What Would You Do in a Crisis? A Lesson for Business Leaders

Imagine the people of Japan and their roller coaster experience of traumas after the triple disaster of earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear radiation.  The scale of the devastation is incredible. Yet, the response of the Japanese people was order and organization. Natural disasters are fortunately uncommon in business. Unless you experienced the horrors of 9-11 when the Muslim terrorists crashed planes into the Twin Towers, you won’t experience natural disasters like Japan.  You will experience crises in business. What would you do in a crisis?

I’ve been following the day-to-day horrors in Japan. What is so amazing to me is the response of the people experiencing the disaster. You don’t read about large scale looting and violence like you did after hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.  You read about people looking for their families so they can be reunited.

Then there are the shelters. Remember reading about the violence in the Super Dome? If that didn’t get your attention, the destruction of the Super Dome by the Katrina survivors was pretty awful.

Contrast that with the Japanese response. In one fishing village, the shelter is in an elementary school with 500 people living there. They have divided into units of about 15 people each. Each group has elected a captain to represent them at a daily meeting where they discuss how to run the shelter in an orderly manner. They made decisions on assigning tasks for keeping the place clean. They did this by creating six divisions to oversee various aspects of day-to-day life from cooking to medical care.

It didn’t start this way.  There was a near riot the second day when food was being distributed and the hungry people at the school stormed the stage. Yet, the Japanese quickly realized that chaos would not work for them in a crisis.  Chaos won’t work in business either.

In a crisis, the first decision you must make is how you are going to respond. Are you going to face the deadline, challenge, or problem calmly or are you going to scream at someone on your team? Either is a choice. I have yet to see when a screaming manager got people more productive. The manager may have gotten people’s attention with a tirade, but it didn’t result in a cohesive group producing their best work. The only thing that screaming does is to produce more stress.

Next you’ve got to get people to help you.  Reaching out to others isn’t a sign of weakness. It’s recognizing the reality that in a crisis a functioning team can get more done than an individual. Clearly ask for what you need so you get the quickest response.

Some people are saying that it’s the Japanese culture that is producing this response. I’m not so sure. I do remember the response of the firemen who rushed into the Towers certainly knowing the dangers involved. There were New Yorkers helping strangers navigate down the seemingly endless stairs in the Towers.

A crisis requires that people make choices. You can choose to destroy and create more chaos or you can choose to be calm and help. It’s your choice whether you become a leader or not.

Maura Schreier-Fleming is a sales strategist and founder of Best@Selling, a sales training and consulting company. She wrote Monday Morning Sales Tips and works with sales professionals who want to sell more and get more business.