8 Strategies for Leading in a Crisis

In the wake of the Australian Dreamworld disaster recently and the subsequent public views that things weren't perhaps handled as well as they should have been, it’s a timely reminder for leaders in all organizations, teams and businesses - of any sort and size - to be prepared when something unexpected and dreadful happens. 

It’s not a pleasant topic*; for many leaders, this type of talk and preparation for a crisis that hasn’t happened takes them away from their daily work and can feel like a waste of time or a distraction from the priorities at hand. You may think, ‘yes I’ll handle that when it happens’ but your role in leading and facilitating in a crisis requires some prevention. 

*Why am I writing about leading or facilitating in a crisis? My current work is as a speaker, author and facilitator. I’m a communications specialist. I’ve spent many years in my career studying and then lecturing in under-graduate and post-graduate Public Relations, Advertising and Communications and being the full-time leader in communications roles in health, education, government, sport. I held consultant roles for many other businesses over the first 20 years of running my own business. During this time I learned that responding to and facilitating in a crisis is a part of leadership. You take it on when you sign up to be a leader. You can’t hide or escape. So I was ‘in’ for leading and facilitating in a crisis when I took on a leadership role in an organisation. And then as a PR practitioner, I was doubly in. I had to be a facilitator of other leaders during times of crisis.

I see there are some strong key pillars of timeless advice to be aware of and to put to work when a crisis hits, no matter what business you’re in, no matter your leadership role. 

1. Be ready

Always be ready. Crises aren't planned. You don't schedule them so you can't say ‘Let's have a meeting and do our media training in the two hours after the crisis'. You've got to be ready. Now. What if something happens today, or tonight or overnight? Or tomorrow afternoon? Would you be right to go? Would you really be ready? A crisis is an almighty shock for an organisation. It feels like it has come out of nowhere and then all of a sudden you are in it; it’s all around you; it’s everything you see and hear and it’s unexpected. But you still need to be ready. 

2. What's your response?

You need to know what you will do as a business. Just as you have an evacuation plan if there is a fire in your premises, what's your broad plan for if something tragic, disastrous and dreadful happens? For example, who’s on your Crisis Response Team - or whatever you call it. Who are they? And what will they do? Does the board meet immediately or have a phone hookup or does Leader A take the first media calls (or Leader B or C if A is on leave; and if they’re ill or away then is it Leader D and then Leader E if B and C are in Bali)? What’s your hierarchy or handling what’s about to unfold? Work it out. Now. 

All leaders need to have been grilled with media and customer key message training. Recently. This is not so you can come up with smart arse legal-ese answers but so you can calmly and professionally handle the valid questions that will be asked of you by customers, families, staff, media, sponsors, suppliers, stakeholders, investors…

By the way, they are not annoying questions, they are valid questions being asked by people who want to know. 

So yes, your actual messages to families, staff and media may need some crafting and tweaking from PR gurus and speechwriting former political sidekick geniuses but people will want to hear from you. They need to hear and see your organisation represented and speaking. Swiftly. That’s how communication is. Quick. Even if there isn't much to say right now, you've got to be seen and heard. Either onsite where the crisis occurred or at a head office or work location and in your work clothes. It's all about visibility.

If it looks at all like you’re absent, even if you're working so bloody hard behind the scenes, you still appear invisible and guilty and uncaring. The longer it takes you to come out and say something - even if you are consulting your legal team on the exact wording - the worse things starts to look. 

Remember the look of Premier Anna Bligh after the disastrous Queensland floods. Sleeves rolled up and moleskins on and working. Not working sweeping out flooded shops. But working with the information coming through from the weather bureau and getting information together and attending briefings and then delivering her media conferences - both prepared messages and taking questions from the media. She was visible. Seen. Heard. Continually. And this visibility gave her great credibility. 

3. Contacts at the ready

Who’s on your list? Do you have your stakeholders and key contacts at the ready?

Media contacts. Board. Key leadership staff and employees. Stakeholders. Legal. Suppliers.

Can you put your hands on that list of information immediately? Who are they and what are their emails and phone numbers. Is it up to date? 

But can you really touch that information now? Do you need to ring someone else to get this? Too slow. 

I remember observing a team who took about two hours to bring together all the contact information they needed. This was after the crisis had hit. It was awful. Crazy. Do it today. Get it ready. Keep it updated. 

