Four Competences in Crisis Leadership

The business world has always been unpredictable, today even more so. Your employees might go on a strike for the right to work at home; your customers might abandon your brand because your products contain too much fat, sugar, wheat … or the opposite; your supplier might increase their price or go bankrupt overnight; and without preamble, your municipal government might declare that your rented office building is no longer available for commercial purposes.

Those are but a few examples of the potential changes faced by businesses. There are certainly a lot more dramatic situations that can be termed as crises, the handling of which can literally make or break a company, including smoldering crises like product defects, customer activism, rumors and scandals, class action lawsuits, sexual harassment, etc., and sudden crises like natural disasters, terrorist attack, technology disruption, hostile takeover, etc.

In order to thrive or simply survive in such a protean business land, leaders must be equipped with proper crisis leadership that can help their organizations to weather the storm and achieve long-term success. Crisis leadership sets apart those companies that flourish following a crisis from those that don’t. It entails more than managing corporate communications and public relationships during a crisis.