The Best Way to Handle Fear

There is no doubt about it … fear during a crisis is 100% real. Fear that you don’t have all the answers. Fear that you’ll show too much vulnerability to your team. Fear that your business won’t be able to recover from the issue at hand. Or fear that your efforts to right the ship may make the situation worse.?

If you’ve ever led a team through a crisis, you’ve likely experienced these types of fears, too. Now, fear isn’t necessarily a bad thing because how you deal with it is what matters the most. How you harness it, tamp it down, and stay calm despite it.

When fear appears, I try to look at it like it is an opportunity in disguise. It’s that quiet voice in my mind reminding me to stay alert, to pause and think before I speak. But if I look deeper, I realize that fear is there for a reason. I recognize that voice not as an obstacle, but as a messenger, playing its role to guide me.?

But when very real fear is present, how do you stay calm in a crisis?

People often ask me about the mindsets and behaviors that are necessary to succeed and stay calm in a crisis. In order to really be prepared for a crisis, you have to know yourself. Which means doing the work to learn about yourself outside of a crisis (more on that here). By doing so, if and when a crisis occurs, you’ll know your role and how you should best act. And that’s the first step. But not everyone around you will be ready. Some may know how to manage fear, how to stay calm, while others don’t, and you need to manage both kinds of people. That’s where crisis training and planning comes into play – the next step.?

At Kith, we develop crisis preparedness frameworks that help define, practice, and stress-test the roles of your team members and leadership. This enables you to understand how to collaborate most effectively during a crisis. We’d be thrilled to help you get your team crisis ready.

Remember that while fear can feel overwhelming – even paralyzing – it's important to understand that fear doesn't have to be the enemy. Rather than running from it, we can choose to acknowledge it and use it as a signal to be more alert, more present, and more focused. Starting with how we set ourselves and our businesses up to stay calm, prepared, and ready to tackle a crisis.

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Kith facilitates crisis preparedness workshops that will help your company attain the clarity, trust, and speed you need to respond confidently – no dithering! – to any crisis. We’d be happy to have a conversation about how we can help your company be ready to chart an effective course to reputation protection.