Other CCL Press Fieldbooks

Crisis Leadership

Using Military Lessons, Organizational Experiences, and the Power of Influence to Lessen the Impact of Chaos on the People You Lead

Nothing tests a leader like a crisis. There is an element of the leader’s deepest character that is revealed during highly charged, dramatic events. A crisis can quickly expose a leader’s hidden strengths and core weaknesses. It can show the world if the leader has what it takes to function effectively when the heat is on. Will the leader address the crisis head-on, take those actions needed to fix it, and, if appropriate, take responsibility for the crisis? Will the leader freeze, or worse, claim to be a victim and pass off the responsibility to others? What can and should a leader do to find out what went wrong and to ensure it doesn’t happen again?

Three leadership elements have a tremendous impact on crisis leadership. These elements—communication, clarity of vision and values, and caring relationships—are important to leaders in normal operations, but their importance is magnified during a crisis. By paying attention to these themes, leaders can hope to increase their understanding of practices that handle the human dimension of a crisis. The result is a leader more prepared to contain the crisis, regain control of the situation, ensure the minimum amount of damage is done to the organization, and effectively prevent, defuse, and reduce the duration of these extremely difficult leadership situations.

The anxiety, insecurity, and confusion that a crisis generates are huge challenges for leaders. They must be prepared to provide leadership not only to those in their organization, but also to those in the greater orbit of their influence: clients and customers, the surrounding community, stockholders, suppliers, vendors, local government, concerned organizations, activist groups, and the media. And, of course, leaders must also lead themselves. They must deal with their own emotions and needs a crisis triggers. For some leaders, this may be the biggest challenge of all. (CCL Stock No. 185)

Evaluating the Impact of Leadership Development: A Professional Guide

Scratch the surface of any successful organization and you’ll likely find systems designed to evaluate how well it runs. Commercial and not-for-profit organizations use evaluation processes to weigh options, balance trade-offs, and make better decisions. An evaluation system gives organizations a logical and practical framework for collecting and assimilating information.

Although many professionals do difficult and excellent work in and with organizations to build leadership capacity, tools for supporting the evaluation of leadership development are few and far between. CCL’s experience evaluating leadership development initiatives has given us specific ideas for how that work should be conceived and conducted: that it should be participatory, be integrated with initiative design, and enhance organizational learning.

Ideally, the focus and design of an evaluation are tightly integrated with the design of the initiative itself. When collaborative processes are used to focus the evaluation and to apply the results and evaluation work is integrated into the design and implementation of an initiative, both the initiative and the evaluation are more effective, and organizational learning can result.

That learning gives organizations increased knowledge regarding barriers to and facilitators of organizational change. They learn which processes, structures, areas, or systems can support change, as well as what needs further attention. In addition, roles and responsibilities are further clarified during the evaluation planning process, which also includes strategies for sharing results and lessons across the organization.

Well-designed developmental initiatives link different kinds of learning opportunities and occur over a period of time. They also link individual development to organizational goals in a cycle of assessment, practice, and learning. The results of such initiatives are best measured with an evaluation process that is itself cyclical. Recognizing the cyclical nature of evaluations allows organizations to use them as planning and learning tools that augment the individual and group impact of leadership development. (CCL Stock No. 187)