4. War room, Board room or Bunker

Where will your crisis response team meet? Where is your bunker? Where will you operate from? Is it adequately resourced with phones and printers and wifi and food and beverages? This is for the team (internal staff plus external consultants) who will be managing your organisation’s response to the crisis full time over the next days, weeks and months. It's also for the media and families and stakeholders who will be nearby, and in your face. They have questions and will need answers. 

Coordinate it and control it from somewhere. Is there a space where you can run rolling media conferences -- because as new information comes to hand you'll need to speak to people on an ongoing basis. If you don't keep speaking you'll get intercepted as you leave your glamourous house in the morning, all freshly washed and showered and breakfasted. Not a good look to relatives and families traumatised by the crisis currently oozing from your company. Even if you’ve been working all night, we can’t see that. Get your team in that room and then get visible. You need to do and say something.

5. Mindful Mantras 

The sh*t is most certainly hitting the fan. Beyond the horror of a crisis, things will feel increasingly awful for the leaders involved. So what will you use to guide how you keep responding and managing through the crisis?

Some of the best historical PR advice was 'tell it all and tell it fast.’ My sense is that isn’t adopted so much today. It’s more like ‘tell them some stuff but hold that and edit that bit and don’t you dare say that’. But other great kernels of PR advice are 'bad news doesn't get better with age’. It still stinks when it finally comes out so you can go with it now or let it fester some more. You choose. 

Plenty of responses I see companies use seem to be legally based on a 'don't admit fault’ response. But then if that IS the advice, some leaders then translate that so they present with a 'show no emotion whatsoever’ approach or 'don't express sadness and grief'. But you are human. Your organisation is a group of humans working together. And you deliver services for humans. And some of the humans have been impacted - badly. Remember this. Show this.  is a group of humans working together. And you deliver services for humans. Remember this. Show this. 

I recall hearing about a CEO of an airline who was photographed as they hugged a distraught relative. That's human. Better than saying 'our organisation has the highest levels of safety systems and audits in place and we are focused on the safety and health of blah blah crap and cliche down on the corner of Not Listening Street and Robot Voice Road.'

Dull. Cold. Inhuman. Rich. Ivory tower. Distanced. Removed. Out of touch. Heartless. Money hungry. Bonus = my lifetime income. Uncaring. 

This is what it progressively conveys. True or not it’s a heightened emotional environment in times of a crisis. 

Customer centricity is such a thing today and thinking you are distanced from real customers is folly. They are right there. Watching you and waiting for you to show what type of company you really are, what type of leader you really are.

6. Remain Calm

There was a classic PR textbook ‘Public Relations Practice’ when I was lecturing and practicing and in learning about communicating in a crisis, students would giggle at the matter-of-fact checklist we used to drill them on in preparation for a crisis. The checklist had ten points, of which numbers one, three, seven and ten read ‘Remain Calm’. Throughout all the advice you have to remember to keep it together and so ‘Remain Calm’ got repeated on high rotation. 

Anxious and crisis-fueled people say things. Some of that might not be helpful to traumatised customers or families or staff. Leaders under pressure can go all boss-like and 'I'm right’ and say things like ‘Yeah but I did do that' and then it's a ‘You took it out of context’ statement and urrrgh now the crisis is about how you’re responding to it, not about the tragedy that occurred and how awful people are feeling about it and what you're doing about it. This is called leadership. You will feel like sh*t during this but you need to stay calm.  Leaders under pressure can go all boss-like and 'I'm right’ and say things like, ‘Yeah but I did do that' and then it's a ‘You took it out of context’ statement and now the crisis is about how you’re responding to it, not about the tragedy that occurred and how awful people are feeling about it. It's called leadership. You will feel like sh*t during this but you need to stay calm.  how you’re responding to it, not about the tragedy that occurred and how awful people are feeling about it. It's called leadership. You will feel like sh*t during this but you need to stay calm. 

In the midst of a crisis, the PR team I worked in would say to each other 'this will get worse before it gets better'. And it does. It feels like a movie ‘Under Siege’; you feel under attack, on the defensive and like you’re being blamed for every thing that's happened over the entire life of the organisation. But keep it together. It will likely get worse before it gets better. More information will come out. Media will arrive on the doorstep. Any doorstep. Your doorstep. All doorsteps.

