Lead With That: What Crisis Management Can Teach Us About Humanity, Trust, & Communication in Leadership

Interview Transcript

INTRO:

Hey, welcome back to CCL podcast Lead With That. We talk current events and pop culture to look at where leadership is happening and what’s happening with leadership.

Ren:

Disaster often strikes without warning, leaving devastation in its wake. But what defines the human spirit is our ability to rise from the ashes to rebuild and to come together as a community stronger than ever before. And leadership and leaders are critical to making that happen. Starting in the beginning of August and running through just this past weekend here in the second week of September, 3 massive natural disasters have devastated the communities and cities of Lahaina and Maui, the Atlas Mountain region in Morocco and coastal eastern Libya. These places have experienced the fury of wildfire, earthquakes and floods, testing the resolve of these communities and their people.

But it wasn’t nature alone that contributed to the devastation we’re seeing in these places. And it won’t be nature at all that pulls these communities back together, but the people and the leadership uniting to do it. Through the darkness and the dust, we want to shine a light on some of the things that are happening in these places with these leaders and with the people who have to live through all of this.

Today, we’ll look at how leaders navigated the chaos when disaster struck, what lessons we can learn from their experiences to avoid catastrophe in the future, what conversations and actions could have happened and been taken to avoid these things in the first place. And most importantly, how can we empower individuals and institutions to lead effectively during these critical moments?

Welcome back everyone. I’m Ren Washington, and as usual, I’m joined with Alison Barr. Alison, have you ever experienced a natural disaster?

Allison:

No. The closest I came to it was in July leading a program here in Colorado Springs, and there were 18 people in that group, I think, and all of our phone alarms went off at the same time for a tornado warning, a severe tornado warning. And it had been ominous looking outside, but if you’ve ever been to Colorado, you know how quickly the weather can change. So that was the closest I ever came to it. During that time, someone sent me a photo of the tornado that was in question, and it was maybe 20 miles from campus and just decided to go east instead. So that was the closest I ever came.

Ren:

What’d you all do when that happened, when the alert beeped and everyone’s phones started chiming in the room?

Allison:

Well, people were very casual. I won’t lie. People were very casual and sort of turned off their phones and went about their business. And I said, “Hey, y’all, we likely have to take this seriously, but keep doing what you’re doing, and I’m going to contact our point of contact,” who was Lisa at the time, “…to make sure I know what the right process is.” And they said, “Okay” and just kept on going about their business. Sure enough, as I was looking for Lisa, naturally, Lisa was on her way upstairs to give us some information. So the information was, “We don’t suspect it’s coming our way, but here’s the plan if people are uncomfortable. If people are uncomfortable, here’s the plan. And should it come this way, keep your phone on you, I will text you. And if I text you, that means it’s go time for the plan.”

Ren:

Well, today I think that some of what we’ll talk about how in any kind of situation or emergency, whether it’s an organization or a team or a person, the most resilient entities out there are prepared for disasters. Sometimes we say things like anti-fragility, where despite what happens, there are plans in place to mitigate things. And even if we can’t plan for everything, are the right things in place to help us be successful?

Allison:

Yeah, and I think, well, and kudos to Lisa, if you’re listening. I’m sure we’ll talk about this, but Lisa was calm, and that’s one of the keys that I think we’ll get into, when you’re communicating plans for a disaster or that there’s about to be a disaster. She was very calm and very clear in her communication. “Here’s what we will do if we need to do it, and you hear a text message from me, that means we’re doing it. What questions do you have?” Pulled me off to the side. She’s not panicked. As I think about organizations and people that we’ve worked with, I’m pretty sure that every single workplace probably has an emergency response binder. How often does that get looked at? So in theory, in theory, most organizations are probably planned in terms of, “Do we have a plan for this?” “Yes, we do. It’s in a binder somewhere.”

Ren:

I wonder then even if there’s a section in that binder that says, “And when everything is broken and everyone’s yelling at each other and everything’s crashing around it, turn to page six and then throw this thing out the window.” Because it’s interesting when we think about human stress and strain in these situations, because you said she was cool, she was collected. And staying calm, cool, and collected in these things is not only challenging during, but then in the wake of these things, incredibly hard to stay present.

