Overview

When the Ground Shifts Under Your Feet

The thing about crisis is that it doesn‘t announce itself the way you expect. You‘re in a meeting, or reviewing a plan, or halfway through your morning coffee, and the ground shifts. Communications go down. The plan you built last week is suddenly irrelevant. People are looking at you.

What I learned—in Baghdad when the Green Zone came under mortar fire, in Somalia during constitutional negotiations that could have collapsed at any moment—is that your team isn‘t watching to see if you have the answer. They‘re watching to see if you‘re steady. If you can hold direction when everything around you is moving. If you can be honest about what you don‘t know without falling apart.

That‘s the core of crisis leadership. Not having all the answers. Creating clarity and psychological safety in the chaos, so that your team can think clearly enough to find the answers with you.

Preparation

The Three Phases: Prepare, Respond, Recover

Phase 1: Prepare (Before the Crisis)

Most leaders skip this. Crisis feels like something that happens to you, not something you can prepare for.

But you can. Not by predicting the exact crisis. By building your team‘s ability to handle uncertainty.

Psychological safety is the foundation. If your people are terrified of saying something wrong or making a mistake, they‘ll freeze when crisis hits. If they trust you and trust each other, they‘ll think clearly and move fast.

Build this before crisis through: telling your team what you don‘t know, admitting mistakes, asking for input, being honest about uncertainty. Show them that you‘re comfortable in ambiguity.

Also, scenario-plan. Not obsessively, but genuinely. What could disrupt our business? What would we do if that happened? This isn‘t about solving it in advance. It‘s about your team having thought about the category of problem so it‘s not completely foreign when it occurs.

Do a pre-mortem: imagine it‘s two years from now and we failed. What happened? This reveals your hidden vulnerabilities.

Response

Phase 2: Respond (During the Crisis)

This is where the FOG Filter becomes essential. Frame the situation honestly—what‘s unfolding, stripped of panic and spin. Orient around what you know, what you don‘t know, and what you need to learn. Gauge your options against the FILTER criteria: Is this a moment where speed matters more than perfection? Where inaction is worse than an imperfect decision? Where the decision is reversible and you can learn from it?

Here‘s what your people need: What‘s taking place? What are we going to do about it? What do I need to do? What‘s the timeline? When will you tell us more?

They don‘t need optimism. They don‘t need false reassurance. They need clarity and honesty, even if the honesty is “I don‘t know yet.“

Your communication rhythms change in crisis. Instead of monthly all-hands, you‘re communicating daily or more. People need to hear from leadership regularly or they fill the silence with stories. And the stories are usually worse than the reality.

Here‘s what I learned in conflict zones: people can handle bad news if it‘s clear and if they understand what comes next. They can‘t handle ambiguity.

Recovery

Phase 3: Recover (After the Crisis)

This is where most leaders drop the ball. The crisis ends, they go back to normal operations, and nobody processes what just happened.

That‘s a mistake. Your team just went through something hard. They learned things. They saw what they‘re capable of under pressure. And if you don‘t help them make meaning of that experience, it just becomes trauma.

Create space to reflect: What did we learn? What worked? What didn‘t? How did we show up for each other? What do we want to do differently next time?

This isn‘t therapy. It‘s leadership. You‘re helping your team integrate the experience and move forward stronger.

Also: rest. After a crisis, your people are exhausted. Give them permission to truly rest, not just go back to normal.

Leadership

The Leader‘s Composure: Managing Your Own System

I learned this the hard way: the moment you lose your composure in a crisis, people stop listening to your words and start watching your emotional state. Your anxiety becomes their anxiety. My mentor Julian Hottinger, a Swiss peace mediator I worked with in Somalia, once got stung by a scorpion during a negotiation session. He barely reacted. Kept going. His calm wasn‘t suppression—it was a deep understanding that his emotional state would set the temperature for everyone else in the room.

This doesn‘t mean being a robot. It means knowing your tuning—understanding what triggers you under pressure so you can notice the reaction before it drives your behavior. For me, crisis activates a hunger for control. When things are chaotic, my instinct is to take charge of everything. That impulse has an upside (bringing order to chaos) and a dangerous downside (I stop listening, stop delegating, and try to solve things that aren‘t mine to solve). Knowing that pattern means I can catch it.

You also need sanctuary—a physical or mental space where you can hear yourself think, separate from all your roles. In crisis, you‘re conducting enormous circuits of emotional energy. Humans weren‘t designed for this. You need a place to reset. For me, this means exercise, sleep (as much as possible), and time away from the crisis.

And critically: you need a confidant. Not an ally—an ally has their own stakes in the situation. A confidant is someone outside your professional system where you can say “I‘m terrified“ or “I have no idea if we‘re making the right call“ without it undermining your team‘s confidence or creating a double bind for someone who reports to you.

If you try to be composed alone, you‘ll crack. If you process with your team too much, they lose confidence. The confidant is the release valve.

Culture

Psychological Safety in Crisis

This is where everything hinges. If your people are terrified of making mistakes, they‘ll hide problems instead of surfacing them. If they trust you and trust each other, they‘ll say “I see something“ and you can adjust.

Create psychological safety by: not punishing people for raising concerns, treating mistakes as information (what can we learn?), explicitly inviting people to challenge you, and being willing to adjust course based on what people on the ground are seeing.

Organizations that prioritize psychological safety work through crises cleanly. Organizations where people are afraid to speak up turn into disasters because information stays hidden.

Your people are your best source of information about what‘s working and what isn‘t. You need them to trust you enough to tell you the truth.

Frequently Asked Questions

What‘s the most important thing your team needs from you during a crisis?

Your team watches whether you can hold direction when everything around you is moving. They don‘t need you to have all the answers; they need you to be steady, honest about what you don‘t know, and willing to think clearly under pressure. Your emotional composure sets the temperature for everyone else in the room.

How do you build psychological safety before a crisis even happens?

Tell your team what you don‘t know. Admit mistakes. Ask for input. Be honest about uncertainty. When people see leadership modeling comfort in ambiguity, they‘re more likely to surface problems and think clearly during chaos. Crisis is too late to build safety; you need it embedded in normal operations.

What communication frequency does a team need during crisis?

Daily communication is usually minimum during acute crisis. People fill information vacuums with stories, and the stories are usually worse than reality. Regular updates—morning briefings, all-hands calls, team meetings—tell people you‘re thinking about them, managing the situation, and still in control. Silence creates panic.

How do you manage your own stress while leading others through crisis?

You need sanctuary—physical or mental space where you can think without performing. You also need a confidant outside your professional system where you can say “I‘m terrified” or “I don‘t know if we‘re doing the right thing.” Processing with your team undermines their confidence; processing alone burns you out. A trusted confidant is the release valve.

What happens after the crisis ends?

Don‘t just return to normal. Your team went through something difficult and learned something about themselves. Help them integrate that experience: What worked? What didn‘t? How did we show up for each other? Give them permission to rest. Then move forward stronger. Processing the experience prevents it from becoming just trauma.

How to Lead in a Crisis: A Leader's Guide