Posted: July 14th, 2022

Crisis Leadership Phases and Challenges

Crisis Leadership Phases and Challenges

From the leadership view, being alert on the signs of crisis is important. Leaders must be able to detect organizational crisis, and being able to react timely and appropriately.

James (2005, 2011) defines two primary types of organizational crisis. James defines organizational crisis as “any emotionally charged situation that, once it becomes public, invites negative stakeholder reaction and thereby has the potential to threaten the financial well-being, reputation, or survival of the firm or some portion thereof.”

These two types of crisis include a sudden crisis and smoldering crises. Sudden crises are circumstances that occur without warning and beyond an institution’s control. Smoldering crises differ from sudden crises in that they begin as minor internal issues that leaders can control and detect due to manager’s negligence, develop to crisis status. James categorizes five phases of crisis that require specific crisis leadership competencies:

Signal detection
Preparation and prevention
Containment and damage control
Business recovery
Learning
Each phase contains an obstacle that a leader must overcome to improve the structure and operations of an organization.

Answer the following:

Discuss the two types of organization crisis that leaders face? What are some examples based on your experience?
Describe the crisis phases and the challenges for a leader to be successful.
Describe some of the top leadership characteristics needed to cope with a crisis. Give at least one example of good crisis leader and one example of a poor crisis leader.
Assignment Expectations
Length: This Case Assignment should be at least 3–5 pages, not counting the title page and references.

References: At least two references should be included from academic sources (e.g., peer-reviewed journal articles). Required readings are included. Quoted material should not exceed 10% of the total paper (since the focus of these assignments is critical thinking). Use your own words and build on the ideas of others. When material is copied verbatim from external sources, it MUST be enclosed in quotes. The references should be cited within the text and also listed at the end of the assignment in the References section (preferably in APA format).

Organization: Subheadings should be used to organize your paper according to question.

Grammar and Spelling: While no points are deducted for minor errors, assignments are expected to adhere to standards guidelines of grammar, spelling, punctuation, and sentence syntax. Points may be deducted if grammar and spelling impact clarity.

The following items will be assessed in particular:

Relevance—all content is connected to the question.
Precision—specific question is addressed. Statements, facts, and statistics are specific and accurate.
Depth of discussion—points that lead to deeper issues are presented and integrated.
Breadth—multiple perspectives and references, multiple issues and factors considered.
Evidence—points are well supported with facts, statistics, and references.
Logic—presented discussion makes sense; conclusions are logically supported by premises, statements, or factual information.
Clarity—writing is concise, understandable, and contains sufficient detail or examples.
Objectivity—use of first person and subjective bias is avoided.

REFERENCES

Harris, R. (2011, Jul 5). What went wrong in Fukushima: The human factor NPR News, Retrieved from: http://www.npr.org/2011/07/05/137611026/what-went-wrong-in-fukushima-the-human-factor

James, E., and Wooten, L. (2005). Leadership as (un)usual: How to display competence in times of crisis, Organizational Dynamics, 34(2). Retrieved from http://positiveorgs.bus.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/Competence-in-Crisis-Wooten.pdf

Hayashi, C. & Soo, A. (2012). Adaptive leadership in times of crisis. Prism: A Journal for the Center for Complex Operations, 4(1), 79-86. Available in the Trident Online Library.

Strickland, Eliza (2011, Mar 16), Explainer: What went wrong in Japan’s nuclearreactors IEEE Spectrum, Retrieved from: http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/energy/nuclear/explainer-what-went-wrong-in-japans-nuclear-reactors

Required Websites
FEMA, Program Management: http://www.ready.gov/program-management