When we look at these disasters, which some could easily and I think they’re fairly, say, catastrophes, I think part of what we’ve got to navigate is that real human element of, it’s easy in theory to say, “We’ve got a plan,” but what happens when you watch someone’s home get swallowed up right in front of you by fire or water or by the ground, or you know that your family member is elderly and stuck in that building and there’s nothing you can do. I think then we can’t lose sight of how easy it is for humans to fall prey to our body’s natural mechanisms of survival. And then that might cloud some of those mechanisms of higher thinking and then maybe that calmness.

Allison:

Right. It’s interesting too, isn’t it? Again, I was in a situation where it was, there might be a tornado, which is very different from an earthquake happening in the moment. It’s not even remotely close. And people’s responses were very blasé about it. Mine was too. And I admit that because maybe elementary school failed me, I don’t know, but I learned at a very young age that it’s very rare for tornadoes to happen at high elevation. My brain went to, “What are the chances of a tornado crossing over Pike’s Peak, which is 14,000 feet? Probably not likely. Could happen, though.” So anyway, it’s interesting-

Ren:

That’d be a scary image.

Allison:

Right? I know. I know. It’s interesting, as you say, people’s natural responses. And again, I acknowledge there’s a big difference between this might happen between we’re in the midst of an earthquake right now.

Ren:

Yeah. Then I just can’t help but think, and we’ve broached this in a few areas, someone’s desensitization to these things can naturally inhibit their behavior. I don’t know if it’s just your general awareness of nature phenomenon. It might just be, we are so inundated with high stress situations that we’re thinking, “Oh, a tornado 20 miles away.” I’ve had much more frightening things closer to me, and then maybe we’re not concerned, or we’re surrounded by these things so often that I think we might lose sight and take for granted of it.

But I think when things happen like Lahaina and Morocco and Libya, and you see the things that happen, it can really snap it into focus. So maybe taking a look at these 3 disasters separately, there’s some themes that come up around what happened, why it happened, both manmade and naturally made. But maybe before we go into there, has any one of these natural disasters been one that’s been more forward in your mind, something that you know more about? Is any one of them not that much about? What’s been your general awareness of these things and what’s been happening?

Allison:

My gosh, my knowledge and I’d say my alarm went off with the Maui fire. My alarm went off for all of them, of course. But I live in an area where forest fires are very common, very, very common. The Waldo Canyon fire in Colorado Springs, I can’t remember what year that was, but it devastated. You lived here, I think at the time, right, Ren?

Ren:

Yeah, I was there.

Allison:

Yeah. So it devastated how many lives? I don’t know. It burned entire, how many acres? Thousands, right? Thousands of acres.

Ren:

Yeah. Yeah.

Allison:

It was so devastating,

Ren:

The whole front range and then the next year, the Black Forest. Yeah, so it was wildfire seasons there for a couple of years.

Allison:

I of course immediately thought of one of our colleagues with the Morocco earthquake. I’m not sure how or when I got pushed to news of the flooding in Libya, but I also wondered why I hadn’t, so that was curious to me. So, to answer your question, I know bits and pieces about all 3. What about you? Is any one more interesting or more alarming or…

Ren:

Well, there’s a lot of alarming things around Lahaina, and that’s probably the most I’ve seen because of all this controversy and then conspiracy swirling around Maui. It’s America and social media is wild. The Libya thing, it just happened this weekend. It kind of just happened too around Morocco. I think you asked questions, “Well, why don’t we hear about third world, brown countries and the travails of them?” Well, I think probably because of what I just said.

I think Lahaina’s been really curious because of the, and I don’t even want to dignify some of the wild things that I’m hearing about it. But when I really dig into a lot of what happened and why it happened, nature, and not just the fact that these were natural disasters, but things that are happening in and around our climate and to our natural world were huge components of it. For the Lahaina drought, that regional drought for a long time, commercialization of wetlands, and then winds brought on by Hurricane Dora, which then had all this high pressure air that was already in a super dry and droughted area, that super high winds came in, and all of a sudden there’s fires in the highlands and then power poles are being knocked down. Then before we know it, and the story of Lahaina in just a day, in just a day, that fire started happening from a neighborhood north on the hill all the way down to the water.

