Crisis Leadership




Week 6 Blog: Crisis Leadership
Could a company plan for everything that may happen in its day to day life? I believe, not a chance, unless your leadership and management are proactive in creating contingency plans that can determine a path for anything that could happen. And then they better continue to update and review to keep even the new managers and staff up to date on those plans. It is not about leaving something in a file or on a board to collect dust but it is about being prepared with a plan to follow when a crisis occurs (Lussier & Achua, 2016). I bolded and underlined the word ‘anything’ because truly anything could happen in today’s world of terrorism and shootings in schools and businesses. I can remember when people used to make jokes about “going postal” when postal workers were under so much stress that they took it out on their coworkers.
On August 20, 1986 postman Patrick Sherrill  walked into his workplace, shot and killed 14 co-workers and injured 6 more before shooting himself  in the head. This was a stereotype due to several incidents involving postal workers from 1986 to 1993 (scott, 2011). Where was the leadership and crisis planning during those years?
School shootings are happening more than you know or even care to think about. Could leadership do all the planning in the world and still fail to stop even one? Infoplease.com lists from 1996 to 2018 a count of 106 shootings just in an educational institution (n.d.). This was not just the United States but on a global scale and then these were only those that had a lasting cultural impact. Where was the crisis leadership?
Of course I mention some pretty horrific examples of crises that happen and we hear about in the news. There are other crises that can happen on a different scale and even closer to home and work. Abey Francis, MBA Knowledge Base, lists nine types of crisis in organizations starting with natural disasters, industrial accidents, product (or machine) failure, public perception crisis, industrial relations, business management, criminal events, management turnover, and hostile takeover (2019).
Here are stages of crisis in organizations by Abey Francis (2019):
Pre-Crisis Stage
This stage allows a seed to grow because management will ignore or neglect the conditions of the crisis.
Warning Stage
The general response in this stage is either shock, or denial and complacency.
Acute Crisis Stage
The crisis has already started. Actual losses have already started. At this stage it is shown whether the crises’ management staff is well prepared or not.
Clean-up Stage
When the problem passes the warning stage without being solved, then it has struck the company and damage has happened.
Post-Crisis
After the warning, it is where a company finds remedy for the damage caused by the crisis.

I end this blog of crisis leadership with this. If the company wins back the people’s trust, and work is back to normal, then the crisis has officially ended. But has it?


Scott. (September 19, 2011). The origin of the term “Going Postal”. Today I Found Out:Feed Your Brain. Retrieved from www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/09/the-origin-of-the-term-going-postal/

Crime Data. (n.d.). Timeline of worldwide school and mass shootings. Infoplease. Retrieved from https://www.infoplease.com/us/crime/timeline-worldwide-school-and-mass-shootings
Francis, A. (June 19, 2018). Crisis in organizations: Stages and Types. MBA Knowledge Base. Retrieved from https://www.mbaknol.com/organizational-behavior/crisis-in-organizations-stages-and-types/

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