How to Lead in a Crisis
The following contribution is from the Center for Creative Leadership website and is authored by the team.
Don’t expect leaders to magically forge themselves during a crisis. Instead, prepare yourself and your teams for effective leadership in crisis situations by developing communication skills, empathy, and clarity of vision and values.
How to Lead in a Crisis
Nothing tests a leader like a crisis.
The inherently human and emotionally charged climate surrounding a crisis can have profound effects on the people in an organization.
It can even threaten the stability of the organization itself.
Fortunately, there are steps a leader can take before, during, and after a crisis to support team members, mitigate losses, and keep things running as smoothly as possible unfamiliar to them in these situations.
But by understanding and adopting the strategies explored here and in our book «Crisis Leadership,» you can be better prepared to lead effectively when it matters most.
Why Strong Crisis Leadership Matters
Crises are inevitable, both in life and in organizations. But knowing how to lead in a crisis can directly influence the duration, severity, and ultimate consequences of the crisis for your team and your organization.
In times of uncertainty, leaders set the tone by their example and their conduct.
Strong leadership during unexpected events can reveal a team’s underutilized strengths, while instability is fueled by evasive and inflexible leaders.
Effective leaders typically have a well-developed ability to influence others and achieve results.
In a crisis, we recommend focusing on these crucial influence skills: communication, clarity of vision and values, and concern for others.
Paying attention to these skills and developing them is absolutely vital. The idea that a crisis will forge a leader—one who will rise to the occasion and display previously unseen abilities—is unrealistic.
But if you possess the skills that enable you to engage with your direct reports, care and take an interest in their well-being and development, be consistent in your behavior, and demonstrate integrity, competence, and commitment, you are more likely to behave in the same way during a crisis.
Strong leadership is also important during polycrises, when multiple crises interact and create complex challenges. Our polycrisis research examines the key leadership capabilities needed when organizations face multiple, interconnected crises.
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10 Strategies for Leading in a Crisis
- Communicate key information consistently.
In a crisis, information is powerful. It reduces the emotional distress caused by the unknown, lessens fear, and provides tactical guidance.
As a leader, your responsibility is to gather the most reliable and up-to-date information from trusted sources and share it with your employees. Doing so demonstrates concern, engagement, awareness, and control of the situation. Without transparent communication, a crisis can negatively impact morale, attitudes, productivity, and retention.
Essential information should be disseminated throughout the organization by all possible means. We recommend first communicating face-to-face, either in person or through virtual channels. But don’t stop there.
Key information should be managed with the 3 Rs: review, repeat, reinforce.
Repeating and reinforcing information daily, and through multiple delivery methods, helps it be assimilated and retained. Learn more tips for communicating in a crisis.
- If you’re in charge, take the reins.
The onset of a crisis presents enormous pressure to act, and act quickly. Sometimes, you need to begin addressing a problem before you fully understand what’s happening.
Effective leadership in a crisis involves being proactive and taking the initiative. Do something even if it might be wrong; paralysis or overanalysis are more risky. When making decisions and taking action while leading a crisis, communicate your actions truthfully and honestly. As your response changes, keep your employees informed about the 3 Rs.
- Remain accessible to your team.
When leading in a crisis, be present, visible, and available to employees. When leaders appear calm, concerned, informed, and in charge, people are more likely to trust that the situation is under control.
Since it’s not always possible to tour your facility and speak with colleagues in person, let employees know how they can reach you for status updates and to ask questions.
It’s also important to understand that organizational protocol must allow for flexibility in leadership during an emergency. Whoever is in charge is whoever is present. An entire operation cannot be paralyzed because the bureaucracy hasn’t considered the absence of a key member during an emergency.
- Prioritize people’s well-being.
It’s important to do everything possible to reduce people’s emotional stress while they perform their jobs. Treat everyone in your organization with empathy and genuine concern. Demonstrate this by paying attention, using active listening skills, and responding to what they say, as well as considering what isn’t said.
