Leadership in Crisis
The task of leading during a sustained crisis-whether you are the CEO of a major corporation or a manager heading up an impromptu company initiative-is treacherous. Crisis leadership has two distinct phases. First is that emergency phase, when your task is to stabilize the situation and buy time. Second is the adaptive phase, when you tackle the underlying causes of the crisis and build the capacity to thrive in a new reality. The adaptive phase is especially tricky: People put enormous pressure on you to respond to their anxieties with authoritative certainty, even if doing so means overselling what you know and discounting what you don't. As you ask them to make necessary but uncomfortable adaptive changes in their behavior or work, they may try to bring you down. People clamor for direction, while you are faced with a way forward that isn't at all obvious. Twists and turns are the only certainty. (1)
Crisis in leadership is a certainty for all leaders of organizations. The crisis may be as profound as dealing with the aftermath of natural disasters, terrorist attacks, destruction of facilities through fire, etc. Many crisis are less dramatic but extremely important to the long-term viability of the organization. They can include issues of worker strikes, economic downturns, new competition or innovation that negatively affects the organizations profitability. How leaders deal with these types of crisis will determine their success or failure as a leader.
The purpose of the paper is to review, in depth, a specific leader who faced a crisis within their organization. The paper should be 12 point font, double spaced and 7-8 pages in length (excluding cover page). The paper should have a minimum of 10 references to support the findings in the paper. The primary objective is to review the crisis faced along with the leader's actions and motivations. Such issues as the individual's state of mind and display of emotion, how they communicated with stakeholders and their use of power are examples of issues to explore. The paper should also review the outcome of the actions taken. This assessment should review the decisions made and how they were/were not aligned with the organization's vision and mission statement. Illustrating actions of courage or weakness are also important. Lastly, a review of the values, traits and behavior the leader displayed during the crisis and how it differs from their style during more mundane times is important.
(1)Leadership in a (Permanent) Crisis, by Ronald Heifetz; Harvard Business Review