It’s wild to think, on the eighth I think it started, and then by Wednesday, just a day later really, Lahaina’s nothing more than ash, 2,700 buildings destroyed, hundreds more damaged, more than a hundred deaths confirmed, more than a thousand people still unaccounted for. And you see the people, the locals there, who are talking and they’re talking about how they don’t have internet, they don’t have power. I saw this one woman say, “Everyone knows what’s happening here except us.” So how do you lead through crisis when the people who you’re trying to lead can’t hear or see you?

Allison:

Right. Yeah. I want to clarify that CCL is not in the work of environmental crisis at the moment. So I don’t know that I can speak to what they specifically should do differently, but we can speak broadly to it. We talk about crisis leadership at CCL. There are 5 components of crisis leadership we’ll get into later, I’m sure, but communication is number 2. So even if you don’t know, you have to communicate and you need to be visible with people.

What’s interesting too about Hawaii and digging a little bit deeper, they went from averaging 1 federally declared fire disaster every nine years, and that was since 2004. I was reading an article by a scientist named Clay Trauernicht, and I might have butchered your name, so apologies.

Ren:

We’re sorry, Clay.

Allison:

He’s a nature and a fire scientist in Hawaii who was quoted saying that Hawaii has had fires, small, small fires, for the past 20 or 30 years. However, climate change of course is making all of this harder. His prediction is that Hawaii will be having explosive, I’m quoting him, “Explosive fire behavior,” and it’s the perception of risk in Hawaii that’s been generally low that needs to shift. So I think there’s something in there about looking at trends and looking at data and trends of what’s happening. You can look at that at an organizational level too, and if things are escalating, even if they’re small things but they’re starting to escalate and get bigger and bigger, that’s something to look at and prepare for.

Ren:

Yeah. I think that preparation is exactly a big trend that we start to see here, is a recognition that there might be trends or issues that are occurring. Should we create some SOP, standard operating procedures, that we know that are abundantly clear or have a series of redundancies? Something that happened in Lahaina was that without power that people’s cell phones and energy was down, there was no TV, there was no radio, and there was a reticence then to blare the sirens, which typically, you may have seen, the director of the emergency response responded to a reporter, or rather just a community member, saying, “Hey, why didn’t we put the sirens on?” And he said, “We didn’t turn the sirens on because those are tsunami sirens. People go to high ground when we do that, and we didn’t want people to run to the mountain.”

When I look at the timeline, and then that guy also later, he since resigned, he also said, “I wish all the sirens went off.” But it’s interesting, if we just had a backup plan, let’s pretend that in an event where there is a natural disaster, we blow this when there’s no other form of communication, what would that look like? How could we prepare and communicate so we can fill in that gap even when communication can’t happen?

Allison:

Right. It’s tricky, isn’t it? Because Hawaii hasn’t historically been known for mass forest fires. So when I think about it from an organizational level, or even my example of tornadoes, Colorado is not known for tornadoes. They lose speed. There’s too many mountains. But given the nature of things that are starting to trend and patterns that are changing, is it something that we need to take more seriously? So even if those alarms sounded, and I don’t know. Even if those alarms sounded, I just wonder if people still would’ve been slightly casual about it, because they’re not necessarily known for having devastating forest fires.

So I only offer that to consider how do we change people’s reactions but also not cause a panic if there doesn’t need to be a panic. I acknowledge that in Hawaii there needed to be a much bigger response, of course. But if you look at patterns, organizational patterns, how do you get people to respond to something that they consider to be very low risk for their area or their organization?

Ren:

Yeah. I think you’re highlighting the real tension that exists in this space, where hindsight is 20/20. People were saying, “God, if we only had a little bit more warning,” but you raise a really interesting point. It’s like, but how would you even know what the warning was to mean? Especially as fast as things were moving. People in the morning. So the Lahaina fire, I’m doing air quotes, our favorite thing, everyone. The Lahaina fire was known, was a small fire up in the northern part of Lahaina in a neighborhood after a pole had fallen. And then later in the afternoon the fire had jumped the fire line, and then before the night was out, neighborhoods were engulfed. So there’s this all of a sudden, this sudden urgency that caught people so unaware, and there is something to say about that or see about that where it’s not even what we’re doing in the moment, but how do we manage afterward?

