Sabine Gromer is the founder of MagnoliaTree, a coaching & consulting firm. She focuses on change, executive coaching & crisis management.
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Viktor Frankl is often attributed for saying, “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
When we recognize that in all of life's struggles we are empowered and not helplessly at the mercy of fate, valuable perspectives and options for action can emerge.
Engage In Crisis Management Early
Leaders have a responsibility to ensure the well-being and continuity of the systems they lead. This duty weighs heavily, but you can prepare accordingly in advance. Believe me, you are much more crisis-proof than you suspect. Make a list:
- Which life crises have you already overcome?
- How did you overcome them?
- What have you learned?
- How do you transfer what you learned to the here and now?
The World Economic Forum conducted a survey in 2022 to list global risks. It covers human suffering, societal disruption, economic shocks, environmental degradation and political instability. The climate crisis and its ecological consequences dominate the list. Nearly half of all respondents (41.8%) said they see the outlook for the next three years as constantly fluctuating with many shocks.
Crises management focuses on developing action plans for responding to emergencies and executing those plans. The five essential elements of crisis management can be summarized as follows:
• Prevent: Identify, avoid and/or minimize risks and threats.
• Plan: Develop contingency plans.
• Inform: Use a wide range of current information and news. Networks can carry and give good impetus.
• Practice: Test the contingency plans.
• Execute: Execute effectively when needed.
Crises Put Leaders To The Test
Crises test leaders on their leadership skills, creativity and resilience. These skills cannot be learned from a guide or manual. In many ways, successful crisis management for leaders is an intense examination of themselves and the challenging acquisition of necessary skills. Let's take a look at them.
1. Be confident. You must be a role model and make decisions based on facts. Above all, this requires self-confidence. You must be less likely to overestimate or underestimate yourself, know where your limits are and be able to take over but also to let go. To do this, you need to have a stable personality that allows trusting in yourself and others.
2. Be empathetic. You must have a good sense of your team and recognize what team members need, especially in times of crisis that trigger uncertainty and powerlessness. Empathy is not a nice-to-have trait, it is a strategic imperative that must be an indispensable leadership quality even away from crises. Empathy is a key driver of innovation, engagement and inclusion. Recent research shows that cultivating empathic leadership is one of the most important strategies for responding to crises.
3. Foster creativity. Creativity is the key to getting through a crisis and reorganizing after a crisis. To be successful through severe crises, you need to discover and use the creativity of your employees. Creativity is universal. It is part of being human. It involves the use of our individual imaginations and the ability to share ideas and interpret the world around us. Promote a culture that reinforces diversity. People want to hear others' ideas so they can inspire or sharpen their own. But above all, encourage your own creativity. Paint, tinker with a model train, do a puzzle and let your thoughts run wild. Creativity expands the scope of action and allows ideas to mature like an incubator, promotes associative thinking and relaxes.
4. Communicate. Especially in times of crisis, it is of particular importance for you to communicate with everyone at all levels—clearly, calmly and factually. It is also possible to communicate what is still uncertain or in the decision-making process. Especially in uncertain times, your employees want to know what is coming up and it is reassuring to know that you are actively dealing with these problems. An "I don't have an answer yet, but I'll give you feedback as soon as I do" is more confidence-building than beating around the bush or not talking about it at all. Also address your concerns and fears: What is negative, what is interesting and what is a positive benefit from the situation?
5. Remain calm. Crises often narrow our field of vision and reinforce prejudices and selective perceptions of the world. To deal with crises emotionally, our brain tries to simplify as much as possible. The catch? Our room to maneuver becomes narrower. Neuroscientists call this effect "predatory fear": the less threatened we feel, the more room we have to think through scenarios and act strategically; the more threatened we feel, the less room for action our brain allows. Without our active intervention, we react reflexively and are less creative in finding solutions to problems than under normal circumstances. We explain the world to ourselves more simply and as we like it, but not more truthfully. Therefore, it is important for leaders in threat scenarios to inform themselves more broadly than usual and to be open to facts and other perspectives. Leaders should also focus on meditation and mindfulness exercises, especially when everyone around them is acting in panic. Meditation sharpens skills such as attention, memory, emotional intelligence, social awareness and, most importantly, the inner calm that leaders need to manage crises.
These skills cannot be acquired in a weekend workshop. They require intensive work with yourself, time, patience and, above all, lots of practice. They are not skills that leaders should only pull out of their first aid kit when an emergency occurs. They are the basic skills of great leaders that should be used even in the calmest of winds.
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