Dealing with a crisis

Leadership is hard when things are going to plan, but it becomes even harder when you are facing a crisis. Businesses will face challenges such as a change in market conditions that may need you to pivot your work or even restructure your workforce. In your home life, illness, bereavement, or simply moving house can disrupt how you show up at work. When a crisis occurs there is a lot to deal with, but there are two mistakes I see leaders making again and again. One is not prioritising time for their development when they are dealing with a crisis and the other is not changing their approach to adapt to the crisis. 

Time to reflect 

You may think a crisis is no time to be thinking about your development, and if you have a narrow view of what that is, such as getting a promotion, you would be right. If however, you understand personal development to be all the activities you do to be your best self at work then during a crisis is one of the most important times to ensure you do these things. 

You can’t lead a team of people effectively if you are not being effective yourself and that might require you to do some reflection and change your behaviour. Dealing with a crisis is stressful, it might require you to get more rest, ask for help or change your approach to your work. The first step to being able to do those things is acknowledging that things need to change. If you don’t make the time to reflect, you are in danger of just carrying on as if nothing has changed, which may cause you to be less effective in how you handle the situation. How you approach your own needs during a time of crisis will likely impact how you approach the needs of your team and your business. 

Adapting to the need 

The second thing to consider is changing your approach to your work, which you might need to do as a result of making time to reflect on your situation. What works during “business as usual” might not be the right approach during a crisis. A period of crisis, whether that is a business emergency or a personal one will, hopefully, only be for a relatively short period of time. Changing your approach during this time can help you to deal with the challenge in front of you and ensure that you come out the other side ready to get back to normal.

There isn’t a right or wrong way to do things as such, it is more about being intentional with your approach. If you pause work that will benefit you in the long term it should be because that is the right thing to do, not because you are so caught up in firefighting that you lose the ability to plan ahead. Likewise, you may choose to lower the quality of the work or pause projects in the short term to gain capacity, but that is very different from standards slipping because you didn’t change your approach and people started to make mistakes through too much pressure.

Recognising what you need during a crisis and adapting your approach accordingly is what will help you to deal with the challenges facing you. It will also help you to better understand what your teams need. You may need to encourage others to rest, to pause work or to make a difficult decision and leading by example is the best way to get your teams on board.