That’s sort of what happened in Morocco, where we got a 6.8 magnitude earthquake. There’s no siren that you’re going to put off when that’s happening. Then 20 minutes later, in the high Atlas Mountains in the Marrakesh area all the way to the coast, there was a 4.9 aftershock. So out of a 10 point scale, they had a seven and then they had a five. Immediately out of almost… the death toll now is up to almost 3,000 just in an area near that high Atlas region. Then another maybe 1,700 in the Al Haouz, I can’t say that exactly the right region, but just so much life in a moment gone. And what we’re seeing in Morocco, I was listening to one scientist reflect, or rather a civil engineer, and she was talking about where there aren’t earthquakes, you don’t prepare for earthquake.

Allison:

Right, exactly.

Ren:

That’s just what you were saying.

Allison:

Yeah. Right. So it’s tricky, right? See, it is such a tension. I want to be cautious how I frame this. There are communities who don’t believe in certain things, and they do perceive messaging, and I’ll leave it at that, messaging to be a fear, fear-mongering. So it becomes really, really tricky. It’s very, very tricky. I think the root of all of that is trust. So if I trust my leader, I’m going to believe them when they say It’s time to go hunker down in the basement. I don’t care what you believe right now, it doesn’t matter, go to the basement. It doesn’t matter what’s happening out the windows right now, I’m telling you this is what we’re doing. So it’s tricky.

Ren:

Well, very tricky. And trust is gone in Lahaina now and Maui. There’s no trust of the mayor. There’s no trust of the governor. Trust in Morocco is interesting, because the country and other countries have pretty quickly united, because earthquakes aren’t entirely uncommon in Morocco, just very uncommon for where it happened here. It’s more typical to happen in the northern part. So there it’s just these ideas of could there be more preparation in environments where we know earthquakes are happening? They lost ancient buildings, but a lot of modern buildings after I think a big earthquake in 2016 in Morocco, they’ve been built differently. A lot of them are still standing.

But Libya is interesting, because you talk about trust. We know Libya since 2014 has just been a splintered, ruined country, fractured government. They’ve got an internationally backed government, and they’ve also got a local supported government, an extremist part. But it’s hard to trust these entities, especially when infrastructure is key to survival. A big thing that happened in Libya was a tropical storm, or a big storm cell, another storm cell. It’s just so wild. Storm Daniel comes in, and a massive amount of rain falls over the whole region for a long time. Then it turns into I think a smaller version of a hurricane, hits the edge of Libya, this rainfall, insurmountable rainfall comes, and then these 2 dams break one after another at 3 o’clock in the morning. So there’s just these individual reports of being woken up by this loud crash and then a wild, high, 23-foot wave of water washed through this city Derna in Eastern Libya.

The pictures from the satellite of where there were buildings and where they’re not, it’s massive. There’s over 11,000 people that died almost in an instant. 30,000 people are displaced. So you talk about trust, and I’m a person in Libya thinking, “Oh, I’m going to trust this broken group of men here?” And make no mistake about, it’s a broken group of men up there, who have no idea what the hell they’re doing and who aren’t really interested in me. But then someone’s like, “Hey, we should fix these dams,” and we’re like, “Sure thing. You’re just going to put money in your pocket. So how do I trust somebody that’s untrusting when I’m in crisis all the time?”

Allison:

Right. Yeah. That’s a question that goes much deeper that we probably won’t get into, I don’t think, but it’s putting the right people in leadership. Again, and I’m simplifying, this is very complicated when it comes to government. But if we translate that to the workplace, you’ve got to have the right people in the right places.

So if we could, again, I know we are not comparing apples to apples here, but if we translate that to an organization, the right leaders have to be in place. And trust is part of that skillset, of course, as well. A lot of organizations by design have risk management that looks at risk in a lot of different ways. But when we’re talking about crises in organizations, these are relatively low probability but high impact situations that threaten competitiveness. So we’re not talking about swallowing 11,000 lives over the course of an evening. It’s different.

Yeah, I wish I could answer the question that you asked directly regarding specific countries and locations, but I can’t. But when you think about it from an organizational level, people who are going to have to handle crisis better be trustworthy people.

