How can you develop resilience when working on a crisis communication team?

Run your war games (tabletop exercises at a minimum) and stress test the team and your play books. And, don’t do it once a year!

My advice is to understand you must reduce your own fears and anxiety, first, when working on crisis issues, before counseling others. To do so, includes healthy food, water, 8 hrs of sleep a day and healthy mindfulness, which all become a super power to excel in counsel to others. It sounds simplistic, but few do so. In fact, many think no sleep or energy in a crisis is a badge of honor. It is not. It make you too, the crisis expert, vulnerable and highly incomplete.

Developing resilience in a crisis communication team is vital to effectively manage the demanding and stressful nature of the role. Start by investing in training and education in crisis management and public relations to build knowledge and confidence. Encourage team collaboration and a support system to distribute emotional burdens and remember that crises are part of the job. Prioritize self-care and stress management, seeking professional help if necessary. Attend resilience training programs, develop a growth mindset, and refine communication skills. Reflect on and learn from each crisis, utilize your support network, and hone adaptive problem-solving skills. Establish work-life boundaries and practice positive self-talk.

With multiple audiences to communicate with a playbook is invaluable to allow everyone to understand who “owns” which audiences and channels. Corporate messaging is also critical as is the governance around that messaging and the use and governance of any messaging that flows from it. Key to all of this in a crisis situation is a regular cadence of meetings to check in, assess progress and agree actions, with all of this fully documented.

Crisis comms is stressful no doubt, but it's also very satisfying when you do the job well. One way you can manage the burnout is by developing a thorough understanding of the business and preparing for potential crisis. Speak with key stakeholders, identify vulnerability, map scenarios & have a plan in place for when the crisis strikes. It helps alleviate stress and ensure a smoother & more effective handling of the situation.

The Stoics taught that we must learn to go of things in life that are out of our control. They believed that worrying about what is beyond our control merely causes unnecessary anxiety and stress, using valuable fuel and energy, and delays us from thinking about and working toward the things that really matter — that which is within our control. This Stoic way — the use of our energy to consider and apply solutions to problems, rather than dwelling on the problems themselves, is a practical and pragmatic way of keeping stress at bay.

In a crisis situation, especially a fast-moving one, it can be easy to lose focus. A live working planner is absolutely critical to ensuring everything is completed and goes through the right governance.

Accept that you can not control everything. It really is a serious mindset change. We're trained in "communicating the facts" but we should invest in "communicating uncertainty". Accept that not everything will go as you want and try to find your own flow and state of mind. It is OK not to be OK and organise your crisis communication set up so that it is possible to take a break when needed. You're not doing anyone a service by "keep on going" - you will start to make mistakes and undermine your mental health. Check in with family or loved ones regularly and respect your need to sleep and rest.

Stress management and emotional regulation are learned skills, so build the mental muscle memory now, before you find yourself in a moment of crisis. Develop a well-equipped resiliency toolbox by practicing coping strategies and finding what works for you. If the first time you try breathing exercises and meditation is in the midst of crisis, you won't find these tools to be as effective as they could be. If you build them into your daily routine now to combat stress, turning to them in high-pressure situations will come naturally and you'll reap the mental and emotional benefits.

One of the best ways to manage your stress is to prepare yourself for a crisis. I would often run simulations with my team, where we would create a realistic crisis scenarios and have the entire team respond to it. We did everything from setting up fake emergency phone lines, to updating our website and writing press releases. This approach definitely helped everyone get more familiar with our crisis communications plan and prepared us for the real thing.

One of the most important and valuable aspects of effective crisis management, is to ensure an environment that fosters continuous improvement. The ability to learn from what worked during the management of the crisis and what could have worked better is invaluable. To maximize the impact of these learnings, you must conduct a formal debrief after business operations have been returned to normal. By formal, I mean, a planned meeting with an agenda, a facilitator and most importantly, someone to document the learnings. The facilitator must create an atmosphere of open and candid discussion, the crisis plan must be updated, and the learnings must be shared in a timely manner with all involved in the management of crisis in your organization.

I have found that maintaining a checklist is very useful. I create it as a LiVe doc that I keep on updating basis my experiences, hits & misses with every use case.

