Crisis -- A Leadership Opportunity

摘要

For years crisis management has been synonymous with reactive leadership. This stems from a belief that crisis is both unpredictable and unexpected; but this is simply not true. Crisis develops as an organization's values, beliefs, culture, or behavior becomes incongruent with its operating environment. A leader who is 'tuned-in' to the signals of impending crisis and understands how to harness the urgency brought on by the situation can minimize the potential dangers and maximize the resulting opportunities. This paper presents the 'Crisis Life-cycle Model' as a generic representation of crisis. It illustrates that crisis can be broken into three unique phases. In the first phase, the organization is typically sitting in the comfort zone. Here, leaders struggle when any change or learning is introduced, as the organization prefers to avoid conflict and sustain equilibrium. However, as crisis hits, the organization is jolted into the emergency phase, which often threatens its very existence. Once the immediate threat is eliminated, the organization enters the adaptive phase. In this phase, the leader has the attention and urgency to solve the underlying issue that caused the crisis in the first place. Unfortunately, many leaders don't take advantage of this opportunity and they push the organization back toward the original status-quo, ensuring that the crisis will return. The study of crisis leadership is becoming increasingly important as leaders in all walks of life face varying degrees of crisis. From this extensive body of research, the authors found seven essential strategies that are crucial for success. to illustrate these strategies, three of the most recognized and successful examples of crisis leadership are used to demonstrate how leaders saved.