Ren:

Yeah. And I think you say something that’s interesting also, the right leader in the right place. For these areas like Maui, Morocco, Libya, they require different leadership, they have different cultures, they’re going to need different things. So I think then we implicitly understand that. So when I think we cast the vision forward, the question is going to be, how do we lead in a couple of different places?

When I think about leadership development, I think one of the first things that leaders need to do in a situation like this, and this one might be pretty broad, and it’s even some of our newest framework at CCL, this idea of human-centered leadership. Now, we’ve always been a human first organization, but we’ve got this great frame and reminder around the premise that leadership is the interaction of people, that the world is the interaction of people, and human-centered leadership drives outcomes.

So I think anything that a leader can do in these situations is control that part of them that gets defensive and wants to fight. It’s the hardest thing in the world, I think, for a leader to have that aggressive accountability that manifests itself as quietly listening and just taking the feedback. No one needs to hear the governor of Maui, when they’re trying to talk about how people are hurting or dying, this push-back, challenging the idea. I think that maybe at first we need to seek understanding in areas of crisis so we can start to identify where people are hurting so we can start to address what we might do to ail or to aid in their pain.

Allison:

Yeah, I think you’re right. When leading through crisis too, I think that most leaders are probably forced to think and behave in ways that feel pretty unfamiliar. Whether it’s a technological crisis, natural disaster, health crisis, et cetera, these types of crises demand that leaders take an emergency response plan. That is different from my boss leading us as a team. His ability to have to take an emergency response plan is not in his day-to-day. That’s understandable. And he very well might have to adapt it as new evidence unfolds and things constantly change. So it’s hard. I think that’s okay to acknowledge that, right? But at what point do you need to equip leaders to be prepared for emergencies? I don’t think a lot of organizations spend time on this.

I just want to clarify too, some of the examples of organizational crisis that are not environmental in nature, it can be something like a data or security breach, a failed product campaign. There’s a really good example that we can talk about from Johnson & Johnson, where they put out Tylenol, this was in the eighties, they put out Tylenol and their containers for the Tylenol at that time were not tamper resistant. So someone at this grocery store put cyanide in with the Tylenol. So anyhow, their response was textbook and actually has led some of the research and has led some of the responses that companies take now.

But anyhow, I think we need to ground in what this can look like aside from an environmental. It can also be a really big fail in a marketing campaign or an ad campaign. Pepsi’s an example of that, Kendall Jenner from, I think that was 2017 maybe.

Ren:

Yeah, I remember that.

Allison:

Yeah. But anyhow…

Ren:

Yeah, diversity. She was hip.

Allison:

Yes.

Ren:

Yeah. Well, yeah, I think you’re right. I don’t think we need to sit in the natural disaster thing necessarily. I think now as we shift our attention to leadership, something that I think is important, I’m curious to hear your point of view on, is it important to have emergency charisma? I think about command and control. In these instances, there’s no time to do, “Hey, let’s have a quick conversation about how we should address this emergency.” No, we have emergency systems. We get into action.

It’s actually one of the things I think we in leadership development talk about all the time. Sometimes dependent cultures, we call them, people, which is there’s a boss up top and they say it and then you do it. You can think defense and army and military structures or police and emergency systems. So I wonder if it’s appropriate sometimes to turn those dials on. There’s an emergency, the Coast Guard needs our help. We don’t need to debate. Is it also a time to turn on emergency charisma? Because sometimes I need a leader who is not the most bland, uncaring, disinterested, or disinteresting person, to remind me about how cold and sad and how miserable this is. It’s a combination of all the executive presence, but maybe you should lean into your humanity in moments of sadness as opposed to make yourself sterile. So, I don’t know. What do you think about emergency charisma?

Allison:

I like the sound of it. Tell me, what would that look like? I do. I’d never heard it phrased that way. What would that look like behaviorally to you? You gave the opposite, but what do you think that would look like?

