Confucius tells us that “Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.”
Crisis is the shadow that follows every bold decision and for many leaders, fear of that shadow shapes everything they do. But what if that fear wasn’t just unnecessary, but actively holding your organization back from being faster, bolder, and more resilient?
Why Leaders Fear Crisis
Fear is a concern, rational or not, about your wellbeing. In this context, it is a concern about your personal reputation or the reputation of your organization. You may fear bad press, a disgruntled customer’s social media remark about your business going viral, employee discontent or the unknown.
But what if I told you you could lead your organization without being driven by fear? You’d show up with greater authenticity, confidence, and speed — knowing your team is prepared and your risks are understood well before they become threats. Crisis comes with risk, yes. But so does growth.
What would it look like if you gave in to the fear of crisis?
You certainly wouldn’t do anything that might be misunderstood or controversial – you’d probably say all the “right things.” And you could maybe prevent a crisis from landing on your doorstep because you never took a chance. That’s hardly realistic. We want and need to take risks in business.
Taking Risks And Feeling Safe
Is it possible to have both — to take risks and feel safe? It is. You just need to feel prepared. Perhaps a better way to put it is, you need to feel confident you can face a crisis.
We’re not talking about false confidence. An ostrich feels confident when it sticks its head in the sand to avoid a predator. While sticking your head in the sand may sound appealing in the moment, you know that’s not a recipe for success when something goes wrong. Protecting a reputation during times of crisis requires action.
The way you prepare for a crisis is to understand the key elements of readiness before one hits. That is how you will keep your reputation safe.
The Three Key Elements of Crisis Confident Teams
In all of our years of being on the front lines of reputation protection, we’ve learned that every confident team shares three key elements:
- First of all, you need strategic speed, and that’s the ability for you to see what’s coming towards you as early as possible, and then have the capabilities to make you faster when you need to respond as the situation dictates.
- Secondly, clarity. It’s the understanding of who you are as an organization and what you stand for, and who matters most to you. Going deeper, it means understanding intuitively the issues, threats, or risks that are going to knock you off course. And it means understanding what your team can actually realistically accomplish.
- And then lastly, trust. Fear is built around your concern for your safety and is rooted in an absence of trust. You need to have trust in your systems, trust in your procedures, and trust in the people that you rely on that are going to be able to perform and respond in a particular moment.
These basic building blocks are the foundation to erasing your fear of crisis, or better said, for you to feel confident during a crisis: strategic speed, clarity, and trust.
Catching Feels: Facing Crises without Fear
How would it feel if you, as a strategic communicator, and your company did not fear crisis?
You would know, and have confidence in, your team could respond to any number of reputation-impacting situations with necessary strategic speed. You would have clarity and understanding around issues, risks, and threats that could impact you and your team’s ability to respond. And you’d trust the systems and procedures that you’ve put in place.
None of that is going to happen simply by wishful thinking. There’s hard work that’s required to make you faster. It requires deep insight and perspective to find that clarity, and it requires confidence born through the experience of exercises and exposure to make sure that you have that trust. The benefit is leading without fear, and that’s well worth the effort.
Kith facilitates crisis preparedness workshops that will help your company attain the clarity, trust, and strategic speed you need to respond confidently – no dithering! – to any crisis. We’d be happy to have a conversation about how we can help your company be ready to chart an effective course to reputation protection.
Looking for more fresh insights? Crisis of the Month is a no-fluff Substack that breaks down real-world crises and what they teach us about leadership, communication, and damage control. Whether you’re in comms, ops, or just crisis-curious, this is your monthly guide to what went wrong — and how to do it better. Sign up today!