I remember working in a hospital and in times of crisis (infection outbreaks, doctors strikes, accidental deaths and other awful system failures) that media and journalists would interview staff in the car park arriving for work. The media were simply looking for information. Staff were briefed to direct them to the PR team. I’d be circling the hospital and I’d say to the media, 'Come in. We have our media centre up and running with rolling news conferences from team experts and other information on hand for you. Let's get you a coffee and get you set up. The CEO will next speak at 11'. briefed to direct them to the PR team. I’d be circling the hospital and I’d say 'Come in. We have our media centre up and running with rolling news conferences from team experts and other information on hand for you. Let's get you a coffee and get you set up. The CEO will next speak at 11'.

And they'd come in. And we’d be in better control of what was getting out there. 

And it was madness. For days. Little sleep. A disrupted life. But you have to remember that people have suffered or died or been injured and families and relatives are having a frightful time right now and for the rest of their lives. Keep it in perspective. You have a job here to do. A leadership job. 

Indeed as more information came to light it did get worse before it got better. More details would be uncovered and you could start to see what went wrong or where the system or people or situation had fallen or failed. And that’s just awful too. 

But then the intensity would start to level out and we would begin to just carry on...in the new world we called 'post crisis world'. The business is never the same. People are never the same after the gut wrenching experience of tragedy and crisis in a company, particularly where people are badly injured or killed. There is a scar tissue and it never really feels like it heals. 

7. Get real practice

When schooling PR students in undergraduate and post graduate communications programs as a lecturer and tutor in the evening (after I’d just come from working in PR practice during the day) I was big on students applying learning to real life situations. No blah-blah lecture. Let’s get real here. Let’s look at something that’s happening now.  communications programs as a lecturer and tutor in the evening (after I’d just come from working in PR practice during the day) I was big on students applying learning to real life situations. No blah-blah lecture. Let’s get real here. Let’s look at something that’s happening now.  situations. No blah-blah lecture. Let’s get real here. Let’s look at something that’s happening now. 

The unfolding of crises like the Thredbo landslide disaster and a Russian submarine sinking, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, plane crashes and bridge collapses and product tampering and food poisoning outbreaks and bushfires and floods and terrorism and earthquakes and countless other horrendous and heartbreaking tragedies that impact hundreds of people from the victims and their grief stricken families, the first responders and the staff who are part of the wider work family.  

In several organisations I worked in, we would practice our public response to a crisis. Not just who would wear the hard hat and direct the ambulances, but who was waiting out at the helipad to greet the media. Who was running the first news conference. Who got the first statement written. Who was caring for customers. Who was handling relatives. Who organised the catering for relatives. Time and again we would practice the response of the wider team. We'd practice the phone chain and the email announcement to staff and the media liaison. All practiced and drilled and tested. Where were the points of failure? How long did that take to do? That’s not swift enough - let’s tighten that process up. How could we do it better? Is there a way to streamline that flow of information?  Who was handling Who the catering for relatives. Time and again we would practice the response of the wider team. We'd practice the phone chain and the email announcement to staff and the media liaison. All practiced and drilled and tested. Where were the points of failure? How long did that take to do? That’s not swift enough - let’s tighten that process up. How could we do it better? Is there a way to streamline that flow of information? 

Our theory was that our brain doesn't know the difference between practice and reality. Let's drill ourselves in this so we are ready and practiced with real experiences. 

Because point #1: It might happen tomorrow. 

8. Look and listen 

Crisis management is a domain of PR expertise. Any crisis that surprises us often stems from that other domain of PR expertise known as 'Issues Management,’ that is, an unattended situation or issue or ‘thing’ may build up and cause you a crisis one day. It’s good to be scanning what’s going on and keeping an Issues Register to track risk and what’s going on across an ’s operations.  

In training students and in consulting with business, I've always aimed to alert people to thinking about the smoke before the fire or the hint that all may not have been well for some time prior to the crisis. For so many organisations there are hints of an impending crisis but the comments, concerns or complaints from customers or the feedback and reporting of issues from staff have little impact. They’re not heard. Some businesses don't want to press ‘pause' on their services - whether that be transportation or logistics, operations on patients, flights, machinery and equipment - because of the great inconvenience and impact it will have on daily operations and service. If it’s just to simply investigate another comment or concern and to check if something might need fixing, it’s all a tad annoying really. 

But the true tragedy is that so often the crisis was a puff of smoke somewhere in the history of operations of the business. No matter how small or insignificant that puff of smoke was, it's how it manifests further into the future that creates the true sadness of a tragedy: that something serious may have indeed been prevented.