• Man up your emotions
The last thing you’d want to do when faced with a crisis is to succumb to the situation. Being a leader comes with a ton of responsibilities and one of which is to take charge of any situation that comes up.
As a matter of fact, you must control your emotions. If you’re able to compose yourself in the face of this crisis, you’ll be able to process what’s happening and how best to control it. This means, always take a deep breath and think about it first.
Sometimes, it may be quite difficult to man up due to the gravity or complexity of the crisis. Then you may need to put a call through to a trusted friend who isn’t caught up in this crisis but have tangible experience in what you do. Such a person should be able to provide you with some objective and tangible guidance as to tackling the crisis.
• Chart up a way forward
The next thing you need to do now is to carefully look at the situation, check the options, then create an action plan. The action plan doesn’t have to be a perfect one as it’s not even expected as this point but an essential brick to stop the wall from collapsing.
The plan is just an interim one, which will buy you more time to design a sustainable solution to the crisis. The focus here should be about getting things done, things that will produce needed results in the meantime.
• Attack the crisis
Without wasting any time again, you should attack the crisis head-on with optimism. You also need to have some indicators in place to check if everything is going as thought out or if there are things you aren’t doing right. You also want to be focused for there may be some early confusion, overlaps and redundancies. Be intentional about the bigger thing you’re trying to get rid of by overlooking some minor concerns that might come up.
Once you achieve a positive milestone as regards the crisis management, inform your colleagues and celebrate it. This boosts their confidences as they see themselves as an integral part of your plan. If the going isn’t smooth as well, endeavor to inform them as transparency strengthens the team more than anything.
Leadership isn’t just by leading a team on project execution, it’s more than that. Expectation of the unexpected is another thing a great leader must always anticipate. When the crisis surfaces, don’t panic, rather stay focused, be intentional and attack the crisis without looking back.
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