Leading Effectively e-Newsletter - January 2008 Issue

Crisis Leadership: Making a Difference When Disaster Strikes
Crisis: Lessons from the Frontlines

For residents of the Gulf Coast, hurricane season is a normal part of life. For many of the area's leaders, disaster planning is part of the job. But when Hurricane Katrina hit Mississippi and Louisiana on August 29, 2005, it called into question much of the conventional wisdom about disaster relief and recovery. Apart from the need for better planning and logistics, the storm and its aftermath made clear the need for effective leadership throughout communities and organizations.

The Center for Creative Leadership works to understand leadership and help people and organizations develop enhanced leadership capabilities. When the Katrina crisis unfolded, the people at the Center, like many others around the world, wanted to help. In particular, we wondered if we could help shed light on the leadership issues of what was widely characterized as a crisis of leadership. While few crises may match the scope and scale of the devastation wrought by Katrina, we asked what we could learn from this exceptional occurrence about the nature of crisis and the kind of leadership needed.

This interest took shape as a two-day learning event held at CCL's Greensboro campus, "Crisis Leadership: Lessons from the Frontlines." The forum participants included ten "frontline" leaders, including a Coast Guard captain, a bank vice president, an American Red Cross official, a public health nurse from New York and a community leader in rural Louisiana. These individuals were joined by a dozen discussants from CCL and other organizations who offered their perspectives on crisis and leadership.

From their stories, we sought to better understand the experience of leading in crisis and to gain insight into the capabilities that are required. How is crisis leadership different from "routine" leadership in complex times and unknown circumstances? How can we better equip people, organizations and communities for the leadership demands that they will face if crisis hits? For CCL faculty, the event stimulated thinking about crisis preparation as a component of leadership development and capacity building in organizations and communities.

An unexpected result was that the experience was deeply valuable for the participants, too, many of whom, still immersed in relief work, had not yet had the opportunity to reflect, make sense of what had happened and share their learning with others.

For individuals in businesses, communities and organizations, we offer this newsletter (and related resources [add link]) as a starting point for discussion and new ways of thinking about crisis response. By expanding your view of crisis response to include leadership development, you will be taking a first step toward being a more effective leader in times of crisis.

The "Crisis Leadership: Lessons from the Frontlines" forum was made possible by a gift from the Marrow family.