A crisis unfolds in stages, and the first casualty of a crisis is trust. From start to finish, there are five things a leader can remember that can help them navigate through the storm and rebuild trust. Pin them to your bathroom mirror, or slide them into your planner:
- Make decisions for the long term. Crises present a myriad of temptations to give in to short term thinking. Keep your eyes on the horizon.
- Recognize there is little margin for error. When trust has been broken, realize that you are living on borrowed time and cannot afford for trust to be broken again.
- Spin kills. You cannot solve a substantive problem with cosmetic rhetoric. Minimizing the problem, obfuscating, or spinning will further erode trust.
- Follow through on everything. Trust is reestablished by reestablishing consistency, and actions speak louder than words. Only promise what you are certain you can deliver. Period.
- Don’t expect to feel like a hero. Crisis does not feel good. The situation will likely have all the drama of a Hollywood movie (at least for you and your team), but don’t expect it to include the epic soundtrack.
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