Ren:

You know what, I appreciate the challenge as we do behaviorally driven. I think it would probably be practicing the skills of active listening, of focused and heartfelt restating of what you’re hearing, emotion first language probably. Probably inspirational first language too, I bet. I would say that when we talk about influence, we talk rational persuasion, we talk inspirational persuasion, and then things in between. Sometimes inquiry is really important, seeking requests and asking what people need, but maybe it’s an advocacy first posture, where your charisma preparation is having something, being ready to not have to rely on your influential or inspirational muscles once, but to have working them out so when the time calls, you can tap into the human part of your communication. I don’t know. How does that work? Does that sound okay or…

Allison:

That sounds great. I think that sounds great. I think that can go missing. We work with clients who have had some crises, some of the types that we’ve mentioned already. I think being present and available too is very, very important. Some of what I’m about to mention comes from CCL’s research, and also a gentleman named Gene Klann, who wrote a book on crisis leadership. But that research states that, this won’t be a surprise to you, Ren, but employees have a need to hear from their leaders frequently. So I think sometimes leaders get worried about, “Well, I already said that thing, and I don’t want to over-communicate.” Actually, it’s the opposite. You need to do opposite of that instinct and over communicate.

Additionally, when leaders appear concerned, like you just mentioned, have some emotional intelligence and appear to be knowledgeable and calm, that is when workers will feel inspired and encouraged and more likely to have confidence that things are under control. So I think to resist the temptation to just communicate once, and you actually do need to over communicate, and those employees who don’t need to hear it just probably won’t read it or won’t listen, but there will be people who need more communication than you’re used to giving.

Ren:

Yeah, who appreciate it, who are expecting it. And there might even be people who don’t need it normally but then need it when crisis happens.

Allison:

Right.

Ren:

You’re so right. No one has ever called me and been like, “Ren, we talk too much. Help us talk less.” So it is interesting when we think about that kind of communication or that over communication. But then too, something you said reminded me, I don’t want anyone to pretend to be emotional or pretend to be human when they’re not. I would never tell someone who’s a cold and calculated robotic person to pretend, “Do your best Mark Zuckerberg and look like a robot trying to inhabit a human.” That’s what Mark gets in trouble for, because he’s not that kind of guy, but his handlers say, “Mark, try to smile,” and then he’s like, “Boop, boop, beep.” So I don’t know. I don’t need a leader to be like, “I’m sad” when I’m not sad. But I do think you said something interesting.

It’s the recognition, the emotional intelligence. It’s this idea that, hey, when people lose everything or when I, for instance, lose my entire city overnight, and maybe I just happen to be across town at a friend’s sleepover and that’s the only reason I made it. In that moment, the leader just needs to demonstrate some understanding. Then I think even in the exercise of understanding, part of the human-centered leadership I think is a recognition of the human at the center of these things. Even the most hardened of us I think have the capacity for that human first approach.

Allison:

Agreed. And transparency is also crucial. I remember one of my clients, who I won’t name, was, this was last year, going through a very big riff and massive layoffs. And in one of our calls, he said to our internal client team, he just said, “I just need everybody to know. I need my leadership team to know that this is going to be hard, and it’s okay. This is going to be hard and we’ll get through it, and we just need to admit that.”

Something else you made me think of also comes from the book that I’ve already mentioned, and I really like this because it’s easy to remember, for me at least, the 3 Rs of communication in crisis are review, repeat, reinforce. You and I have talked about this before, Ren, but when information is scarce, people will fill in the blanks, and then they’ll talk to each other, and that’s when problems really can happen. So when those types of assumptions surface and then start to spread, that can cause a lot of problems that didn’t need to happen.

Ren:

I was just talking about this with a group of leaders and just how easy it is to misinterpret people’s behavior. And that’s in the best of circumstances. Just like even if everything’s going right for me and you wrong me, oh man, the Lord knows, well, we already know, I’m the hero or I’m the victim. But when I’m actually the victim and I don’t have information, good luck recovering. That’s I think we’re actually seeing, it’s been a month since Lahaina. Basically it feels from an outside perspective that misinformation, disinformation, a lot of static, unmoving things, and it’s really interesting when we start to say, “Well, how do we get some clarity on what’s happening? What does real transparency and communication look like? And can we just be honest about the shortcomings that can come up?” I think part of the way that we can stop telling stories about each other is just to admit where we lost sight of things. A lot of these leaders need to say, “I’m sorry.”

Allison:

Yes.

Ren:

And “We need to do better,” and they need to freaking do that and then keep moving.

