The 5 Pillars for the Crisis Response Team

Emergency response teams are in operation all over the globe. Some organizations have seasoned experts, some have much less experience. Your crisis response structure may span dozens of people or a small group. No matter your scale or situation, this article outlines the 5 pillars supporting an effective response team.

Bring out the best and defeat chaos

In the face of Covid-19, emergency response teams are in operation all over the globe. Some organizations are seasoned experts, some have much less experience with a full-bore crisis.

Your crisis response structure may be so large that it is running 24/7 and spanning dozens of people across the main central team and crisis response clusters (sub-teams with a distinct focus and responsibility). Or you may have a group of four people in a smaller organization, each taking on a part of the work. You may be physically together working in a control room or connecting virtually.

No matter your scale or situation, this article outlines the 5 pillars supporting an effective response team:

· The Big Black Chair

· Hyper-clarity

· Impeccable Communications

· Address Tension and Conflict

· Establish Confidence

1. You need a Big Black Chair

What is the Big Black Chair? It’s the leadership role that sits, day-in day-out, at the centre of the overall team. All eyes and ears are on that position. It’s the conductor. It mobilizes and coordinates. It’s the role model. But if it’s you in that chair, you are not a lone wolf. While you are adamant about adhering to the 5 pillars and insisting on performance, this unwavering position does not create a dictatorship … very much the opposite. You are there to create a coordinated space of creativity, influence, and action for your experts — your team. You’ve surrounded yourself with strong skills in different domains and now your job is release them to mobilize their capabilities.

Tone rules. Your tone and body language sets the context — be unflappable and remove all panic from the environment. The strongest context in the room wins and it’s where your people will go. Your context and invitation to the team is simple — controlled urgency: stay focused, bring your best, bring your imagination, speak up, work and win this together. Move with unrelenting pace. Sprint if necessary but never flailing or in panic.

Response and action cannot be informed by emotion but this certainly does not mean the absence of compassion and humanity. Signs of empathy in leadership, being moved by the heavy circumstances of the day, is a strength as your crisis response likely holds the security, protection of and care for people its core. Break downs in the team’s effectiveness will occur when emotions trigger a loss of competence — panic, inability to communicate, paralysis, or aimless venting and anger. So, take care of your response team and yourself — as all of you take care of others. Find times and places for everyone to breathe and to think of themselves and their loved ones — and then return to focus.

2. Hyper-clarity on your stand and priorities

Take a stand. Full, strong and easy to understand. “We stand for …” ; the north star on which everyone can navigate. It places a frame right in front of your team to guide their recommendations, decisions and actions. Stands will not shift.

However, crisis is often a trek into the unknown and quick, coordinated flexibility is critical. There is no place for ego or saving face regarding previous priorities, actions or decisions. Priorities may shift. Actions may be redirected. Decisions may be reconsidered. During the course of the response, it is crucial that if any of these changes happen that they are communicated loudly and clearly:

“We are now … “

“Previously, we were … “

“This is because … “

And then explicitly check for understanding.

Also, highlight things that are not the primary priorities in the crisis that may habitually be a high priority in normal times. For example, a high priority in normal times is money; so, it is crucial to tell the team, if applicable, to release itself from the normal treatment of spending considerations, so that people are not self-regulating against a constraint that should not hinder their solution development.

Free the imaginations of your team with clarity on how decisions will be made: what level of authority they have, what must be escalated and how the escalation process works. When teams are invited to bring their most talented voices to imagine and deliver solutions within a well-understood structure, then the conditions for a high-powered response are set.

3. Impeccable Communications

There is no room for confusion or varying interpretations. Impeccability in words, instructions, status and commitments is critical. The need for clarity is at its most essential when requesting and making commitments.

Every commitment must include a specific description, a specific time and, if needed, clear expectations of support from others. Every request for a commitment must evoke of one of two answers from the person being asked to make the commitment:

Yes: The specific deliverable will occur at a specific time.

-or-

Alternative: Offer a variance on the request but one that still achieves an understood deliverable at a specific time. That alternative offer could be, “I will report back on that request in 30 minutes.” The requestor may ask for an adjustment to your alternative, and so on … but something firm will land.

Commitments are owned by one person. The one who accepted the commitment. That person is solely responsible for reporting on its status, achievement or, most importantly, to clearly inform anyone who needs to know as soon as the commitment is at risk. Reporting a commitment at risk is one of the hardest practices to enforce, as team members do not want to be seen as struggling or letting down the side. The Big Black Chair is responsible to create an environment where reality is readily spoken. Only then can assistance be launched to firm up the deliverable.

Honesty is crucial. Bust down any wall that has people seeking to protect themselves or ‘look good’ by hiding what is real. Questions are gold. Remove any hesitation to ask questions. Make transparency and full understanding an absolute and make every team member responsible to deliver and achieve clarity.

4. Address tension & conflict

The Big Black Chair establishes the context and environment for skilled people to bring their magic. From a crystal-clear stand, ensure that the conditions exist to foster creativity and action from that creativity. Make fluid information sharing and the interaction between team members to permit maximally-informed decision-making.

To allow this to happen, the presence of underlying tension and conflict must be accepted as reality. To succeed in this truth:

· Understand that the crisis likely has a personal dimension for each of your people, directly affecting their lives. Or they may simply feel overwhelmed by the circumstances. Watch the dynamic in the room, understand your people and provide opportunities and assistance to cope. While the natural emotions brought by the situation cannot be allowed to overtake the competence of the response team, humanity and compassion should be openly welcomed and shared.

· This is a time for the adage, “Praise in public, criticize in private”. Keeping the voices in the team open and free is key, and this specifically means avoiding any emotional targeting of individuals. The Big Black Chair must consistently model how the team will interact to keep things forward-focused. Feel free to be direct on whatever principle you are asserting, just keep the language objective, team-oriented and in service to achieving your stand.

· In crisis, there is no time to reflect on wishes, ‘who’s-to-blame’, recriminations, or ‘if-onlys’. Looking back to hunt for why things are what they are is only permitted to teach and only if it serves a better crisis response now. After-Action Reviews or Post-Mortems are there to keep the unneeded past out of the room.

· Consider conflicts, properly handled, to be an opportunity for valuable and diverse contributions to the crisis response. They raise alternative viewpoints and reinforce the presence of each person’s strongest voice. The role of the Big Black Chair is to make sure these discussions happen without the emotion that leads to a loss of competence in the team. Intimidation, bullying or any power imbalances must be removed from the space so that all team members trust that achieving the stand for the response has absolute priority over ego, hierarchy and position.

5. Call out confidence & progress

The greatest call of confidence is to express your trust in the team and to issue a universal invitation to:

Challenge conventions.

Create possibility.

Expose creativity that was previously unseen.

Speak and influence.

While being realistic and sincere: shout out the winning stories and map the points of progress. Find opportunities to publicly and deeply appreciate each team member — it could be an achievement, how they help the team hang together, resilience while facing difficulties in their own life, how they are a champion for making the stand come to life — whatever authentically keeps your people moving together.

Bring the strongest context to the room. Serve the stand and your team. Own the Big Black Chair.