How Well Does Your Team Function in a Crisis?
People are understandably abuzz due to the rare earthquake which struck the Eastern US yesterday, shaking things up from Georgia all the way to Canada. If you’re like me, you were suddenly inundated with calls, texts and Facebook status updates; here in New York City, people generally freaked out for a few moments.
Was this a true crisis? While the affects were fortunately minimal, it still caused a disruption of business operations, so yes, it could be considered such. How you and your team react to emergencies & crises is important to know in advance; it also says a lot about how you operate under normal work conditions.
If your office was directly affected yesterday, when the earthquake hit, did your team members:
- Stay cool and collected, or run screaming out of the building?
- Communicate their status to you, or wait until you contacted them?
- Take a head count, or instantly pull out phones to call loved ones?
- Get back to work immediately, or use the disruption as an excuse to goof off?
- Scan news Websites for information, or open social media sites to post updates?
- Return to the office, or leave for the day?
- Continue working on fixed deadlines, or request extensions?
- Notify clients of the disruption, or wait until they called you?
No manager can truly predict how employees will react in a crisis. However, “mini emergencies” such as the one we faced yesterday are a good test run for learning how way staff will behave when something more dire happens.
What else did you notice about how your team handled yesterday’s crisis? As a leader, how did you react? What were you especially proud of, and what would you have done differently?