How to Lead Your Team Through Crises

Effective leaders know how to guide their teams through trying times. They find ways to alleviate strain when stress is high and always get the best out of their most talented employees during a crisis. 

However, if you are new to leadership, you may find it hard to raise morale when times are hard. This struggle is entirely understandable, as many of your top employees will be aware of the headwinds you face and may be stressed by the crisis they find themselves in. 

As a leader, you can empower your employees by taking a considered, calming approach to management. Doing so will reassure your talented team and help them focus on the task at hand rather than fretting about the future. When leveraged correctly, this approach can improve critical thinking, foster a creative, agile spirit, and reduce the risk of human error during a crisis. 

Setting the Right Tone

Finding the right words when your team needs direction can be a real challenge. You may even feel as though you are the one who isn’t prepared to handle a crisis if you find communicating with your team is a struggle during uncertain times. Rather than waiting for the perfect words to come, consider taking a crisis-management leadership approach that foregrounds: 

• Honesty and confidence;
• Data-driven decisions;
• Calmness during chaotic times;
• Cautious optimism in the face of uncertainty; 
• Clarity and transparency.

Try to empathise with your team when they are uncertain of the way forward. They’re likely worried about the future of the firm, too, and may want to simply vent their frustrations. As a leader, you do not always have to find the perfect response — sometimes, active listening is enough to alleviate stress and strain. 

Creating a Plan 

While you never want to find yourself in a crisis scenario, uncertainty is a fact of life. Rather than finding yourself on the back foot when suppliers go bust or storms threaten to shut down your stores, get ahead of the competition by creating a contingency and crisis management plan that works. Typically, this involves: 

• Collaboration: Loop the right people into planning conversation when you start to create continuity policies. During this time, you’ll also want to assign roles like “Crisis Management Team Leader” and “Crisis Communications Manager”. 
• Conduct Internal Audits: When crisis strikes, you want to know exactly which elements of your operations will struggle the most. Audits help you form crisis response plans and allow you to develop strategies that empower affected teams. 
• Practice: A pile of policies and crisis documents will give you a direction to follow when disaster strikes. However, if you want those policies to be carried out effectively, you will need to regularly practice everything from fire drills to mock supply chain disruption. 
• Experience: Every business goes through a crisis from time to time. You can minimise the risk of future disruption by learning from past experiences and providing case studies for your employees to view. 

Creating a thorough plan is a sure sign that you are a prepared, proactive leader. A well-designed plan can calm your employees and can help you master the art of leadership during an emergency. Creating clear contingency plans and continuity initiatives will protect your profitability and aid your efforts to run a well-drilled rim.

Reducing the Risk of Further Errors

As a leader, your primary task is to ensure that crises don’t lead to future errors. This can be a real challenge, as folks are likely to compound mistakes when they are under pressure and feel overwhelmed by the scale of the crisis they face. As a leader, you can proactively guard against further issues by utilising initiatives to reduce human error in the workplace:

• Set Reasonable Goals: Do not expect your team to right the company’s course and bring in huge revenue overnight. Instead, set easy-to-reach short-term goals and reward folks who make a positive contribution. 
• Automate: Some tasks, like invoicing clients or tagging projects, are best left to automated programs. Provided your algorithms are set correctly, automated tools will never make an error and will free up time for more creative tasks. 
• Oversight: Balancing between micro-managing and being too “hands-off” during a crisis can be a struggle. You can empower employees while reducing the risk of error by utilising technology to track activity and regularly reviewing performance during a crisis to spot signs that folks are overwhelmed. 
• Back It Up The proliferation of cloud technology means there’s no reason not to back up multiple versions of working files. Regularly backing up your work means that folks can find old versions of documents and spot the source of errors before it is too late. 

Implementing proactive policies can minimise the risk of future errors and help your team feel secure in their roles. These benefits can be advantageous if you lead a relatively inexperienced team that is more likely to overwork themselves when the signs of a crisis first emerge. 

As a leader, you should also find time for workplace resilience training. Resiliency training can empower your team by helping them practice strategies to reduce stress, improve focus, and bounce back after an error. Resiliency training strategies are relatively straightforward, too, and include: 

• Self-awareness activities;
• Relationship strategies for helping others;
• Self-compassion practices.

Teaching your employees to practice resilience can improve the effectiveness of your own leadership strategies and will ensure that you can set the right tone during uncertain times. 

Conclusion  

Effective leaders thrive during uncertain times. You suddenly have a chance to meaningfully improve morale in your workplace and can use the opportunity to boost engagement and create buy-in amongst your employees. However, if you’re new to leadership, you may find it difficult to chart a productive route forward. Rather than trying to make it up on the fly, create a proactive plan that will improve your team's resilience, bolster your employees' efforts, and ensure that you can keep doing business and turning a profit when disaster strikes.