Allison:

Yeah, part of all of this, like you’ve already said, is relationships. Let us not forget that we work with other human beings. You’ve mentioned human-centered leadership many times here. During crises, leaders who have built those personal relational, a foundation that’s relational, can then focus on the immediacy, right? Because they’ve already built that foundation of trust and then they’re not having to backpedal. So that becomes really important to… This is well before a crisis happens, is that leaders need to be somewhat relational. I know there will be people who listen who cringe at that, but I’m not saying you need to be best friends with people. What I am saying is that you need to make sure you have a culture of trust at your organization, because inevitably, at least once, your organization will have a crisis, at least once.

Ren:

If anyone’s in a relationship you care about, you know how important trust is.

Allison:

Absolutely.

Ren:

So when we’re involved in places where we live and work, it’s critical for our general success. I don’t know if this is a direct segue, and I know we’re rounding towards the end, but I’m curious about this with you, as we think about organizations. Because I know we’re talking about environmental disasters or rather natural disasters. We shifted a little bit to the org focus, but the environment and the trends happening in and around our climate are things that are going on, and organizations in certain industries are going to really need to consider it. Real estate is a perfect example that, that’s a serious consideration. Power, energy, these things are all going to have to navigate the shifting tide and sentiment of the environment around us. So what do you think are ways to leverage the crisis leadership or just any awareness that we have of leadership that, how can a leader prepare for the environment?

Allison:

Gosh, that’s tricky, Ren, isn’t it? I think doing due diligence. As a leader, it’s your responsibility to stay up to date on external factors that impact businesses. There are a lot of leaders who do that already. But I would say to take that very seriously and to look at some of the things that have gone on, maybe not in your immediate location, or maybe for some people it is in their location listening at this point, right? Flooding, tornadoes, those types of things have been happening for years. So what is your plan? Aside from having your binder, how are you going to create that foundation of trust?

I would encourage people to really take seriously these, I’ll mention them, they’re the five components of crisis leadership, but we’ve mentioned almost all of them, if not all of them, actually. The first one is to seek credible information. By the way, this book was written in 2003, a very long time ago. So as a leader, it’s your responsibility to make sure you’re up to date on trustworthy information. So that means avoiding things that have a bias of varying degrees that might have inaccuracies. So number 2 is communication, which we’ve already talked about at great depth. Number 3 is, within that communication, explain what the organization is doing. So even if you haven’t had a crisis yet, there’s a lot going on in the world right now. It might be time for you as leaders to talk about that and think about what will we do? What will we do? It’s better to be ahead of those things.

The fourth one we’ve talked about, which is to be present and available. And the last one is maybe if you have not been through a crisis at your organization may be the most important, which is to dedicate resources. That would include a budget for future crisis, because you might not need it, you might not need it, but chances are you’re likely going to have a crisis at your organization at least one time.

Ren:

I think that’s probably the trick and the challenge, is to ingrain that truth into our realities and then create reflex responses to it. As we’re talking about this, there’s an interesting comparison around our general human imperative. A lot of us who are afraid of snakes, typically we’re afraid of snakes, because they can cause us demise very quickly. That’s why out of the corner of your eye, especially as a Coloradan, and when you’re on the trail, you see a stick, it looks like a rattlesnake, you move. You don’t wait to check it out, you don’t walk closer to it, you move away from it very quickly, and then you reevaluate. But really, and the reality is that we see a snake maybe 1 out of a 100, but a hundred times we’re jumping, and we’re jumping for that 1 time.

So how do we, I think as an organization, measure your appetite and run the calculus for how do we react when we don’t need to? What’s a reaction, so we can build it in our system, that’s not disruptive to the business, but a real reaction that we can ingrain in ourselves so when real crisis happens, we’re not grabbing our hair and like, “What the hell do we do?” But we know what’s going on. You see this in a lot of defense communities too, where they run drills, where they go battle stations, people, and they practice this over and over and over again. Now, granted, those environments are different because we don’t necessarily need battle stations at CCL, but I wonder how to balance that tension between repetition so when disaster strikes, we reflexively know what to do.

Allison:

Right. You’re reminding me of childhood, right? Stop, drop and roll. We had to practice that. We had to know that. We had to know where to take cover. I grew up in Pennsylvania. There actually were tornadoes, not in my area, but in school we had to know where to go. So we just knew those things because it’s inevitable. Again, it might not happen. Like you said, Ren, you might see a snake. Unless you live in my house, where there are lots of snakes frequently. Don’t come to my house if you don’t like snakes.

