4 Actions to Take in Times of Crisis
“Winter is coming” – we hear this from all directions. Inflation is rising as fast as the ozone; the stock market is volatile and precarious; and the pandemic may or may not be “over.”
As an effective leader, you have to be aware of the impact these (and other) factors have on your organization and, just as importantly, on the people that make up the organization. It is during times of crisis that effective leadership becomes most important, and these are four actions that can help to guide your company through tough times.
- Acknowledge Your Employees Specific Difficulties and Take Action to Mitigate Them.
While tough times may be tough for everyone, it is a fact of life that they impact different people in very different ways. I will never forget how, after the pandemic hit, Leadership Speaker John Maxwell gave a talk on the internet and told us that we were all in the “same boat.” I was wondering – how can that be? My company had been doing well, but I wasn’t a multi-millionaire, and my company would be at least temporarily shut down by the crisis. I was not sure how I was going to navigate through this and survive. How could John Maxwell be in the same boat? Well, he explained, he had been scheduled to meet the pope, and he was going to have to cancel the meeting. Ok, I thought, but here’s the thing – I can’t pay my people, I have to refund a great deal of money that had been given to me for work I could no longer perform, I didn’t have tens of millions in the bank – and, by the way, I wouldn’t be meeting the pope either! The point is, nothing can piss off a team more than this kind of tone-deafness. Make a point of finding out just what the particular concerns are of your people and address them. Help out when you can. It is always important to place common interest first, and never more than in times of crisis. And, most importantly, any time you are requesting your people to sacrifice, show that you are willing to sacrifice as well.
2. Think Strategically and prepare for collateral damage.
Those who made it through the pandemic did so by making plans that took the pandemic into account.Some of these moves seem obvious in retrospect – purchasing outdoor heaters for restaurants, transferring to a zoom-based culture in business. But others were less obvious. Many restaurants collapsed because of collateral damage of the pandemic. Government checks made people less willing to come to work, lessor qualified people were given jobs, and the quality of these restaurants sank. We all heard many executives complain – people just don’t want to work anymore. By blaming circumstances and even their ex-employees instead of figuring out how to attract those quality employees back, they doomed their restaurants.
3. Articulate a Vision.
In times of crisis, people either come together or go apart. When John F. Kennedy was faced with the crisis of the Soviet Union’s defeating the U.S. in the space race by putting the first manned craft into space, his response was to galvanize the country and its scientific community by announcing that we would put a man on the moon within ten years. Faced with the seemingly imminent destruction of his country, Winston Churchill galvanized England by articulating a vision of shared difficulties in order to fight off a catastrophic result.He offered nothing but “blood, sweat, and tears,” and his nation rose itself to meet his challenge. When your company is faced with difficulties, let your people know that you are aware of those difficulties, and show them how all of you together can overcome them.
4. Act Decisively.
In times of crisis, those who acknowledge challenges and who act decisively to mitigate them are more likely to guide their organizations through them. Thinking positively can be useful, but failing to notice oncoming challenges is suicidal. Note the oncoming difficulties, plan your way or thriving despite them, and share your plans as a vision to the others in the company.