Are You Leading Through Crisis or is Crisis Leading You?

The buzz about leadership through crisis often centers around concepts like crisis management. Crisis management is defined as the way an organization deals with sudden events that threaten to harm the organization and its stakeholders. As consultants, we look at crisis differently.

Without diminishing the gravity of the situation, we also see the silver lining of disruptive events in the life of an organization and the opportunity for growth they present.

We look at the current situation of an organization – – its people, internal systems, and the external environment – – as opportunities for leaders and organizations to step outside of their day-to-day routine ways of operating. We encourage them to become aware of unconscious patterns and ways of behaving that are keeping them from higher levels of functioning and effectiveness.

We advise our Mission-Driven clients to leverage the current times to intentionally look at their organizations from a 50-foot view and assess everything: human capital, operations, funding, stakeholder engagement, and untapped opportunities.

Mission-Drivers use crisis moments to initiate conversations with key stakeholders to identify gaps in all areas of the organization (click to see our COVID-19 gap analysis). This requires self-reflective, self-confronting leaders, board members, and staff (read more about self-confronting leadership here).  It is easy to plan after a situation is resolved, but it is also a missed opportunity. Turning into the fire, while it is burning, can add the heat that is needed to overcome denial and address the ways an organization is not its best self. This is the time to rally yourself and rally others. There is important work to be done.

To learn how you can lead through crisis, contact Jacki Davidoff for a 15-minute conversation.