Ask for advice not feedback and focus on skill gaps not weaknesses. Words make a difference so let's choose wisely. Ultimately you are going to have outcomes and impacts that you need to deliver on and these will be key to assessing how effective your approach was. Never overlook the impacts - I refer to these as the development and growth we see in humans. It can relate to factors like - behaviour and action - attitude and mindset - how people deliver their roles - how people engage with one another - the words and language they use - the stories they tell about their role and the broader organization

Be critical and forensic when it comes to learning from the experience, and the experience of others. Sometimes it is luck that brings success and vice versa. Like so many areas of public relations often people stumble through and still don’t understand the real lessons.

It’s important for leadership teams to let employees know what is expected. For many employees, fear and anxiety stem from the unknown. You can reduce these concerns by communicating through daily emails, virtual meetings or phone calls. And when employees ask questions you cannot answer, let them know you’ll work to provide the needed information—and follow through.

In terms of collaboration be aware that to do this successfully is acquired knowledge/skill set. Not something that you can just create on the fly in the middle of a crisis. Make sure the teams have the capability and organizational environment to deliver valuable collaborations. Get it wrong and you will be adding to an already volatile situation.

In my opinion, dealing with uncertainty and unpredictability in a crisis situation can be extremely challenging, so it is always important to remain calm. Staying calm is the key to making intelligent decisions in the face of uncertainty. Teach yourself to control your emotions and assess the situation rationally. You need to be able to plan for the short term and long term. This will help you manage events over time more consciously. Systematically gather information about the situation. Track news, collect data, consult experts. The more information you have, the better you will be able to make decisions. Consider and prepare for different scenarios. This will help you to be prepared for different possibilities.

In my experience on a crisis communication team, embracing change and uncertainty has been a game-changer. We maintain a repository of past crisis communications, including successful and challenging cases. It's a treasure trove of lessons learned and best practices. When faced with uncertainty, we turn to these resources to adapt and refine our strategies. We encourage team members to share their experiences, insights, and innovative ideas. This collaborative approach helps us navigate the unpredictable nature of crises effectively. Embracing change and uncertainty cultivates a growth mindset within the team, promoting the belief that we can overcome challenges and continuously improve through effort and feedback.

Opportunities come from knowing how to think and respond to skill gaps, threats and risks differently. Not just focusing on your strengths. There is a real risk to avoid the above and be caught up in the organizational disease known as success bias. Normalize and destigmatize talking about the challenges and risks - this is where innovation and growth will be found.

It's useful to remember that a positive attitude isn't just about being Pollyanna. It can take the form of focussing on action rather than frustration or viewing challenges as learning opportunities for the future. Using the stress management techniques mentioned earlier to take breaks and step away from work when appropriate are really helpful for adding perspective. This can fuel a more positive attitude to challenging work.

I think the most important part of resistance training is to understand that life will continue no matter what. If you have the mentality that if one door is shut, another will be open, you'll notice that you're experiencing much less stress when things go wrong. And when combined with a challenge-oriented mindset, this will significantly boost your resilience!

Communicate with team members, discuss your feelings and experiences, and provide emotional support to each other. Discussing stress and emotions together can help reduce stress. If the strain becomes too great, seek help from a professional in the field of psychology or psychotherapy. Psychological support can be very helpful in crisis situations.If possible, delegate tasks to other team members. Don't try to do everything yourself. Trust your colleagues who can support you.

Do not allow other's energy or perceptions impact your approach. Someone may come to you, hair on fire, yelling of a crisis. But when you get in there, you see that it's not really a crisis at all. Maintaining calm, looking for facts, getting all of the information, is important to determining what's ACTUALLY happening. Your energy levels do not need to match others to take something seriously.

To foster resilience in a crisis communication team, provide training, stress management techniques, encourage a strong support system, prioritize self-care, promote flexibility and adaptability, maintain open communication, learn from experience, and offer resilience training. These measures equip the team to handle high-pressure situations effectively and maintain emotional well-being.

After the crisis is over, remember to analyze and evaluate what happened. Never put the crisis situation into the back burner. In order to identify lessons learned and improve plans and strategies for future crises, it is necessary to analyze the situation in depth.

Be graceful and acknowledge and validate the feelings being expressed. The best crises response has come from top management gracefully accepting and based on the situation, admitting that a mistake has being made. People love seeing the human side in these cases.

Another critical dimension to consider is to understand, as early as possible, as much as possible, as clearly as possible, the facts of the situation, and the different versions of truths that exist.