"Psychological aspects of working on the crisis team"

Quoting BSI Standard 100-4: Business Continuity Management:

"Every crisis means enormous mental stress for those involved, but it also represents a complex problem that needs to be solved at the same time. Crises are unique, highly dynamic, and complex events that have numerous variables and parameters. The high degree of networking in modern systems makes it difficult to understand the interaction between the individual parts, the cascading effects, and the side-effects of the decisions made. Wide-ranging decisions need to made under these difficult circumstances that not only can have financial consequences to the organisation, but also can directly or indirectly affect the lives of people. There are a wide variety of causes of stress in a crisis. Such causes range from shock due to the events, a personal fear of failure; fear for family members; emotional strain; fear of the unknown; sensory overload due to too much information; contradictory or insufficient information; being pressured for time; disruptive environmental conditions such as noise, heat, or cold; hectic actions; or even thirst, hunger, or a lack of sleep. The body reacts to stress just like it did in ancient times by reducing mental capabilities and activating the physical panic reaction. Adrenaline is released, the blood pressure rises, muscles tense up, headaches arise, and heart and circulatory system malfunctions can occur. This can lead to side-effects such as hectic, a lack of concentration, forgetfulness, thinking in circles, blackouts, doing things just for the sake of doing something, inadequate problem analyses, and tunnel vision (which restricts the field of view and changes a person’s perceptions). However, reactions ranging from aggressiveness to a complete loss of control can also be caused by stress. Stress does not only have negative side-effects, but also positive side-effects. Stress can be a driver and motivate people to perform at their very best. For this reason, this factor must also be taken into account when preparing to work on the crisis team. Crisis team members should therefore possess a certain resistance to stress and should be self-confident. However, it makes sense to take additional preventive precautions. Such precautions include, for example:

• Technical training increases self-confidence and reduces the stress that can arise from insecurities.
• Knowledge of general problem solving strategies and of your own capabilities and patterns of action allow a decision to be made quickly by following an ordered procedure.
• Through training, the members of the crisis team can be prepared for crises to increase their level of stress resistance, to relieve stress using special techniques when necessary, to redirect the stress and put it in a positive light, as well as to refrain from emotionalising the situation. This can be necessary to prevent a spiralling level of stress in which the misjudgements and poor decisions caused by the stress lead to constantly increasing levels of stress, and therefore to more bad decisions.
• Training on the psychological and group-dynamic aspects of working on the crisis team enables more effective co-operation in the crisis team.
• The teams can be prepared to work together in a crisis through exercises. This helps them to develop a common working method and common model of thought. Factors such as the level of trust, development of a common language as the basis for communication in the crisis team, a good working climate, and the ability to judge the other team members to a certain extent can reduce stress.
• External stress factors can be reduced by creating a positive working environment and work conditions (e.g. in terms of food provision, room climate, and resting and sleeping areas)."

Sincerely,

Health psychologist and IT Continuity professional

(photo: Brian McGowan on Unsplash)