5 Reasons Your Crisis Team Could Fail

Even the most senior of Crisis Managers can crack under pressure, we’ve seen it before. Just because you’re the Managing Director or CEO and have grown the business from strength to strength, are you fit and experienced enough to run a team of Crisis Managers during an event?

Lack of preparation and poor leadership can be the factor in your Crisis Team failing. Here are five of my steps on how you can avoid this.

1) Are you creating a recipe for disaster?

Similar to what we covered in our last article around building a foundation for your Crisis Management Program, making sure your key stakeholders are fully aware of your concepts and strategies to an effective plan is important, but making sure the buy-in from the rest of the team members, the department manager, and people out on the floor is critical. They could be the people dealing with the crisis head on.

If you ignore their influence and importance to your Crisis Team’s objectives, you will fail the business.

There is a few basic reasonings to why team members need to clearly understand their roles and responsibilities during an incident:

• Your crisis team need to feel confident in their actions when trying to control the situation.
• Communication needs to be efficient and correct.
• When larger crowds need to be controlled effectively and the crisis management team is not able to do it on the ground, you need to rely on the wider team.

With my 20 years’ experience in this subject, I have been very fortunate with creating a strong, trusting relationship with my peers, clients and contacts. I shouldn’t have to sell myself, I stay away from being too frivolous and so should you.

If you’re talking about crisis management, it’s because you’ve got a reason to. I work on creating strong emotional intelligence within my team and client base and understanding the importance of flexibility to meet the actual needs of each business unit.

Just because Rob wants to run a course on Tuesday, doesn’t mean it works for the business unit manager and his/her staff, but if it works next week, I should flex. Even though yes, the CEO had it all on a schedule, there is no point using that as ammo to convince the team to show up. Be flexible, tailor the training to each department and empower the business area.

If you don’t, the team dynamic will blur, people will lose control, disasters will occur.

2) Your leadership skills determine whether a crisis team succeeds or fails

Ask yourself, what’s your Crisis Management culture right now at your organization? There are likely three responses to that question:

1. Really not good, Rob.
2. It’s getting there, we have work to do but it’s on its way.
3. We’re probably the most prepared organization you’ll come across this year.

If your answer is one, that’s OK, and it’s common – we should talk. If it’s three, we should still definitely talk!

Regardless of what stage you are at in your journey, clear crisis team organizational structure is key. I’m always aware, when meeting clients, of what sort of crisis plan they need, what it’s going to look like and how we could role it out. That doesn’t necessarily mean a General Manager or CEO agrees with me right away, it’s not an uncommon response.

When a real-life event takes place, it not only gets the documents and plans into action, it usually prompts other questions, and most of the time this is focused around leadership skills.

1. Believe in it yourself, it’s easier to promote that way.
2. If you need help or instructions, work with others honestly.
3. Create a mass plan so no one gets left behind.
4. Never mention someone has been slow in assisting your development.
5. Never use criticism, go and see the work and help deliver it.
6. Maintain relationships and respect people who can help.
7. Instill confidence for them to deliver the components.

During a crisis, use these seven steps again to maintain that control and leadership. You can practice and learn about similar steps at conferences such as the International Crisis Management Conference.  

The Crisis Team need to have that same structure and that’s something you can help lead. The individual should know where they sit within the structure, what their tasks are and how that aligns with their colleagues’ roles too.

Clear communication early on with feedback from the Crisis Team on what their key skill sets are, should be laid on the table and discussed. This is then applied to your plan and practiced.

Remember, the responsibilities and action plans for the team should be easily accessible. One of the biggest issues organizations have, is creating easy and regular access to the Crisis Plan.

3) Quick thinking counts, but it’s just the start

“People won’t do what you expect them to do”.

Quote Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkRVO009KDA

At the beginning of a stressful crisis event, the human mind reacts in two ways: fight or flight.

There are more technical elements to this decision-making, but quick thinking will always be the most important mental attribute to the individual involved. However, some quick decision-making can cause negative results. That’s why, practice, training and exercise is so important.

This process within your Crisis Management Team is called Situational Awareness.

You can in fact train your leaders and relevant people to be able to follow effective decision-making processes by planning this out far in advance.

The three key steps to positive situational awareness are:

• Collecting information,
• Assessing that information,
• And acting on facts.

You will learn early on who in your team shows attributes to that positive quick-thinking processes, but it’s making sure the whole team can show good situational awareness that is key.

4) Regular tabletop exercises will build trust and togetherness

The concepts I’ve covered above are all well and good if they’re practiced. The team won’t know how they’ll react or what their strengths & weaknesses are in those situations without tabletop or other exercises. You have an opportunity here to bring them to life in a controlled, safe environment.

Having key stakeholders alongside the crisis team discussing and working together to solve a problem is a fantastic team building exercise (HR will love it). More than anything, it promotes a sense of togetherness when they practice.

A good example of this comes from the common fact that Special Forces have always remained as a tight-knit group. This is due to them being put in the hardest conditions and forced to work together to get through it. Highly realistic training environments and scenarios are developed with mental and physical tasks put on the shoulders of these men and women, to encourage them to stick together under real, unimaginable scenarios.

Blog Resource: 5 Ways to be as Prepared as a Spec Ops Team

5) If you take only one thing away from this…

…document the crisis!

The importance of this is that the information gathered can be used as evidence for your post incident review (PIR) as well as keeping everyone updated in real time.

Appoint someone who you know has the intellectual knowledge and capability to remain calm under pressure and gather the correct information.

Documenting the crisis event doesn’t just need to be someone inputting into a Crisis Management System or even into their notebook, it’s about sharing that information in real time via the Master Events Log displayed in the Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) or Situations Room. Everyone needs to get that situational awareness as soon as they walk into the room.

Practice this step.

During your tabletop exercise and practice runs, make sure someone is practicing this and allowing others to see how it may look during an event. This means that when (not if) it occurs, there are no shocks, your team know where to look and what information is to be shared.

My Summary

We at PreparedEx are known for how we present realistic scenarios in an engaging, low-stress environment, where teams walk through their plans for responding to an unfolding situation. These tabletop exercises have proved repeatedly to be a reliable resource to know whether your crisis team will succeed or fail.

Ensure you practice the plans and programs in place as much as possible so that when an event does occur, your team run like clockwork.

You can connect with me here on LinkedIn or via our website to discuss how your Crisis Team is doing everything they can to succeed.