Five Essentials of Crisis Response

Jacqueline Strayer

There is no dress rehearsal for responding in a crisis. And it can build a brand, an organization or leader or destroy it. The Chinese word for crisis has two characters, one is danger and the other opportunity. How organizations and their leaders come out the other side of this crisis will in part be determined by how successfully they respond in this crisis. Let’s look at some fundamentals:

1. The principles of crisis response are even more compelling now. Clear, simple and transparent communications, that are timely, frequent and accessible, addressing the salient questions that stakeholders have are how leaders need to approach communicating to their organizations.

2. It is an imperative that leaders balance telling the truth of their reality with instilling hope in the future. Organizational members need to understand what is, while seeing there is a reason to believe in their future and that of their organization.Leaders need to provide that, embrace that and always keep that in front of them. And their organization.

3. More than ever brands and their leaders need to understand that whatever they do from a humanitarian standpoint must be done with empathy and without expectation, except to serve the greater good. To appear self-serving is apparent and inappropriate.

4. Importantly, in a crisis, there are inspirational stories of heroes, of  kindnesses and self-sacrifice that happen throughout organizations. These stories need to be captured and shared. Often.

5. Leaders need to celebrate the fantastic things that are going on within their organization with humility and respectfully. In fact leaders need to take at times a back seat to celebrate what their organizational members and other key stakeholders are doing in the wake of the crisis. They become the narrative.