7 leadership behaviours that hold a team together during a crisis

A compelling vision will inspire your team when times are good, but also hold them together when times are tough. Furthermore, in a crisis the stakeholders will look to you for calm, clear and disciplined actions to lead the business back into growth and profitability.

In a crisis – whether it’s the loss of a major customer, a critical team member departure, a brand or reputational issue, or a global shock like COVID-19 – your role as CEO is to lead deliberately, to role-model how you want the rest of your team to lead, and to maintain focus on what matters in this moment but with an eye on the future. This is when your behaviours matter most because your leadership is very intently watched and evaluated in this situation.

When leading in crisis, most of your leadership behaviours should be the same as when there is no crisis — this is because at all times you must lead the business with urgency.

We are all human, and crises affect us. It’s okay to feel the pressure and momentarily dip. This could be evident in your visible frustration or disappointment with an outcome, but you need to bounce back quickly.

The seven critical leadership traits

These seven leadership traits are especially critical in a crisis, and you need to be deliberate in their use in times of crisis:

1. Be aware of your leadership shadow: Times of crisis magnify your leadership shadow as the team watches you even more closely. Long after the crisis, people will remember whether your decisions were fair and respectful, and consistent with the company values.
2. Be a person of hope and a simplifier: The team needs someone who is confident about the future but also pragmatic about current realities. You must cut through the noise, communicating clear perspectives of the current situation while laying out the roadmap to take the business forward.
3. Be out front, visible and communicate with the team: In times of crisis, the team is looking for you. Think about the president or prime minister of a country. When there is a crisis in the country, the media love to find out the leader was nowhere to be seen, or worse still, at some holiday resort. You need to keep the team informed; and remember, it is impossible to over-communicate. Increase your engagement with frequent all-hands meetings. Keep the team informed about business developments and celebrate small wins. Step in and take ownership of significant issues. Your presence reassures the team.
4. Know the details intimately: Step above the chaos but also understand the specifics. In times of crisis, superficial knowledge isn’t enough. Ask yourself: What is most important right now? What am I missing? Is my team being fully honest, or are they telling me what they think I want to hear? Am I being too optimistic? How could this crisis unfold? What are the best – and worst – case outcomes? Which stakeholders need to be updated — banks, investors, the board, your family? Am I hoping for the best but planning for the worst?
5. Get close to the front line: Information flowing through multiple levels in an organisation can be slow and affect the accuracy of this information. Get close to the front line to understand exactly what is happening. Speed and accuracy in crisis management can mean the difference between minor setbacks and major failures.
6. Focus on less to achieve more: What is important right now? It’s almost always about cash flow. What are the three or four levers you can pull to help that situation? For example, growing the business uses cash, so you might dial back your sales and business development initiatives to conserve cash. Think, ‘What else can we stop doing?’ Sales and business development are good examples, but what other controllable investments can you reduce (such as tighter inventory management)? Be ruthless in your prioritisation; every minute and dollar spent on non-essential efforts in a crisis puts your business further at risk.
7. Emphasise your company values: They are a filter by which you make decisions. In a crisis, regularly challenge yourself and your team to ensure that your actions align with those values. If transparency is one of your values, tell your stakeholders as much as you can without increasing uncertainty. Sometimes, too much information can fuel confusion and fear rather than reduce it.

A final thought ties back to the quote, hope for the best, plan for the worst. An approach to protect you from being too optimistic is to appoint someone on your team to be a devil’s advocate to challenge your thinking. This person should ask tough questions, stress-test your assumptions, and force you to consider worst-case scenarios. It’s not a fun role, but it is an essential one.

Dane Hudson is the author of Discipline beats vision: How to be the leader your company needs