A business can encounter a variety of crises, ranging from natural disasters to employee misconduct to political unrest. It’s important to properly navigate crises because they can have a significant impact on your company’s profits and reputation. Crisis leadership is key to properly managing incidents and maintaining public trust. Keep reading to learn more about crisis leadership and why it’s vital to your business strategy.
What Is a Crisis?
A crisis is any event that disrupts an organization’s operations. Crises can vary in severity, duration, and their level of impact on your organization’s profits and reputation. Some examples of possible crises include natural disasters, disease outbreaks, and political uprisings. Events like these can shift customer priorities, reducing the demand for certain products or services, especially nonessential items. A crisis can also take the form of internal practices, such as failure to secure information or enforce safety protocols.
What Is Crisis Leadership?
Crisis leadership involves responding to an organization’s challenges and preventing them in the future. One part of crisis leadership includes emphasizing the needs of employees and customers and providing emotional support. For example, a crisis leader may acknowledge concerns and maintain clear communication throughout the crisis. This leadership style also focuses on the long-term effects of crises. Response methods are analyzed and revised with input from employees and customers to develop effective plans to manage future challenges.
Crisis Leadership vs. Crisis Management
While crisis leadership and crisis management are both important during challenging times, there are some key differences between these approaches. By understanding these differences, your organization can be sure to utilize both approaches at the right times. The primary difference between crisis leadership and crisis management is that crisis leadership focuses on long-term strategy. Crisis leaders preserve the company’s values and prioritizes the needs of employees and customers, ensuring public perception remains positive. This is a more proactive approach to challenges.
Crisis management, on the other hand, is a more reactive approach. It focuses on maintaining normal operations during a crisis through a crisis management plan. For example, a crisis manager may ration inventory during a national disaster to ensure it lasts until vendors are operational. They may also adjust procedures to ensure efficiency and protect the company’s ability to pay employees during a challenging time. The goal is to offer stability and help crisis leaders maintain high morale.
Characteristics of an Effective Crisis Leader
Critical thinking and adaptability are essential when it comes to crisis leadership. This allows a crisis leader to rapidly evolve to unforeseen challenges and adjust plans as necessary. In addition to these attributes, other characteristics that are essential to effective crisis leadership include:
- Decisiveness - able to rapidly make the right decisions in the midst of difficult circumstances
- Coordination - able to quickly organize teams to work together to accomplish the tasks at hand
- Goal-driven - skilled at establishing short-term and long-term goals with specific objectives, assigning them to teams, and ensuring they are accomplished
- Experience - has plenty of hands-on experience and training such as simulations and mock drills
- Communication - effectively able to interact with individuals and groups in various situations to clearly and concisely share information
- Open-mindedness - able to see a situation from multiple perspectives and think outside the box
- Good listener - skilled at active listening and able to digest large volumes of information from various viewpoints
- Facilitation - understands how to effectively gather input and facilitate collaborative decision-making among individuals and groups
- Responsibility - takes ownership of the solution while ensuring other key players are recognized for their contributions
- Prioritization - has a strong sense of which issues should be dealt with first based on an understanding of how tasks and solutions are related and affect one another
- Calm under pressure - able to remain calm, handle stress, and stay focused when surrounded by challenges and chaos
Become a Better Crisis Leader
Many of the qualities and skills that it takes to be an effective crisis leader can be developed and continually improved. A great crisis leader keeps working on getting better in all areas of crisis leadership. Are you ready to become a better crisis leader? Check out this guide to crisis leadership so you can keep your business prepared for the worst.
