The One Trait Every Leader Needs in a Crisis

No one realized the direct mailing to 1,000 local customers listed the wrong date for the Free Customer Appreciation Barbecue. Then, Steve from the tent rental company, called the event organizer, Julio. Steve said, “Your postcard said the event takes place on June 12th. You requested three tents for June 22nd. Which day is correct?”

Paul glanced at the two IT techs trying to fix the internet and video access. They’d been at it for 15 minutes with no luck. Then, he gazed out across a sea of unhappy faces. Filling the auditorium was the company’s national sales team, all gathered for the launch of the new sales campaign.

Susan was surprised to hear from her boss on a Saturday afternoon. Answering the phone, she heard “I just got a call from the hospital. There’s an emergency. Twenty people got sick from food they ate yesterday at the company cafeteria. Television reporters are on their way.”

Crises Come in All Shapes and Sizes

Printing mishaps. Tech glitches. Food safety issues. Crises come in all shapes and sizes - without warning. Many useful books and articles have been written about how to manage a crisis. Most larger organizations have plans for what to do in various types of emergencies. Yet, most of those books, articles, and organizational plans leave out a crucial factor for capably handling crises.

What Every Leader Needs in a Crisis

Whatever the crisis, big or small, an emotionally intelligent leader will handle it better than someone without EI competencies. The four realms of emotional intelligence – self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management – can help a leader in any crisis.

Self-Awareness

Self-awareness means being aware of your own feelings and your thoughts about them. Knowledge is indeed power. With awareness of your feelings, you can be in charge, not your emotions. When Julio learns about the typo on the postcard, he has a lot of work to do to sets things straight. Of course, he is probably angry with the people who didn’t properly proofread the promotional card. With thoughtful awareness of those feelings, he can choose what to do with them. Without such awareness, his emotions dictate his actions.

Self-Management

Likewise, Paul is not happy about the tech mess he’s facing. Nor is anyone else in the room. Without the ability to self-regulate, Paul is in the grip of an amygdala hijack and the sales staff are in a collective hijack. The amygdala is the “fight or flight” section of the brain that responds quickly to any threat or perceived threat. When you’re in the midst of an emotional hijack, your pulse increases, your vision narrows, a flood of adrenaline rushes through your veins.

Without self-regulation, Paul and the sales staff are at the mercy of their feelings. Paul might yell at the tech crew, berating them for their incompetence. Sales staff fed up with waiting might storm out of the room shouting, “Let us know when you get it together, I’m going to get some work done!”

As I explain in Brainpower: Mindsight and Emotional Intelligence in Leadership, research by neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux at New York University tells us emotional hijacks reflect an amygdala insufficiently controlled by the prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex is called the “executive center” of the brain. It’s the rational part of the brain that can plan, strategize. In my book, The Brain and Emotional Intelligence, I call the amygdala the “bad boss” of the brain and the prefrontal cortex the “good boss.”

In a crisis situation, you want the good boss to show up to control the bad boss. How can you get the good boss to show up? Like most things, it takes practice. You can train your brain to strengthen the prefrontal cortex’s ability to control the amygdala. In my Harvard Business Review article, “Resilience for the Rest of Us,” I describe research done by Richard Davidson and Jon Kabat-Zinn to see the effects of mindfulness training on the stress levels of workers at a high-pressure biotech firm. They found that regular practice of simple, but powerful, mindfulness exercises built the resilience of employees.

Mindfulness is basically an attention-training method that teaches the brain to register anything happening in the present moment with full focus — but without reacting. Had Paul and the sales staff trained their brains in this way, the scene in the tech-glitch situation would have looked very different.

Social Awareness

Susan and her boss have their work cut out for them managing the cafeteria-caused sickness crisis. And, much of that work involves dealing with upset people: sick staffers and their families and defensive cafeteria staff and food-service suppliers, not to mention public health officials. If Susan approaches each of these people with empathy for their distress, she’ll have better luck getting their cooperation in helping resolve the crisis.

Empathy is a core skill of social awareness. The good news is that empathy can be learned. The thinking and feeling parts of the brain can change with repeated experiences, practice, and learning. In Brainpower, I explain the three types of empathy. Tania Singer at the Max Planck Institute studies emotional empathy. She and her colleagues have designed training programs for the empathy circuitry that produce positive changes.

[Preview an excerpt from Brainpower: Leading with Empathy here.]

Relationship Management

Relationship management or social skill is more than being friendly. In my article “What Makes a Leader?,” I describe it as “friendliness with a purpose: moving people in the direction you desire….” In a crisis situation, skillful management of the many relationships among people needed to resolve the crisis is essential. In Primal Leadership, my co-authors Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee and I identify six competencies needed for effective relationship management by leaders:

• Inspiration
• Influence
• Developing Others
• Change Catalyst
• Conflict Management
• Teamwork and Collaboration

Clearly, each of these competencies build on self-awareness, self-management, and social awareness. And, it takes time and effort to develop these competencies.

My Advice

Don’t wait for the next big or small crisis to build your emotional intelligence. Start now, wherever you are. You’ll find that boosting your EI skills will come in handy in all aspects of your work.

Additional Resources

Enhance your emotional intelligence skills with the comprehensive learning and development program, Thriving on Change: The Evolving Leader's Toolkit. The program integrates the necessary proven-effective skills, tools, and practices to ensure leaders expertly respond to uncertainty, conflict, and inevitable distraction.

Brainpower provides leaders, executive coaches, management consultants, and HR professionals with a science basis for their leadership development work.