Tweet

Crisis Leadership

Guest post by: Roger Ingbretsen

Article Overview: Whether you are a politician, CEO or occupy any position with the title of leader; how you respond and fix a crisis will define your leadership style and capability. If you are seeking to maintain the confidence and trust of your constituents, clients, employees or the general public, you must respond quickly and effectively to the crisis and maintain executive presence.

Crisis Leadership

In our complex and ever evolving world, another crisis is just around the corner. Just turn on the news and witness much of the “breaking news.” Crisis leadership consists of leadership skills and techniques required to identify, assess, understand, and cope with a serious situation, especially from the moment it first occurs to the point that the crisis is under control.

Whether you are a politician, CEO or occupy any position with the title of leader; how you respond and fix a crisis will define your leadership style and capability. If you are seeking to maintain the confidence and trust of your constituents, clients, employees or the general public, you must respond quickly and effectively to the crisis and maintain executive presence.

Executive presence is about “creating a consistent image of you” as a compelling force when dealing with a crisis. You must become very adept at using your ability to influence others not by title, authority or harsh words; but, by your professional magnetism to motivate others to positively shape and attain the desired outcome needed to fix the crisis.

Along with maintaining executive presence and the confidence of those you lead, the following seven action steps must be taken to maintain a strong crisis leadership role.

1. Step in and immediately take control of the situation. People look to a leader to truly lead! If you don’t quickly take control, people will come to their own conclusion as to what happened and diminish their trust in your leadership ability or your capability to deal with the unexpected.

2. Act swiftly and effectively to assemble all the resources and key players available to assist in the crisis assessment and the possible fix. Have this team look at as many scenarios as possible. Have them think outside the box. Complex problems often require complex thinking and multifaceted solutions offered by many people.

3. Stay in constant communication with your crisis team and communicate honestly and often to your clients, constituents and employees. You cannot over communicate…People want and need to know what is going on especially during a crisis. The best leaders in times of crisis are straight with us, communicating clearly and frequently about the nature of the situation and the efforts to fix it.

4. Never point fingers or place blame. Great leaders only comment on facts and keep their focus on fixing the problem not placing blame before the actual cause has been determined. Even when all the facts are in the true leader immediately focuses on preventing a repeat of the crisis. Besides, there’s plenty of time for placing blame after the crisis ends and all the facts are in.

5. Take responsibility and own the crisis. Most often others have played a role in causing the crisis, but people don’t like their leader to wine and complain about how the crisis is not his or her fault. You are in charge now. You took on the leadership role to deal with the good, the bad and the ugly during your watch.

6. Stay calm, cool and collected throughout the crisis situation. When leaders act irrationally so do the people they lead! A crisis demands emotionally attuned leaders who can tolerate high degrees of ambiguity and uncertainty. People want their leaders to make them believe things are under control, even when they’re not.

7. Keep focused on the crisis until it has past. Focus will lead to a quicker and more effective execution to the problem. Don’t use the crisis to push another issue or personal agenda as it will dilute your efforts and the efforts of others to focus on fixing the immediate crisis. Focus and execution to fix the crisis is the key.

Bottom line…Deal with a crisis quickly, honestly, and completely, keeping everyone informed until the crisis is resolved. That’s what crisis leadership is all about!

Related Articles
  The Fundamentals of Crisis Communications
  The Decline in Trust & Confidence in Leadership
  Reputation Preservation in a Crisis
  Do You Know Where Your Disaster Recovery Plan Is
  Rebuilding Your Finances After an Economic Crisis
  In a time of crisis, PR is your greatest asset
  What Are the Factors That Lead to an Economic Crisis?
  Economic Crisis Affects Our Coffee Production Industry
  Managing Crises Before They Happen
  Corporate consequence, trust and thought leadership
  The Global Myth
  Crisis and the “Black Swan”
  “Crisis Management Planning – What’s Happening Where We Work?”
  Leverage as the Cause of the Global Financial Crisis
  Do You Need A Coach?
  Sales Management Training Tips: Sales are down. What can you do?
  Jim Kouzes: Leaders Focus on the Destination
  Crisis? What Crisis?
  Your Customers' Needs Change in Tough Economic Times
  Crisis Communications Planning or What To Do Before During Or After It Hits The Fan

