While being an effective leader and exhibiting individual leadership capabilities can be a strong foundation, there are some specific skills or competencies relevant to crisis leadership. The ultimate goal is to lead an organization through the five phases of a crisis such that it is better off after the crisis than it was before.
Phase 1
For phase one, early warning and signal detection, being able to recognize and make sense of the warning signs of a crisis is critical. It requires being able to hear and incorporate into your thinking other peoples’ viewpoints and perspectives.
Phase 2
During phase two, preparation and prevention, it is vital that a leader be able to influence people to take action. The ability to influence often includes being able to communicate ideas and requests effectively, including across different work groups; to be inspiring; and to be creative in analyzing and solving problems.
Phase 3
For phase three, damage containment or control, leaders must be able to broaden their communication abilities to include multiple stakeholders and be able to keep the firm’s reputation and long-term viability in mind at all times. Phase three also requires agility in responding to new situations, changing course, and taking risks.
Phase 4
Phase four is about rapid recovery, or resilience, creatively managing both the consequences of the crisis and the day-to-day business of the company. An ability to be flexible is key to effective recovery.
Phase 5
Finally, phase five, is learning and reflection. During this phase, the ability to reflect and to see opportunities is critical in preventing future crises and in finding ways to improve the situation so that the organization is better for having successfully weathered adversity.
Learning is woven into every phase of the James+Wooten crisis leadership framework.
- Develop a commitment to learning and reflection including looking at success, failure and systemic issues that could lead to crisis.
- Assess current skills and develop a learning agenda — at the individual and systemic level
- Focus on developing the competencies relevant to effective crisis leadership
- Leverage the learning and reflection culture to see opportunity during crisis
- Be open to learning from many varied stakeholders
- Seek out expertise and credible knowledge
- Be willing to innovate and learn a new approach for dealing with changing circumstances
- Take time for reflection and post-crisis review
- Consider successes and failures as learning opportunities
- Promote recovery and resilience
- Acknowledge learning and growth that has occurred
Crisis leadership is not an innate talent. It requires preparation and intentional development. Consider the competencies that align with each crisis phase and identify where you have gaps. We’ve listed some things you can do on-the-job or on your own to develop these skills of effective crisis leadership.
Sense making is a helpful skill to use especially when you have not yet defined the problem and are casting a wide net to fully understand what the problem might be. It involves taking in a broad set of information and then connecting the dots and finding the patterns. Some see sensemaking as being at one end of a thinking styles spectrum and analytical and logical thinking being at the other end. Sensemaking can be particularly useful when there is a high degree of ambiguity and a lot of information to process. To improve your skills:
- Improve observing and listening skills
- Seek multiple sources of data and pay attention to people who are closest to the frontlines
- Practice differentiating between what is important and what is not important data
- Tap into the humanities to understand language, cultures and people
- Think about assumptions, constructs, stereotypes and implicit biases that might influence how you look at information
- Become a better storyteller including being able to visually map the story of the situation
- Learn to detect patterns and connections and then consider multiple scenarios that could play out
- Try small experiments to test your ideas
- Get comfortable using images and metaphors to communicate
Perspective taking is the ability to look beyond your own point of view and understand how someone else may think or feel. You want to develop an understanding of how others see the world, how they thing and feel, and what drives and influences them. To improve your skills:
- Practice listening to understand versus listening to develop a quick response. Don’t interrupt when people are talking with you. Be respectful of what others are saying. Paraphrase what you’ve heard back to people to see if you understand what you’ve been told. Learn to ask open-ended questions and be willing to follow the conversational lead of others.
- Focus on taking in information without evaluating it. Choose curiosity and interest over judgment while listening, reading and absorbing data.
- Practice thinking about the perspectives of different characters when you are watching a movie or reading a book.
- Be aware of your reactions and body language when you are taking in unfamiliar things. Pay attention to your physical reaction to new experiences, people and information.
- Recognize that your point of view has weaknesses and accept that new information could change your mind.
- Learn more about people, places and things that are unfamiliar to you. Recognize that the world is full of differences.
- Bridge other perspectives to your own. For example, you may not dislike cheese specifically, but there is some food you don’t care for and you can relate to that perspective.
- Understand that people are influenced by culture, beliefs, and experiences that are different than yours. There is often a reason behind a person’s perspective that may not be obvious to you.
Influence is another leadership competency required for all situations. In the context of crisis, we focus on two specific elements that are particularly relevant: rationale and inspiration. Effective leaders must be able to explain their rationale clearly and concisely while under pressure. They also must be able to inspire during times that are emotionally charged. To improve your skills:
- Add value. Make sure your rationale is well-thought out and a positive contribution.
- Be confident about sharing your ideas and make sure to practice finding the line between assertiveness and arrogance.
- Think in terms of how you can serve others and help them accomplish things. This is an element of inspiration.
- Build trust and respect by being honest and open. Be equally able to express your concerns as you are your opinions. Think about what you are willing to share of yourself and then allow others to get to know you personally.
- Do the hard, mundane, daily work of being reliable and consistent. People can trust who you are, what you believe and what you say and do if you are consistent and reliable.
