
Crisis Management
Crisis is defined as a time of severe difficulty or danger, or a time when a difficult or important decision must be made. This is a serious, unexpected, and potentially dangerous situation requiring immediate action.
Crisis often arises from unexpected situations, and may sometimes be very hard to deal with or understand wherein a difficult choice has to be made between alternatives that are equally undesirable.
What to do in times of crises:
- Stay calm.
- Don’t panic.
- Don’t blame others.
- Analyze the crisis.
- Be rational.
- Decide on what action to take.
- Implement your decision.
- Evaluate.
- Talk about the crisis with your staff.
Even if you don’t have a great deal of experiences, you can ensure that you are successful in crisis management and decision-making if you are methodical in your approach.
Do:
- Concentrate.
- Think logically and go through the stages of decision-making.
- Be honest. (Was it your fault?)
- Be positive.
- Be open to criticism.
- Accept problems.
- Be patient.
- Recognize your limits—you may need to pass the problem over to someone else.
- Be open-minded, particularly to other people’s solutions.
- Be willing to learn from the problem.
- Have the courage to try or start again.
- Keep the problem in perspective.
- Have a sense of Humor when it’s been solved.
- Talk to other people about the problem.
- Be confident.
Get off to a good start in communication by explaining why there is a problem and why you have decided to take the action that you have
Don’t:
- Be over-sensitive.
- Take it personally.
- Be over-emotional.
- Be tunnel-visioned; there is always a way out.
- Be negative.
- Blame others.
- Panic.
- Hide or cover up either the Problem or your actions.
- Put off decisions or Procrastinate.
*This article was prepared especially for Saint Matthew’s Publishing Corporation.