Article Tags: crisis, crisis leadership, crisismanagement, executive presence, leadership style



Related Forum Posts
Re: Business Women Peer Mentoring Spotlight - Hi Everyone, Gosh, I REALLY appreciate your concrete feedback. This was far more than I expected and I'm glad you said what you thought straight out. Each of you have shared something of value and I want to take some more time to think and really go over what each of you have said. However, I can see there are some things I need to change right away. What an interesting point about a NEW program perhaps making people think they are guinea pigs! This is NOT what I want to convey! It's funny how we can see some things so clearly in others while not always seeing it for ourselves! I must admit there are a few things I've been meaning to change (like my bio which is very outdated). Obviously, these things need to be higher on my priority list. You caught me like the plumber who puts his clients first and doesn't get around to fixing his own tap! As far as my target market, I do feel quite strongly about working with Women Leaders and doing Leadership Coaching with them. It's non-negotiable in my books. In my Executive Coaching training, the terms "Leaders" and "Executives" are interchangable. To me, an Executive is a Leader and so is the Business Woman or Entrepreneur who is CEO of her own business. I love working with decision makers! What I did learn is that I need to avoid opening up the Leadership term beyond what I described above. I'm also wondering if there is a misunderstanding with the general public as to what Leadership Coaching really is. Leadership Coaching is all about developing your leadership skills, both as a people manager and in more effectively running and growing the business. There is ALWAYS room for growth in some way. As well, sometimes, we just need a sounding board to clarify what our next BEST step is. In fact, if a woman thinks she has nothing to work on, then we aren't a good Client/Coach fit anyway. How can she grow if she doesn't see the value of expressing ALL of the great ability within her? How can her company grow if she doesn't see the value of strategic planning for the next best level? Thanks again to you all! I will go back to my website and really question whether I am conveying the right message. I got more than I bargained for in this Spotlight... you generously offered way more than I was asking. I think we could be on to something great for the Forum. Now it's time to let someone else have the spotlight. It would be great if everyone took a turn! In gratitude, Tami
Re: 3 Ways I Used Twitter To Grow My Business This Week - Hi Olivia, It seems you are working in the area of leadership area. Is Leadership = Learning? I am looking for some good books on strategy? Which one do you recommend? Thanks, Robert
Re: LEADERS - Nice post, i like the Doers and the listeners comments from my handbook 8.5 HOW MUCH DO YOU KNOW ABOUT LEADERSHIP? Planning Problem Solving Vision Innovation Leadership Emotional Intelligence Delegation Communication Self-Development Relationship Building Commercial Financial skills Personal Energy Ethics Transparency Even there I see that we are missing "PASSION"
Different Hats - CEO Sales & Marketing & Leadership Development Company Strategic Vision 10 Alliances & Growth Strategies 10 Hiring & Managing People 8 Mentoring 8-9 Strategic Planning for Clients 10 Execution of Marketing Campaigns 9-10 (i have great people who do the nitty gritty) Financial Management 9 Bookkeeping 3 (outsourced as I really hate the fine details like GST0 Administrative Follow Up 6-7 (again have great staff) Writing & Publishing 9 (getting better all the time!) Speaking 10 (so I have been told) Self Promotion 9-10 Web development & Promotion 6-7 (learning more and have brought on players who are 10+) Babysitting Employees (1 - wont do it, that's why I work so hard to hire and motivate the people I have) Great topic Kevin!! Jude
Why A Project Fails? - Hello Everyone As the size and complexity of ones business grows, so does their need to effectively manage projects. I have been thinking about the major reasons why a project can go wrong and my limited experience comes up with the following. 1 Leadership: A project manager with leadership skills and not just management skills. 2 Failure to (Foresee and) Plan 3 Failure to Manage: Ineffective change management control methods. Unclear decision making guidelines. 4 Talent: Finding, allocating and developing people 5 Scope: Setting an overly ambitious or amibigious project scope 6 Alignment: When projects are not prioritized in alignment with the business strategy, or project members personal objectives are not in tandem with that of the project / company 7 Lack of Candor: Communication Breakdowns I would be interested in knowing everyone's thoughts on this, especially on ways to overcome the above mentioned obstacles. Cheers!


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

Download a template or see a lawyer?

Working Across Borders

RULE YOUR BUSINESS LIKE A SHINE STAR

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.