The diagnostic can be used to:
- Get a sense of current individual, team and organizational capacity for crisis leadership that matters.
- Use the process of completing the diagnostic and the results to generate discussion and begin to build a culture that includes seeing opportunities within crises.
- Track effective crisis leadership capacity over time.
- Adapt and customize James+Wooten concepts to your particular crisis leadership situation and context.
Notes on completing the diagnostic:
- The diagnostic is intended to help raise the quantity and quality of discussions about crisis leadership, not as a report card. Use the diagnostic with interpretation or customization to your particular situation.
- Choose people to complete the diagnostic who have sufficient knowledge to appropriately respond to the questions.
- The diagnostic can be completed individually and then discussed as a group or can be used as a team exercise with each question debated and discussed as the diagnostic is completed.
- Different groups can complete the diagnostic and compare answers and assessments.
Scores are contextual. A low score on certain questions may be appropriate for your situation.
Crisis Leadership Capacity Developmental Opportunities
Having used the diagnostic to determine the capacity for crisis leadership at the individual, team, and/or organizational level, it may be helpful to choose some areas for further development. Consider your responses to the Capacity Diagnostic and think about the areas you would like to prioritize in terms of closing any gaps. There are several learning tactics that can be used to increase crisis leadership capacity:
- Learning on-the-job: how can you build crisis leadership learning opportunities into your current or future job assignments?
- Getting training or further education: are there traditional educational or training opportunities that can help build crisis leadership capacity?
- Learning from others who successfully exhibit these leadership capacities through observation, benchmarking and/or direct conversations: who is a good model of effective crisis leadership that you can learn from?
- Coaching and mentoring: can you engage a coach or mentor to help you focus on developing crisis leadership capacity?
- Learning from a network or group: are there opportunities to network with others who can help you expand crisis leadership capacity through peer learning or access to new information?
- Finding out about the past: what worked well or didn’t work well during past crises? How can this knowledge be leveraged to build crisis leadership capacity?
- Reading and research: what should you be reading and watching to expand your understanding of crisis leadership?
Across all of these learning tactics, your experience will be enhanced if you engage in:
- regular feedback from others
- self-reflection on what you are learning, what drives you, and your own emotions, strengths and challenges
- some documentation or evaluation of your developmental journey
You may find it helpful to set some developmental goals using this worksheet. We’ve re-stated the high-capacity in evidence descriptions for each section of the Capacity Diagnostic. We’ve also provided space for you to create a list of activities you could engage in to expand crisis leadership capacity. Do not feel it is necessary to have a learning tactic for all 6 sections at once.