Leaders must reassure people in their organization that it is normal to feel emotionally strained in these circumstances. Communicating this message helps create a psychologically safe work environment for people to express their feelings, which is crucial to reducing the emotional impact of a crisis, promoting emotional healing, and reducing long-term negative effects.
Recognizing and managing the emotions of the situation can contribute to individual and group resilience, as well as helping people stay safe and return to normal (or a new normal).
- Don’t abandon your vision or values.
A crisis tends to distract people from the work they need to do, even if it’s critical to the organization’s survival.
Leadership in crisis situations should include following and emphasizing the team’s vision, mission, goals, and standards of conduct. These well-established values have the power to help hold the organization together, providing security and continuity for its people. 6. Lead with positivity.
A leader’s attitude is contagious. A positive and proactive attitude can motivate people even in extreme crisis situations. Because leaders are bearers of hope. Harnessing the power of positivity, loyalty, courage, morality, and other core values will link your crisis response to what’s important to people, making it more purposeful and impactful.
To lead others with positivity, leaders must lead by example. This means avoiding negative people, thoughts, and conversations.
- Take care of yourself.
During a crisis, leaders often focus on the emotional turmoil of their direct reports. But it’s equally important to be aware of your own emotional turmoil, its effect on your behavior, and its influence on your leadership skills.
By paying attention to your emotions, needs, and behaviors, you’ll be better equipped to manage the human dimensions of leading during a crisis. You’ll also be better able to contain the crisis, regain control, minimize damage, and effectively prevent, defuse, and reduce the duration of an extremely difficult leadership situation.
- Make changes that protect your peace.
Leading during a crisis may involve doing some things differently to complete tasks while preserving your personal well-being.
Try to keep some meetings short. Be more assertive. Say «no» more often. Take private 5-minute breaks. Practice relaxation techniques, such as meditation and deep breathing. Focus only on important matters; ignore secondary tasks. Don’t neglect spiritual exercises or activities that are important to you.
- Plan for the next crisis.
As a crisis becomes less urgent, time pressure also lessens. At that point, the plan must evolve into a more complex system that addresses recovery and a return to normalcy, whatever the new normal may be.
At this point, senior leaders must ask themselves an important question: Are we prepared if a similar emergency occurs in the future? Most leaders admit that crisis planning (e.g., having an action plan and setting aside resources for a crisis) is important. However, rarely are sufficient resources set aside for contingencies. While improvisation cannot be planned, reflection and teamwork exercises can be integrated into a training program that prepares everyone for future events.
- Remember the big picture.
It’s natural to take things day by day when considering how to lead in a crisis. But it’s also important to maintain perspective by thinking about the broader vision you have for yourself, both personally and professionally. Take a break from today’s urgent tasks to think about where you’ll be and what you’ll be doing a year from now. These breaks can help you pause and appreciate that you’re alive and that this crisis can bring many good things.
How to Successfully Drive Change When Everything Is Uncertain
The following contribution is from the Harvard Business Review and is written by Michaela J. Kerrissey, associate professor of management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and Julia DiBenigno, professor of organizational behavior at the Yale School of Management.
Abstract: While traditional change management emphasizes incremental tactics such as pursuing small wins and building coalitions, in turbulent times these incremental tactics are unnecessary and can prevent leaders from capitalizing on larger achievements… more
Traditional change management advice emphasizes incremental tactics such as pursuing small wins, building coalitions, and introducing pilot projects that require minimal investment.
In times of stability, these approaches have been shown to generate momentum and buy-in from both stakeholders and employees, softening the rigidity of the status quo.
But in turbulent times—for example, during a crisis or when there is market turmoil—leaders who pursue incremental change tactics risk underperformance.
In our research and experience working with organizations, we’ve observed that when instability begins, there is a brief window—a temporary relaxation of bureaucracy and resistance—in which change is actually easier, if leaders manage it well.