- Work on connecting people. Take time to see how people in your network could be helpful to each other and then help create those links.
- Make sure your rationale is derived from considering multiple perspectives solutions.
- Keep an eye on any gaps between what you say and what you do.
Organizational Agility is when an organization adapts quickly and successfully to changing circumstances or sudden external shifts. It is the ability of an organization to effectively deal with the discomfort of turbulent or disruptive change. To improve your skills:
- Gain a thorough knowledge of all aspects or your work and organization.
- Look across boundaries to see how your organization works. Make connections to understand and relate to people. Break down silos and seek out collaboration.
- Pay attention to what is happening and learn to anticipate and identify potential threats. Brainstorm how you can minimize these challenges.
- Conduct after action reviews and then consider what might have happened if you had made different choices.
- Look for ways to minimize bureaucracy and flatten hierarchy.
- Be an opportunities ambassador and encourage colleagues to adopt a growth and learning mindset.
- Experiment and get comfortable with success and failure; learn from both experiences.
Creativity is a broad concept. In the James+Wooten crisis leadership framework, we are focusing on the ability to think creatively about organizational vulnerabilities to crisis and how to address those vulnerabilities in novel and useful ways. This aspect of creativity requires the ability to brainstorm and imagine in ways that go beyond traditional thinking. To improve your skills:
- Learn about scenario planning and forecasting.
- Tap into abilities that you may not have accessed recently such as:
- visualizing, mapping and drawing
- creative writing
- problem-solving and strategy games
- physical movement
- meditation and self-reflection
- rhythm and music
- access to the natural world.
- Stretch outside familiar territory to learn something new outside your area of expertise.
Communicating Effectively is considered a key leadership competency in many situations. We are focusing specifically on how this competency intersects with crises. A truly gifted crisis leader will have the capacity to convey strength and inspire confidence, while simultaneously connecting to the emotional needs of people. To improve your skills:
- Learn from others who excel at communicating across boundaries and understand how to connect with different stakeholders.
- Work on how to be clear and concise in your communications. This will be necessary when a crisis creates time constraints.
- Learn about other people. Think about different cultural norms, backgrounds and expectations. Focusing on your audience helps you connect even when the message is difficult.
- Study people who inspire. During crisis events, people need to be lifted up. It’s okay to express emotions, but do not direct anger or frustration at other people.
- To truly connect with people, listen. Practice responding instead of reacting. Be prepared to respond to requests for clarification during times of uncertainty and ambiguity.
- Think before you speak. Practice taking a moment to organize your thoughts before you speak.
Risk Taking becomes more difficult during crisis events when information is unclear and uncertainty is high. However, judicious risk taking is a necessary part of creatively responding to crisis. The James+Wooten framework highlights crises as opportunities to make change, disrupt and not only survive but thrive post-crisis. To reach a better-than-before outcome requires risk taking. To improve your skills:
- Experiment and try new things when the risk is low. Learn from your successes and failures.
- Check in with your purpose and values – as an individual and an organization. If you can align with your purpose and values, you may find that you can more readily undertake a calculated risk.
- Learn how to evaluate risk so that you know what to pay attention to before, during and after a crisis event.
Promoting Resilience helps individuals and organizations deal with crisis events and continue to function. Being competent and believing that success can be achieved are two factors that contribute to promoting resilience. To focus on developing these skills:
- Practice understanding how to assess situations. Build you competence in getting an accurate picture of what is happening and determining what you can and can’t control.
- Encourage learning and development for yourself and for others.
- Build a team with diverse knowledge and competencies.
- Choose someone you admire in terms of resilience. Think about that person’s strengths and observe how they handle different situations. What can you learn from them?
Individual and Systemic Learning stem from acquiring new information and implementing a change in behavior as a result. Effective crisis leadership includes leveraging both individual and systemic learning on two fronts: reducing the frequency, likelihood and impact of a future negative event and increasing the frequency, likelihood and impact of a future positive event. It is important to feed the desire to learn and to develop learning skills as an individual or as a system – such as a team, organization or society.
Some suggestions for building a learning appetite and culture:
- Commit to continuous learning and reflection – updating knowledge, skills and perspectives means being better prepared during times of crisis. The skills that go you here are not going to be sufficient. Both individuals and systems have to learn, grow, and change to remain relevant.
- Start by evaluating current skills and identifying gaps. Create a learning and development plan and then track progress. Seek out regular feedback and inputs from others to stay on top of what you need to be learning. This can be done at the individual and systemic level.
- Remember that learning is not a gradual upward incline; learning causes an initial drop in performance and then moves up with improvement. Support the learning process and not just the achievement of a new skill. Recognize when people stretch outside their comfort zones.
- Be part of creating a learning culture where people are encouraged to do, learn and reflect. Cultivate a system that rewards the creation and sharing of knowledge. Look back on past experiences, conduct after action reviews and reflect on successes and failures.
- Make room to grow in emotional intelligence in addition to technical and other skills. Optimism and the ability to see opportunities during hardship is especially important for effective crisis leadership.