8 Ways You Can Prepare for A Crisis
(To Show Your Leadership)
Employees must be able to rely on your leadership during a crisis. As a leader, your responsibility is to quickly adapt to the new circumstances, ease up the process for your staff, and show no panic response. Your behavior must reflect calm thinking. Even if you do panic, you mustn’t show it. Your job is to prepare your employees for a crisis; you can’t be in crisis when the world is, and especially not when your employees need you the most.
Believe me or not, your role has changed within the last year. If things ran smoothly until now, the COVID-19 pandemic has definitely changed things around. Your job as a leader is not only to promote innovation but to make quick decisions with little information. The health of your employees depends on you, and your role is absolutely essential in a time of crisis.
Coping with the aftereffects is challenging. But you can do it if you’re a real leader. Here are eight ways in which you can help your staff cope with a crisis.
1. Understand what’s happening on a larger scale
During periods of crisis, you must understand what’s happening on a larger scale in the world. If you’re not in the loop, you won’t be able to react accordingly. Make sure you understand the context at hand – in this case, the coronavirus pandemic – and stick all the pieces of the puzzle together. The first thing you want to pay attention to is the economy. To give you a brief example, here are some of the essential economic factors in the U.S. to check out during COVID-19.
- Unemployment trends. According to essay writing reviews (and not only), following March, unemployment was back to Depression-level. This pandemic has whipped off about 23 million positions only across the U.S., let alone other countries. From May through June, unemployment dropped again, with about 9 million positions being re-gained. That means the pandemic left a whole of approximately 14 million jobs, compared to the pre-corona market.
- Consumers spend less than before the pandemic. The unemployment benefits helped out some consumers, but checks expired in July, leaving most consumers without a job or weekly payment.
- The Federal Reserve made sure interest rates dropped close to zero since the credit market was close to dysfunctional.
These are just three important facts about what’s happening in the U.S. at this time. If your company was based here, these stats would be essential to comprehend for the well-being of your business. Understanding the bigger picture enables us to handle our own business affairs easier.
2. Be well-aware of your company’s needs
Speaking of which, your next step is understanding your company’s needs in times of crisis. You must comprehend and grasp all of the available information. Only then will you be able to act correspondingly. Make sure you understand potential threats, how the bigger and smaller picture intertwine, and connect the dots between the pieces. What are the risks that your company might be facing? Why does your organization exist in the first place, and what could bring it down?
Understand how exterior events affect your internal environment. For example, misinformation is something you could tackle during this pandemic. Your employees must be exposed to all the information presented and then draw a conclusion based on it. This is something you’ve got to provide for them, access to all information. This is, for instance, one of your company’s needs during COVID-19.
3. Set your company up for success
The best way to show leadership abilities during a crisis is to prevent harmful exposure to it. For example, preparing your company for a health crisis such as COVID-19 would have been smart. If more companies thought about ways to provide easy access to healthcare for their employees, for example, we wouldn’t have been exposed to such a drop in unemployment. In the end, it’s about thinking ahead and planning out all possibilities.
Seek development opportunities before the crisis to ensure that you’re prepared. Help employees expand their abilities by providing optional training, boosting career opportunities, etc.
Robert Levey, CEO at UK Dissertation, recommends, “Do everything you can to set your company up for success. Be prepared for what’s to follow, never give up on improving. Adopt a win-win mindset, always challenge your staff to do better—and be there to applaud when they succeed. Be a true role model for your employees; prepare them for any crisis.”
4. Make quick, precise decisions
Situations change all the time. Therefore, you need to be prepared for any crisis-like situation. Make sure you know how to process information quickly and filter it. Ensure that you can decide what’s best for the company rapidly. During these times, you need to think quickly and act quicker. Besides that, you should not let your emotions overwhelm you.
What you shouldn’t do is let yourself run into analysis paralysis—that moment where you can’t think straight anymore and can’t make sense of anything. A good leader won’t let the crisis get to her. She will analyze the information precisely and make decisions based on the available information. When the situation changes, she’ll adjust.
In a time of crisis, make sure to:
- Determine your priorities and identify what needs to be solved first. During this pandemic, for example, health is primordial.
- Now think about the possible conflicts that might intervene between these priorities. Is there anything specific you can think of?
- Understand who does what, don’t cross the line. Let everyone handle their work. As a successful leader, your job is to trust and be trusted; so, even if you want to solve all the problems in your company, you should not. Each department solves a specific problem. If you trained them right, they’ll know how to react to the crisis, so don’t take on tasks you can’t complete.
- Since every department acts as quickly as they can during a crisis, they shouldn’t be punished for any mistakes. Taking action during a crisis means taking risks. And taking risks is the definition of being a leader. Your staff is learning from you, so don’t punish them for trying to solve a crisis-related issue. In these moments, all you can do is try, right?
5. Adapt the new policies
Making a decision is not enough. After that, you must quickly adapt to the changed circumstances. Here are some of the things that you should know as a leader.
- Gather your team and decide what you should not do during the crisis. This is essential as it will help you face problems more easily.
- Don’t try to maintain long-gone policies. Circumstances change, so must the rules. Map out a new attack plan along with your team. Write down your strategy and hire an essay writer service to handle your work, if needed. You’ve got tons of other important tasks to handle, so delegate.
- Connect directly to the front line. No matter what type of company you’re running, you must connect with community influencers—they’ll keep you updated on everything. For example, connecting directly to doctors, nurses, and pharmaceutical companies during this pandemic is necessary. They will keep you in the loop.
6. Keep delivering
When things get out of control, keep going. Don’t stop only because someone tells you to. Motivate yourself and your team to continue the hard work, even if using a different strategy. This pandemic is the perfect example. Most people continued to work online. Their health concerns, solved. Their comfort concerns, checked. You must think out of the box when crisis-like situations pop up – and remote work was definitely that.
Keep your team motivated by setting targets and goals. Measure performance and have teams report on their progress. Help employees keep their heads up by checking on them every week. Ask them if there’s anything you can help them with, make sure you’re there for them. You could start weekly online meditation sessions, for example, to help them relax. Help them establish routines and stay healthy.
7. Communicate and engage actively
You can’t and shouldn’t handle a crisis alone. You’ve got a team by your side ready to go—so, work together. Communication is the key here. Your job is to actively engage with your employees. Don’t keep them out of the picture or thought process. Keep them involved. Make your decisions transparent to your community, as they are always able to help. Communication between departments is necessary, but so is one on one communication with your employees.
- Set one-on-one meetings to ask them how they cope with the crisis at hand. Engage with them on a more personal level.
- Ask them for your help, if needed. Offer them an opportunity to boost their involvement in the company.
- Reach out to your customers as well. Ask them if they need anything. Provide them with everything they need. In times of crisis, your customers must rely on you.
- Share positive messages and… vibes. This could be as simple as posting a motivation quote on your LinkedIn each day.
8. Show calmness and breathe
Last but not least, stay calm. Yes, it’s a crisis but yes, everything will be okay in the end. You are doing great. Just breathe and take care of yourself. You’re doing everything you can to take care of everything. If nobody told you this today…. Good job!
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Do you want to build and maintain new habits? Get your free PDF version of the Don't Break The Chain calendar and start today!
Author's Bio
Charlie Svensson is a fast, engaging freelance writer skilled in content writing and blogging. The favorite topics of his posts are education, social media, marketing, SEO, motivation blogging and self-growth. Charlie’s got an excellent adaptability of skills to reach diverse audiences.