Regardless, it’s important to know what you should do. And there’s a lot of this that is an individual’s responsibility to know, because I guarantee you, if organizations put forward a mandatory training for emergency response, even if it was a recorded webinar, people are very busy. They probably won’t take it very seriously. They might watch it, but are they going to retain it, to your point? So how do you create a culture where these things become ingrained without creating panic at the same time? It’s tricky.

Ren:

Yeah, and maybe that too is a practical thing right now, is if you all haven’t yet as listeners or leaders or working in the organization, start to ask yourselves not what the emergency plan is, but what’s our appetite for building in habits where we could respond? Are there habits that serve the business that we could start to ingrain that would also serve us in times of crisis? And reminder too, folks, it doesn’t have to be a natural disaster, like Allison’s saying. It’s like real financial crisis, or what happens when all of a sudden our systems go down and we have to execute on a product or a contract? It’s these things that we go, “Oh, no.” So can we build the muscles where I use it in times of good and in times of bad?

Allison:

Right. It’s again, it comes back to me to just that awareness. So it is a leader’s responsibility to have that awareness, know what’s happening in the world around them, and those external factors that are starting, unfortunately, to become a little bit more common. And just because it hasn’t happened to your business doesn’t mean that it won’t. So I think there’s a bit of realism that needs to occur and general awareness and starting there.

Ren:

That’s right. Realism. Something’s coming for you. To pretend that it’s not is a disservice to you and your people.

Allison:

Yes, indeed, indeed. Again, not to create panic, but just we know what to do. We know what to do. Wouldn’t you rather be prepared so that you’re not like me, who did kick a stick recently, and it was a snake. I thought it was a stick. I was walking the dog and I kicked a stick. Air quoting, “stick.” It was a snake. My dog didn’t care. I freaked out. Anyway, everybody’s fine.

Ren:

Well, stay vigilant, people.

Allison:

Everybody’s fine. So Ren, what’s 1 takeaway you think you can leave for leaders today?

Ren:

Yeah. Don’t get discouraged. I was thinking about all this stuff and I was like, I don’t know if anything’s going to change. I don’t know if anyone’s incentivized to not let things like this happen, because it seems to always damage the people who can handle it the least. And the people who benefit, or the people who can handle it the most, don’t seem to be touched by these things.

So when I see all of this, for instance, the Libyan government, for instance, I don’t think they care, because they’re still fighting over power. The Moroccan systems of structure, I think, you know what, actually, maybe if it is only 1 bright spot in all of this, it’s the fact that because the country is familiar with these things, there are some signs of proactivity. But when I look around at what can sometimes be construed as maybe failures of ignorance or apathy, it can be really discouraging. But then I’m reminded of, like I said in the beginning, that I see people working hard. Everywhere I go, people rolling up their sleeves for one another and taking care of each other. So try not to get discouraged. I’m trying not to get discouraged. Trying to, taking care of each other, I guess is my takeaway.

Allison:

Yeah, that human-centered focus. So, I’ll add to that human-centered focus, which is so critical, is the communication piece. Revisit those five steps of crisis leadership if you want. However, I would underline the communication piece. People have varying levels of need to knows, if you will, and there will be people who will panic if they don’t hear from you. And when that happens and people fill in the blanks, your problems are about to get a lot worse. So over-communicate, be transparent, and just tell people what’s happening and what you’re up to as a leader. I just think we could, as always, talk about this for a couple of hours. It’s just a big-

Ren:

Especially this one.

Allison:

Yeah, it’s a big topic. With that said, I know we have to wrap, but you can find all of our show notes and all of our podcasts on ccl.org. And a big thank you to our CCL team behind the scenes who work very, very hard to get our podcasts up and running.

Ren:

Yes, yes.

Allison:

And to our listeners, thank you for being here. Find us on LinkedIn. Tell us what you want us to talk about next. As always, Ren, I’ll look forward to our next one. Thanks everyone.

Ren:

That’s right. Thanks Alison. Thanks everybody. See you next time. Bye, Alison.