FEMA, Business Impact Analysis: http://www.ready.gov/business-impact-analysis

Recommended Website
FEMA: http://www.fema.gov
Homeland Security

Students Name
Institutional Affiliation

An organizational crisis can occur without being anticipated. The crisis can happen at the worst possible time. No one anticipates failure, however, it is imperative to prepare before the crisis occurs. Examples of organizational crises include technological and natural crises. These two types of crisis can occur all of a sudden or at a smoldering pace. Some crisis occurs beyond institutions’ control. Sudden crises are unexpected where the organization has limited fault or responsibility. For instance, the Fukushima nuclear power plant counts as a natural crisis when the plant was hit by a 40-foot tsunami (Harris,2011). The tsunami had destroyed the diesel up system by knocking out the reactors. The reactors were further destroyed by the following earthquake and tsunami. The crisis presented both sudden and smoldering challenges.
Smoldering crises occur as the fault of a firm’s leadership. The crisis begins with minor internal issues that leaders can control. However, lack of proper management causes the situation to develop into a crisis. In the Fukushima crisis, the crisis team went out to scavenge for batteries for wiring. The wired batteries were directed to the instrumentation to determine the water level in the cores. Regardless of the efforts, they failed to get the situation under control. According to (Strickland and Eliza,2012), the plant operators could have conducted successful operations if they had better training or guidance. The cultural stumbling blocks prevented the operators from acting decisively.
The Japanese culture of decision-making process favors group decisions over personal decisions. The Fukushima crisis required prompt decisions. Therefore; making group decisions was more difficult in this situation. For instance, one of the critical decisions was whether to cool the reactors by pumping water into them. Pumping seawater into the reactors would have prevented the meltdowns. The engineers hesitated for some hours before executing the strategy.
Such a decision could have been made and executed upfront. Injecting the seawater into the reactors could have prevented the damage of the fuel/The severity of the accident could have been prevented.
Business leaders can adopt new and better ways to deal with the crisis at hand. Identifying the five phases of a crisis is one of the ways to provide some insight into effective leadership. The crisis that occurs does not necessarily threaten an organization. A well managed smoldering crisis will have less impact as compared to a poorly managed crisis. The first phase is t identify the signal direction. Smoldering crises often leave a trail of red flags. However, these signals are often unheeded by other people. Therefore, ignoring red flags causes leaders to slack on creating ego defense mechanisms. Failure to identify reflags causes a lack of proper preparation and planning. Managers cannot prevent all crises but with realistic planning, they can prevent future crises and manages the unavoidable circumstances.
The third phase is damage control that limits the impact of the crisis on the reputation and finances of the organization. The fourth step is business recovery where business affairs can still run smoothly regardless of the disruptions. During this stage, crisis leaders consider both short and long-term reverie efforts. The resolution must shift the organization to new paradigms that enable the organization to stay in business. The last step is learning where crisis leaders can dissect the crisis and the information involved. Research shows that most leaders adopt reactive and defensive approaches that prevent learning. Adopting effective learning approaches is an influential process that guarantees successful results. Understanding the underlying factors that contribute to the crisis is the best method to lean for the situation.
The most important leadership characteristics required to cope with a crisis is courage. Being courageous in the face of crisis enables the leaders to apply meticulous actions to solve the problems at hand. A crisis can impose ambiguity and impending outcome. Many managers try to solve the issues by applying conservative solutions. A courageous leader will apply solutions that shift the paradigm of the organization (Hayashi and Soo,2012). The solutions will be strategic to protect the company from future impediments that may be caused by the crisis. A courageous leader will act big yet responsibly. Courageous behavior goes above and beyond what the situation mandates. Courageous leaders approach a situation like it’s an opportunity as opposed to a challenge. Such leaders will turn the crisis into a learning opportunity. Learning the crisis prevents future reactive and defensive approaches when dealing with situations. Leveraging these insights enables the leaders to apply the finding in the business discovery phase.
Leaders who lack courage become crisis managers. Crisis managers adopt reactive measures that do not serve the organization long term. Crisis leaders create long-term solutions that result in containment that ends the crisis and creates a vision for a better organization (James and Wooten,2005). Learning and creating proofed strategies enables the organization to prepare and manage the unavoidable crisis. By using past results, the crisis leaders can have backed up data for signal detection. Effective signal detection prevents ego defensive mechanisms thus enabling the leaders to preserve their image. Therefore; competent leaders take full control of the crisis by implementing radical solutions that preserve the company long term.

References

Harris, R. (2011, Jul 5). What went wrong in Fukushima: The human factor NPR News, Retrieved from: http://www.npr.org/2011/07/05/137611026/what-went-wrong-in-fukushima-the-human-factor
James, E., and Wooten, L. (2005). Leadership as (un)usual: How to display competence in times of crisis, Organizational Dynamics, 34(2). Retrieved from http://positiveorgs.bus.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/Competence-in-Crisis-Wooten.pdf
Hayashi, C. & Soo, A. (2012). Adaptive leadership in times of crisis. Prism: A Journal for the Center for Complex Operations, 4(1), 79-86. Available in the Trident Online Library.
Strickland, Eliza (2011, Mar 16), Explainer: What went wrong in Japan’s nuclear reactors IEEE Spectrum, Retrieved from http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/energy/nuclear/explainer-what-went-wrong-in-japans-nuclear-reactors

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