to prepare for. The first, a routine crisis, is one in which there is some predictability through prior experience, common knowledge, and available information. Most leaders have strategies and plans for such emergencies already in place.
The second crisis is the emergency crisis which goes beyond the familiar and requires the whole team to step back, review, and become informed to move forward with a creative strategy or plan. COVID created such a crisis as companies were forced to go completely virtual and then hybrid.
The emergent crisis or a routine crisis that turns out to be not so routine or evolves into a novel crisis as other routine crises combine to create a bigger issue may take the form of a technology hack that turns into ransomware or total destruction of a company’s data. Leaders will not know who within their team or organization will be the first to notice a rapid change on the horizon, but leaders will want their team prepared and competent to take the right action when it hits. No matter which type of crisis presents, leaders must be ready.
What is needed from Crisis-Ready Leaders?
A proactive and prompt response is crucial to recovering from a crisis and requires specific skills from its leaders. Each crisis is an opportunity waiting to be managed, and the first response to a crisis should always be to listen well, then develop a plan. Reacting publicly without doing so could result in brand damage.
Successful crisis leaders are observant without bias, strategically creative, open to multiple options, decisive, collaborative, welcoming to unpopular or differing opinions, willing to face risk, and admit when they have made mistakes. Overall, crisis-ready leaders are calm, courageous, and positive. They cultivate a self-sufficient workforce ready with solid problem-solving skills and competent proactive measures.
Speed, accuracy, and transparency in communication can oftentimes be the difference between disaster and credibility for a leader facing a crisis. Apologies, statements of remorse, and explanations of prevention are important parts of the communication strategies. It is important to understand that overcommunication is necessary to bring about a solution. Frequent, frank, and meaningful communications quell rumors and bolster confidence in leadership.
An emotionally intelligent (EI) leader demonstrates the four domains of Emotional Intelligence in a crisis — self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management —building a foundation capable of facing any future crisis more effectively.
Finally, an effective crisis communication strategy incorporates empathy, transparency, collaboration, and cooperation. Crisis communication tactics should be frequent, timely, and tailored to accommodate the specifics of the crisis.
What are Crisis-Ready Organizations?
It is crucial for organizations to create a proactive crisis culture. A crisis-ready culture prepares a team to detect, assess, and respond quickly to an incident, thereby diffusing the situation, mitigating its impact, and strengthening the team’s engagement. Much like muscle memory, crisis readiness can effectively prepare your team to respond to a broad range of crisis intervention needs.
Crisis-Ready cultures should use a standard operating procedure (SOP) from which critical knowledge is captured and documented. Proactive leadership is demonstrated by front-line workers who clearly communicate guidance and expectations while keeping the SOPs as the framework for action. Collaborative problem-solving invites all team members to participate in issue remediation, thereby creating engagement and a sense of agency among those facing the crisis.
Crisis-readiness allows companies to pursue streamlined communication with stakeholders, utilize hybrid work environments, develop multiple revenue streams, grow strategic partnerships, and encourage team members to be engaged and prepared to do their part, thereby shortening the time between crisis initiation and recovery.