For example, during the early months of COVID-19 in 2020, Julia and her colleague at the Yale School of Management, Elisabeth Yang, were studying the difficulties faced by hospital managers and their staff.
But these managers surprised us by reporting that the crisis had a silver lining: operational changes they had been wanting to implement for years were suddenly being approved, such as a streamlined process for grouping lab orders and tests, portable ultrasound machines for patient exams, and the addition of a nurse leader to support less-experienced nursing staff.
While change may be easier in the midst of disruption, it’s not guaranteed.
Organizational research suggests that, faced with a threat, organizations are just as likely to become rigid as they are to adapt.
To seize these moments and drive the changes they want to see, leaders must be proactive and opportunistic.
The saying «never waste a good crisis» is a commonplace, but it’s often forgotten.
Sometimes this is because leaders fear change, are distracted, or don’t want to further burden their employees in times of crisis.
We’ve seen this in executive teams facing crises, among front-line managers during the pandemic, and in multidisciplinary companies during the 2008 financial crisis.
But effort isn’t everything: change leaders also need to implement different tactics in these turbulent times. We’ve observed a pattern in the successful change leadership approaches adopted by the hospital managers Julia and her colleague studied during COVID-19, and by the leadership teams Michaela interviewed during the same period.
These successful change leaders identified practical ideas and reframed them to address an urgent need, acted quickly, and thought big.
We live in a time when crises and dramatic changes in technology, healthcare, natural disasters, geopolitics, and other arenas occur with alarming frequency.
For those seeking to drive change amid such turbulence—whether to engage their team, gain buy-in from more senior leaders, or influence their partners—we’ll describe in more detail how these approaches work.
But first, we’ll explain why we believe this approach is particularly valuable in turbulent contexts.
Why is it easier to drive change in times of disruption?
Decades of research by USC’s Wendy Wood and her colleagues show that times of major change present the best opportunities to implement lasting personal changes.
The best time to quit smoking for good, for example, is during other major life changes, such as moving to a new city, getting married, or getting divorced.
This is because people are more receptive to breaking and forming new habits when everything around them is already changing.
The environment that supported old habits is transformed. There is room for new habits to form.
Other research suggests that a similar logic applies to organizations.
In turbulent market environments, inertia, bureaucracy, and resistance are suddenly diminished by the force of external demands.
Old routines can change, and it’s easier to greenlight novel ideas, especially if they solve immediate problems.
Colleagues may be more open to changing the way they work when other aspects of their job also change.
When events disrupt organizational stagnation in a widely recognized way—whether it’s a «crisis,» a «transformation» of work, or «unprecedented times»—it’s an opportune time to drive other changes. Here’s how to do it.
Select the Right Opportunity and Reframe It
When the roof of Baltimore’s historic B&O Railroad Museum unexpectedly collapsed in 2003, damaging numerous artifacts and resulting in a reconstruction budget higher than insurance was willing to pay, the museum director didn’t just call in a contractor to repair it: he recognized a ripe opportunity to rally support and change the museum’s identity.
He had long desired to transform it from a sleepy, financially struggling institution, visited primarily by schoolchildren on field trips, into a major attraction offering tours, expanded family-friendly programming and accommodations, and a space for large-scale events.
However, he had encountered resistance to these ideas in the past, especially from his elite curatorial team, who had sought to maintain the organization’s focus on preserving historical artifacts.
However, when the roof collapsed, he reframed his vision as a response to the current crisis.
An analysis of this case by Professor Marlys Christianson of the Rotman School of Management and her colleagues demonstrated how the director successfully garnered staff support by demonstrating how his vision would ensure the museum’s long-term financial solvency and prevent permanent closure despite the damage.
The tactic here is idea selection and opportunistic targeting: First, a ready-to-implement idea is selected, perhaps one that has been stalled or one that repurposes dormant technologies.
The idea must be well planned and ready for effective execution. A cautionary tale: In Julia and her colleagues’ study during COVID-19, physician leaders i
