Leadership During Crisis

Throughout our lives, we’ve all experience crisis which consumes us. Whether they be personal or professional crisis, they give is the same feelings of stress, anxiety, concerns and fear of the unknown to come. In times like these, those who lead us out of the crisis, the leaders, are most important. Not only what decisions they make to get us through the crisis, but also how they go about handling the entire situation makes great difference.

When faced with a crisis, we all go into our crisis mode to approach the problems. We all go about it in our own ways, and different leaders, too, will go about handling the problems in their own ways. In any crisis, there are some key areas to address and focus upon.

• Define the problem. What is the crisis currently facing and how it impacts the people, the project and the business.
• Figure out the cause. Crisis doesn’t magically appear out of thin air. They are usually an outcome of something done in correctly or a result of unanticipated outcome of sequence of planned, or even unplanned, events. Understanding who and what caused the crisis can begin the process of understanding what the solutions may be.
• Identify possible solutions. Explore all possible solutions that can be taken that will provide remedies to the crisis at hand. The more actionable options available, the better the chance of coming out of the crisis successfully there are.
• Make decision and execute. Discuss and debate the pros and cons of options identified and quickly come to a decision. In times of crisis, the luxury of thoroughly thinking, researching and processing isn’t available. Hence the need for quick debate and decisions to be made is necessary.
• Execute on the solution identified. Unite and focus the team to deploy the best solution selected. Monitor closely and make adjustments as needed until the crisis is clear.
• Conduct a post crisis review. Once the crisis has been resolved, it’s important to understand as a leader that you’re not done. Aside from resolving the crisis, this is the next most important item. Conducting a full review of the incidents to identify who was involved in what, good or bad. What happened, why and how did it happen. What solutions were available, their pros and cons, and what and why the final solutions were made. Finally, document everything for future use and make it official.

All these steps are necessary to take during a crisis, but they do not necessarily have to take place in the order presented above. Some steps may be used multiple times during the crisis process. It’s important to understand the steps and it’s value so that it can be used appropriately during the appropriate time.

When things goes wrong and it seems like there will be major consequences to pay for the mishaps, it is very common that people will start pointing fingers and pushing blame. Leaders too have been known to do this and it would be the focus of their crisis strategy. Find the culprit, place blame and make sure that everyone knows it’s not the leader’s fault. Then the leader would start on attempting to resolve the crisis. I’ve seen this over and over during my career and I must say that it is one of the most destructive leadership trait there is. Prioritizing identifying a scapegoat and berating the individual is the quickest and most efficient way to lose your own credibility and leadership effectiveness.

There will be plenty of time to find and place blame at the end. What’s important for leaders is to stay composed and remember that the team are looking to the leader to step up and provide solutions. Focus on the issue at hand. Stay focused on helping your team, your project, your organization to overcome the crisis. That is the true indication of great leadership.

Photo by: Andrea Piacquadio