Prepare yourself now to serve.

By Dennis Haley
Featured in Leadership Excellence Magazine

What is the difference between leading in a crisis and leading during routine times? In a crisis, you can't micromanage the situation—as many simultaneous actions are required in many places. To survive crisis, you need to assess the situation and act independently to do what needs to be done at any given moment. You can't rely on close supervision and act only when given specific tasks.

In a crisis, people who believe that leaders are born tend to believe that events conspire to bring out great leaders. Those who believe that leaders are made employ a three-part strategy:

1. Set the direction. In crises, you don't have time to micro-manage or describe in detail your reasons for taking certain actions. You need a clearly stated vision and purpose, and a well-articulated set of values that support them. All team members must understand what you want to achieve, what you stand for, and the behaviors that are acceptable and unacceptable. You must commit your leadership philosophy to paper, publish it, and discuss it to enable each member to operate independently to achieve the shared goals.
   
   
2. Plan and prepare (rehearse) for the future. Ask: "What is the worst thing that could happen? Generate contingencies and rank-order them based on odds of occurrence and potential impact. Then generate an action plan for each contingency, spelling out the responsibilities of others. Once each action plan is developed, ask people to critique the plan and make recommendations for improvements—until everyone is confident that the plan is solid. Then, assign specific tasks to members, and rehearse the plan until everyone knows exactly what they are supposed to do and how to do it. Conduct "fire drills" until they can be done with maximum effect and minimum confusion and supervision.
   
   
3. Develop other leaders. Crisis leadership requires member autonomy and the ability to react to an evolving situation with minimum guidance or on-the-spot supervision. To develop people to act with autonomy, practice delegation and participation in decision-making.
   
   
   1. Learning to delegate. Effective delegation is empowerment—giving another person the responsibility and requisite authority to complete an assignment. Responsibility without authority is dumping, not delegating. To delegate effectively, you must communicate your intent, the purpose of the task, limits of methods to be employed, and criteria for success. Focus on results. Often, people will achieve, even exceed, desired results when given freedom for deciding the tasks. Properly motivated, people will determine the details, apply themselves energetically, and produce desired results.
      
      
   2. Improving decision-making. When making decisions, effective leaders take their responsibility seriously, get necessary buy-in, and monitor implementation. When you increase participation, you increase cost; however, as participation increases, so does development. As people are included in decision-making, their skills, knowledge, and expertise are enhanced. Their desire to work together and their feelings of being valued also increase. When people participate in decision-making, they are more likely to act independently.

You can't know when a crisis will strike, but you increase the odds of weathering the storm by planning and rehearsing for contingencies, and developing people to act independently and successfully without close supervision.