Crisis Leadership Style
Crisis leadership is a very important part of leading in today's world. The skills a leader needs in order to guide people during a crisis are different from the skills needed to help a group grow. Are you a good crisis leader? What is your leadership style in case of a business crisis situation? A business crisis can test the strongest of leaders, read this article to explore how to ensure you’re ready to take action and weather the storm when one strikes you.
What is Crisis Leadership?
Dealing with difficult situations is an integral part of the job of any leader. You may call such situations as disaster recovery, crisis management; business continuity planning, or organizational resilience, dealing with difficult situations seems an ever-increasing part of a leader’s lot these days. Crisis leadership will become even more important in the future as the nature of crisis changes with the increasing complexities in the world we operate in.
In a moment of crisis, when things seem to be mostly falling apart, the followers turn to its leaders for a sense of reassurance and guidance on how to tackle the situation. These are times when leaders have to be smart about how they present themselves and deal with the crisis. A crisis occurs when policymakers experience “a serious threat to the basic structures or the fundamental values and norms of a system, which under time pressure and highly uncertain circumstances necessitates making vital decisions.” Leaders in such circumstances need to make calculated decisions to improve the chances of survival.
Three elements are common to most definitions of crisis: (a) a threat to the organization, (b) the element of surprise, and (c) a short decision time. In a crisis, leaders are expected to reduce uncertainty and provide an authoritative account of what is going on, why it is happening, and what needs to be done.
Characteristics of Effective Crisis Leaders:
The skills a leader needs in order to guide people during a crisis are different from the skills needed to help a group grow. Some leaders have a flexible style, allowing them to execute one or another style depending on each situation. There is no right or wrong, and the following attributes have been identified by researchers being helpful in the situation of crisis from a leadership perspective:
1. Sense-Making: Leaders need to determine, even in the face of ambiguity and complexity, the likely level and impact of the threat. They need to get a fast and clear grasp of the situation and quickly analyze what’s going on and what needs to be done to take charge.
2. Decision Making: Leaders must make decisions amid conflicting information, values, and risks. They need to evaluate options realizing the importance of time lost in such situations. Finally, they need to make the best decision in a limited amount of time in the given set of constraints.
3. Coordinating: Leaders must recognize that a crisis cannot be managed in a linear, hierarchical fashion. They need to communicate succinctly and effectively about what needs to be done to resolve the crisis. They might need to get into “giving directions” mode, often telling everyone what their role is, what the desired goal or accomplishment is, and the deadline in which the job needs to get done.
4. Meaning Making: Meaning-making refers to crisis management as political communication. Leaders need to offer their stakeholders a coherent and credible account of what has happened. The normal channels of communication may not be operative or may be overloaded, requiring new channels and protocols that must be quickly mastered.
5. Terminating-Accounting: Terminating a crisis is only possible if the leader correctly handles the accountability question. Leaders need to know when the crisis has ended, operationally, and politically.
6. Learning: Leaders need to recognize that there are “lessons to be learned” from a crisis. They don’t dwell on why things happened till the crisis is resolved as they understand that there is little time to blame others for what has already happened and the immediate need of the hour is for action to resolve the problem. But they don’t forget the learning part and find the lessons learned after overcoming the problem to make the necessary changes in the face of a future crisis.
Related Links
You May Also Like
-
Authoritarian Leadership Style
Although generally considered as a traditional, outdated, and non-preferred style of leadership, the autocratic style still can be used effectively in certain situations. It is a leadership style characterized by individual absolute control over a group. If you work for an autocratic leader, your job is usually to do what you're told. Learn more about this style and situations where this could be an effective style to use and when to avoid this type of approach. Analyze the characteristics of this style to evaluate if your followers consider you an authoritarian leader!
-
There are four characteristics of leadership that help us to understand the character of leadership as a concept. 1. Leadership is a process, 2. Leadership involves influence, 3. Leadership always occurs in a group context and 4. Leadership involves goal attainment. These are the four components that make up the character of the 'leadership' term and help us to define the leadership concept. All of these components of leadership have common characteristics.
-
Collaborative leadership is all about collaborative problem-solving and decision-making or can also be defined as the leadership of a collaborative effort. . The term started to appear in the mid-1990s in response to the formation of long term public-private partnerships to rebuild public infrastructure. Learn how you can use principles of collaborative leadership to enhance your leadership skills for being an effective leader.
-
There are four major factors in leadership called Leader, Follower, Communication, and Situation. The success of the leader is dependent on how the leader is effectively able to communicate and motivate followers to perform desired tasks using the appropriate leadership style best suited for the given situation. Interdependencies and dynamics of these four factors of leadership must be considered by a leader to be effective.
-
Understanding of how individuals of different cultures interact with each other is very important. Not all individuals can adapt to the leadership styles expected in a different culture whether that culture is organizational or national. In a fast-paced business environment, developing a richer understanding and sensitivity to other cultures is a skill that leaders must possess. Learn to be effective in a cross-cultural setting.
-
Charles Darwin had once commented that “It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.” Agility means the capability of rapidly and efficiently adapting to changes and recently, agility has been applied in the context of software development, agile enterprise, and agile leadership. Agile leaders play an important, even essential, role in scaling agility in an organization. Understand how being an agile leader helps in effectively catalyzing organizational change.
-
What are the functions which a leader does to establish as a leader? What are the activities undertaken by them to become great leaders, rather revolutionary leaders? The most important tasks done by a leader in all situations are defining the vision, mission, and goals, leading the team, administrative functions, motivating followers, decision making and conflict resolution, and continuous development.
-
Bureaucratic leadership relies on a clear chain of command and strict regulations. Bureaucratic leadership style is a very decent style for work involving serious safety risks, such as handling toxic substances, moving large objects. The focus is on compliance with rules and laid down procedures to make sure that the group is doing their job correctly and safely. Learn some advantages and disadvantages of this style and situations in which this style could prove to be effective.
-
The ten most important qualities that define a good leader are self-awareness, interpersonal and communication skills, ethical values, organizational consciousness, self-confidence, adaptability and flexibility, imagination and creativity, focus & result-orientation, continuous self-development and accountability and ownership for his actions. These ten qualities of leadership every good leader should possess to a certain extent and must continually strive to develop them.
-
Appreciative leaders encourage contributions from those around them and facilitate the discussion to mutually solve problems. Understand the concept of Appreciative Leadership and learn about tools to create and ask powerful questions - that lead to new discoveries and possibilities. Instead of focusing on what’s wrong in the workplace, learn about, and build upon what works. Learn in this article the art to apply appreciative inquiry to specific situations and challenges at your workplace.
