Crises are a part of life, and that’s especially true when you’re talking about business. A crisis situation can emerge unexpectedly and can wreck havoc if you’re not prepared for them. The COVID-19 pandemic is a case in point. Among other lessons, the pandemic taught us that crises can be global, unprecedented and can affect virtually every aspect of your business. Some of the changes they cause can even be permanent.
But not every crisis is totally unpredictable, and there’s a lot you can do to ready your organization in case disaster strikes. With the right tools in your toolkit, you can properly respond to even the worst crisis, enabling you and your organization to weather the storm with the least possible damage.
It isn’t enough to simply survive and advance. Every crisis has a bright side and pulling the right lessons from a crisis is essential to learning from your mistakes and supporting long-term future growth.
Continue reading to learn more about leading your organization through a crisis.
Leadership challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic
The pandemic created a host of unprecedented yet simultaneous challenges that forced leaders to pivot in ways they never had before.
First and foremost, the pandemic is a public health crisis, and one of its lasting effects has been to transform the importance people place on their health and wellness almost overnight. Leaders have responded to this trend by investing more time and resources into workspaces that are not only clean and sanitary, but also promote other areas of health and wellbeing. For some business leaders, that means completely redesigning their office workspaces to create cleaner air and offer greater exposure to natural light.
Beyond health, the pandemic has been particularly challenging because it’s been so widespread and has affected so many different aspects of business. In fact, the pandemic is probably better thought of as a series of numerous smaller challenges wrapped into one big one. Leadership teams had to simultaneously respond to each of these mini-crises while at the same time working to address the larger issue.
Work patterns have changed while the future remains uncertain
The pandemic forced people to reorient their priorities in real time. Making sure loved ones were safe topped the list for many people, and that meant work often had to take a back seat when it came to taking care of children, aging parents or making doctors’ appointments. This has been a serious challenge for leaders because it’s forced them to pivot in kind, adjusting their own expectations and workflows to accommodate the needs of their employees.
One of the great overarching problems caused by the pandemic is the sheer uncertainty it’s created around the future. For people at all levels of their organization, uncertainty has reigned supreme during the pandemic. When will the office reopen? When will vaccines be available? Will I be laid off? Will I get sick? Will my family get sick?
Leaders are expected to have answers to many of these questions, but they’re operating under the same constraints as everyone else. Often, they have had to rely on incomplete information to make key decisions, adding an additional challenge to the entire ordeal.
Most effective crisis leadership strategies
There are right and wrong ways to handle a crisis situation. Leaders who shirk their responsibilities, avoid the tough questions and hide in the shadows as their organization faces the onslaught of whatever challenge it’s up against won’t just damage trust among customers and employees. They’ll also make it much less likely for the organization to make it through.
Here are some of the most effective strategies your leadership team can (and should) employ to help it through a crisis:
- Have a plan: Don’t get caught flat-footed when a crisis strikes. While many crises are difficult to foresee (looking at you, COVID-19), there are many more that are predictable. Take a hard look at your business and figure out any possible risk factors that could cause trouble and figure out how they might affect your business. Use this information to develop appropriate contingency plans so you’re ready if the worst happens.
- Act fast: Crises arise unexpectedly and develop quickly. There’s not much you can do to control that. What you can do, however, is work to allay concerns by communicating the situation to employees and your customers as soon as possible. This helps you gain as much control of the situation as you can while reinforcing your customers’ and employees’ trust in your ability to lead.
- Take responsibility: Nothing hurts an organization more in a crisis situation than doing nothing, covering up facts and hoping the problem goes away on its own. Keeping employees and customers in the dark on issues they need to know about can damage trust. Worse than that, waiting too long to do something can make the problem much, much more severe.
- Understand the legal issues: Depending on the type of crisis, there might be a number of additional legal obstacles you need to overcome. For example, an automaker might face several legal challenges if customers were injured in vehicles that had a safety defect. It’s important to discuss any potential legal challenges with your legal counsel to better understand and plan for any outstanding risks.
- Focus on the customers: Many customers might be angry and upset in the event of a crisis. That’s understandable. Maybe you didn’t live up to your promises, leaving customers feeling deceived and wronged. A central part of your crisis management strategy should include repairing these damaged relationships and winning back your customers’ business. Offer discounts, refunds and new incentives to show them you’re willing to own up to your mistakes.
Turning a crisis into an opportunity
Many leaders take a reactive approach to a crisis: They respond only when a crisis has already begun, putting measures in place to make sure it doesn’t happen again. While that’s certainly an important part of handling the situation, crises also present major opportunities for future growth and development that organizations should seriously consider.
Here are some of the things your leadership team should do to take advantage of a crisis:
Look at the bright side
It’s a cliche, but there’s good reason for that: It works. Many leaders focus too much on the negative when a crisis strikes, and it’s not hard to see why. You have to deal with angry customers, a damaged brand image, employees who might lose trust in your ability to lead, and depending on how big your business is, a media onslaught.
But there’s always a bright side. Think seriously about what a crisis can offer you in terms of innovation, changed processes, or opening new streams of revenue. Many companies took the pandemic as an opportunity to transition to a hybrid work environment, cutting down on costs associated with running an in-person office and expanding their talent pool far beyond the limits of their immediate locale.
Target deeper problems
Crises have a habit of exposing some underlying, preexisting problem that either went unnoticed before or simply wasn’t deemed that serious. A crisis gives you the opportunity to address problems of that kind head on, giving you the space to think more creatively about how to solve them when everyone’s in the mood for change.
Healthcare is one example of this. Health facilities had been experiencing staff shortages for several years before the pandemic. But the increased demand caused by the pandemic created a renewed sense of urgency among healthcare leaders to find more effective ways to hire the staff they need and create an environment that boosted job satisfaction.
Learn from mistakes
No one’s perfect, and mistakes happen. Sometimes those mistakes can be easily managed and smoothed over, but when they help contribute to a crisis, it’s a lot more important to understand what went wrong and prevent those from happening again.
It’s always easier just to ignore mistakes and hope their lingering effects just go away. A more responsible approach involves embracing those mistakes, understanding exactly what went wrong and drawing meaningful lessons you can apply elsewhere to make sure they don’t happen again. In a crisis situation, it’s important to ask yourself honest questions about the situation and what could have gone better.
Working with The Bailey Group
No one said handling a crisis was easy. That’s why it’s important you have effective, capable leaders at the helm so that when disaster strikes, you’re ready.
That’s where The Bailey Group steps in. We understand that every leader and every organization is different. Our team of coaches focuses on each of our clients’ specific needs and objectives to train their leaders in the right way to tackle any challenges that could crop up.
Through our LevelUP program, we offer coaching to individual leaders to help them achieve their full potential. We also have a team development program to help empower your leadership teams to achieve success.Contact us today to schedule a free consultation
