Supervisory Leadership

You're the leader. When crisis hits, your people look to you for guidance. You need to stay calm and, fortunately, we know how you can. There are three keys to staying calm in a crisis.

Preparation prevents panic. Research on people in crisis situations tells us that the ones who stay calm are the ones who concentrate on what they need to do, not on what's going to happen to them.

It's simple logic that you can't concentrate on what to do if you don't know what to do. And, it's simple physiology that makes it almost impossible for you to do any decent planning when crisis hits.

So plan ahead. For some guidelines on how to do that effectively, check out the Supervisory Leadership Tip on Critical Incidents.

Count on staying calm. Remember when your mother told you, "if you're angry, count to ten before you say or do anything?" It was good advice on anger management and it's also good advice when crisis hits.

As it happens, your brain has two hemispheres. One of them handles stuff like imagination and emotion. The other handles logical things. In a crisis, you want the logical side in control, so you're concentrating on what needs to be done and not speculating on what awful things can happen

If you give your brain a logical or linear task, like counting, it gets assigned to the half of your brain that handles those tasks. Counting or running down a checklist automatically unhooks some of your emotion. So count, use the checklist you prepared, tick off a list of things to be done.

Breathe deeply. These should be diaphragmatic breaths. In a crisis, your brain needs lots of oxygenated blood. Deep breaths get more of that oxygen into your bloodstream and slow you down, too. And if you count the breaths you get a double benefit.

That's the three keys to staying calm in a crisis of any kind.
Preparation prevents panic.
Count or review a list to stay calm.
Breathe deeply.

Helpful Book on this Topic

Psycheresponse: Psychological Skills for Optimal Performance by Emergency Responders by Michael J. Asken

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