The Background

Early in my crisis response career, I had a revelation that all crises are patterns of human behavior. Furthermore, crisis response patterns themselves are pretty uniform across the board, geography, culture, and organization’s attitude.

In the next few pages, I discuss the problem of self-inflicted leadership and the behaviors that cause crisis response failure behaviors (CRFBs). These are the ingredients of the patterns of mistakes, errors, and intentional misbehaviors at play in crises.

The more senior you are, the more you are going to be skeptical and frustrated. The major takeaway from the hundreds of situations I’ve been through with clients is that these bad behaviors do happen. They are obstructive to response success. All are preventable. But first, we need to recognize the symptoms before we can understand the solutions required.

These leadership problems are explained in very plain straightforward language. I think you will find this approach to be refreshing in the absence of excuse-making, justification, and blame shifting.

Perhaps the most important issue in readiness is preparing management, leaders, and responders. Most critical of all is the emotional readiness to respond. It turns out that leadership emotional readiness is far more important in responding to urgent situations than logistical or tactical readiness.

11 Crisis Response Failure Behaviors (CRFBs)
In the Order They Occur

1. Surprise
2. Disbelief
3. Silence
4. Stalling
5. Denial
6. Victim Confusion
7. Testosterosis
8. Arrogance
9. Search for the guilty
10. Fear of the media
11. Whining

1. Surprise: Stems from the U.S. management culture that stresses the invincibility of managers and leaders. Today’s prevailing attitude is that smart managers are unlikely to suffer a crisis. The unintended consequence of this delusion is that much necessary readiness activity never takes place.

   Lesson 1: The smarter they are, the harder and faster they fall.

2. Disbelief: Arises immediately in a crisis because of the ingrained belief that, “It must be a mistake. Crisis doesn’t happen here, to me.” So, the word goes forth to demonstrate that, “it’s a crisis” is false. Even if something adverse is clearly occurring, the lies begin. The instruction from management is interpreted to mean: “find out that it’s not a crisis,” plus, “don’t do or say anything until you talk to us.” The response is held up, and the cover-up expands.

   Lesson 2: In crises, badly handled things get worse from the start and stay worse.

3. Silence: The most toxic strategy possible. Silence makes you look like a perpetrator, sound like a liar, and quickly become untrustable, whether you or someone else is at fault. How can leaders be seen as credible, reasonable, rational, or honorable while avoiding action and whining about the unfairness of it all while real victims are piling up?

   Lesson 3: Silence is quickly toxic to reputation and is the most frequent CEO career-killer.

4. Stalling: The process of waiting to talk and holding up decision-making until the right information arrives. This step requires enforcing a period of toxic silence on everyone at the top and to various depths of management. Doing nothing, even for what appears to be good reasons, is unexplainable. The clock starts ticking on top management’s departure.

   Lesson 4: Speed of action and decision beats smart every time. When in doubt, do something.

5. Denial: Refusal to accept the fact that something bad has really happened and that there may be victims or other direct negative effects that require prompt public acknowledgment, disclosure, and response.

   Lesson 5: Denial once underway has a momentum all its own.

6. Victim Confusion: Begins occurring almost immediately. Senior management introduces minimizing whatever the “non-crisis” impact will be on the organization. That’s when a problem that starts in the field is appropriated into the C-suite. The leadership of an afflicted organization is distracted, even blindsided by the continued attention given to those who are victims: people, animals living systems, sometimes all three.

   Lesson 6: Management confusion, irritation, and humiliation boils, “Hey, we are victims too!”

   Lesson 7: Despite senior executives whining and warning, the visibility and concern will still focus on real victims rather than the organization’s good behavior over the years.

   Lesson 8: When there are victims, most goodwill bank accounts dry up.

   Lesson 9: The creation of victims quickly overwhelms most or all of your prior good deeds.

7. Testosterosis: Often management’s first public response is to look for ways to hit back, rather than to deal with the problem. Refuse to give in, refuse to respect those who may have a difference of opinion or a legitimate issue. That’s because management’s first crisis response is usually emotional or emotionally driven. Crisis management always puts management in crisis. Testosterosis characterizes this puzzling and confusing first set of outbursts. Management testosterosis, spontaneous hitting back or striking preemptively, is the single most powerful recruiting tool trial lawyers need to secure clients, created freely by those now considered to be the perpetrator of the problem.

   Lesson 10: Like the crisis itself, things are about to get worse because crises always get worse before they get better. All crises ripen badly.

8. Arrogance: Reluctance to apologize, express concern or empathy, or take appropriate responsibility because, “If we do that, we’ll be liable,” or, “We’ll look like sissies,” or, “We’ll set a precedent,” or, “There will be copycats.” Arrogance is also responsible for lack of readiness, which is an epidemic among arrogant inherently overly-optimistic, overly-confident management and leadership overwhelmed by crisis.

   Lesson 11: Every tick of the clock during this period of silence, confusion, stalling, and testosterosis represents a substantial nick in the organization’s reputation as well as the survivability of top management.

9. Search for the guilty: Shift blame anywhere you can while digging into the organization, looking for traitors, turncoats, troublemakers, those who push back, and the unconvinceables.

   Lesson 12: The original order is changed to read, “Find out who screwed up.”

10. Fear of the media: As it becomes more clear that the problem is at least partly real, the media begin asking, “What did you know, and when did you know it,” “What have you done, and when did you do it,” and other humiliating, embarrassing, and damaging questions for which have to be avoided because you have stalled so long.
11. Whining: Head down, finger in your navel, shuffling around, whining, and complaining about how bad your luck is; about being a victim of the media, zealous do-gooders, wacko-activists, or that people don’t know anything; about how people you don’t respect have power; and, that you “don’t get credit” for whatever good you’ve already contributed.

The Biggest Lesson of All: A Surprise Ending

Leadership emotional readiness is far more important than logistical or tactical readiness.**

* Read the full article here.