Speaker 1: Welcome to Crisis Management, Understanding the Three Stages of Crisis Management. This is part of our eBit series. Our eBit series are tidbits of eLearning information that allows you to gain insighted knowledge to help further your decisions. You can also look for our eWebinars, which are 60-90 minutes long, and our eWorkshops, which are one day to multiple days of training. Let's move forward. Let's talk about the crisis. There are many scenarios that can cause a crisis. Many that may be caused within your industry, community-related, financial crisis in your business, employee-caused crisis, whether they took actions or maybe you've lost key employees or you just need more employees, customer-focused crisis, and that could be one customer or several customers that the situation causes a crisis that you need to handle. And there are others. Obviously, this is being recorded at the time of the COVID crisis. So you can see that many crises aren't always caused by the industry or the business itself. Crises can come out of the blue. So what do we do? What happens when a crisis hits? Well, hopefully we're prepared. We call this preparedness. Think about it. What have you done in your business and in your industry to be prepared? Have you taken steps? And how do you take steps? Like we said, many times a crisis will hit that wasn't caused by anything that you did. COVID is one of those great examples. How can you be prepared? How can you make it through? How can you teamwork together and fight through it, battle through it, and succeed from it? Actually, our reaction is based on whether we're prepared or not. Panic happens to those that are ill-prepared. Calm can happen to those that are better prepared for it. But it doesn't mean that it doesn't cause stress. But how to work through that, they are more prepared. That's what brings resolve. My people are prepared. I believe that they are. We've worked on this. We have things in place that will have decisions made. We have great problem solvers. Those are some good things that bring good resolve. But then there's also caution. What do I do with my business? Do I make drastic changes or small changes? How do I measure what's going on? How do I evaluate our systems and our processes that are occurring and whether they're right for our crisis or there might be some adjustments as well? Obviously, some of our preparedness, it gives us where we're shaky and we're uncertain. And that's where we do not want to be. It sounds so simple. And in some ways, when we talk about the three stages of a crisis, it is very simple. There's the before stage, what we call pre-crisis. There's the during stage, what we call the crisis has landed. And then we call the after, meaning post-crisis. When we talk about crisis management, obviously, the more that you can do in stage one that you prepare is the best. But here's the trick. You don't always expect or know or assume that a crisis is going to happen. But the smart organizations prepare. Stage two, the during crisis, the ones that are prepared doesn't mean that they have total success or they don't have things that affect their business, but they have a way to work through it and the people to work through it. Those that were caught by surprise and their people weren't prepared are the ones that struggle even to survive. And in stage three, is it we wipe our forehead and we say we got through it and everything goes back to normal? Or did we realize that we need to make changes and become stronger from what we've learned? So stage one, top organizations and leaders work hard during the before stage. One of the things early in my career is I was a turnaround specialist. I would be sent into struggling locations or businesses that I would have to define and then put a solution in place to help turn them around. Obviously, I realized that I had to do this through people. So I would quickly assess the leadership team and I would teach them how I problem solve the first thing and then how I make decisions because I do have a set process on how do I think about a problem or decision? How do I make decisions and what do they have to adhere to? After I do that, then I would encourage them to seek other ways as well. But I wanted each of them to have set ways in which they solve problems and make decisions. But it was also important for them to understand my mindset. This is why it's important as a leader to teach their leadership staff how to problem solve and make decisions and then empower them to do that. So then when they would make decisions, then coach them, ask about, tell me about your thought process that brought this decision. And even it's a good time to say, here's what I might have done differently. So they still continue to know your mindset and they're always improving. The next thing in stage one is to create a first team environment. Anyone who hire, if you're taking over a location, speak to it on day one. A first team environment comes from the book, Five Dysfunctions of a Team. But it's where you build a team that no one talks behind each other's back. You welcome difference of opinions done professionally and everyone owns the decisions moving forward. That's called a first team environment. And in fact, if someone comes to speak to, let's say myself about someone else that they're going to complain, I tell them that they need to go have that discussion with that person. And that's a first team discussion. So it really creates that it's okay to be vulnerable. And if I tell someone I need to have a first team discussion with them, it means that I need to bring an issue with them. And we work through it for the better of the organization. Next is we instill good habits. Obviously, good habits are the best ways to help bring good results. And when something's a habit, it becomes natural. It's hard to do something all of a sudden because you have to, because things change. This is why habits are important. I recommend the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, which is a great book from Stephen Covey. And these are good habits to instill, to explain to everybody, because it's habits such as be proactive, but first things first, start with the end in mind, seek first to understand, take win-win, synergize, and sharpen the saw. All great habits, but they're not just words. Explain how those habits take effect in your industry and in your business. Teach them and then coach them daily. And then finally, you need to have a morale and a value and principle system that people take initiative and expect accountability. You can see, we already talked about that when we want them to be problem solvers and decision makers, that then if they take initiative and accept accountability for their decisions, or they put forth how they were going to solve a problem, they learn and they grow. And it becomes natural. I would tell everybody, if you can build problem solvers all around you, how much easier does that make your job? But this is stage one. Whether you know a crisis is coming or not, it is very good for business. Stage two brings an opportunity to measure. So when stage two happens, it's when the crisis is there. So you need to measure the leadership team execution. How are they executing the team and each individual? You may define a leader that is lacking in skills that you need to take note and coach to it, and you might find a leader that this doesn't belong on the team. And that is very important to define at these times. But you also need to measure individual leader execution, as mentioned. Their capabilities need to be evaluated. Observe future leaders on the staff. I would always tell people, you don't have to be in management to be a leader. So who else is stepping up? Who else is stepping forward that you should take note of that maybe needs to be on the leadership team? Or you take note that with a little more development, it can be. Coach and measure both leadership staff and the regular staff. Take notes, evaluate. Also take notes and evaluate your systems and processes. They may have worked great or okay when everything was fine, but how is execution moving forward now that you're in the crisis? And then identify what next steps. Well, what I identified is the systems and processes need these changes. I might need to trim this person off my leadership team, but I do see that I have two or three other potential leaders. Is there one I can move up now? Or what do I need to do as far as development plans for everybody? What can I add to the development and what has become priorities? This is stage two. And then stage three, it's not time to be still and say, well, we made it through. Let's get back to normal. You need to be ready with a plan. That's why you evaluate it in stage two. That's why you did assessments of what should be added to someone's development plan. That's what's become more priority, where each personnel should be, whether they should be on the leadership team or whether they're still on the leadership team, but really needs more development. But you need to make what moves you need to make all from stage two of your planning. Staff changes, team changes. You need to set goals and objectives with each individual and with the whole team, saying we're out of this now, but here's our goals and objectives. And here are some milestones that show that we're making progress because we want to take us to new heights in everyone's development and in the execution within our organization. You educate the whole team on the plan and you implement systems and processes, adjustments for the betterment, and then you pick a time on how you evaluate as you're moving forward, usually within the first 90 days. That way you make other fine-tuned adjustments and your team just gets better. Keys to leadership. Well, it's very important that as a leader going through the crisis, they make themselves very visible, very transparent. They instill calm and confidence, even when maybe it's not a good day, but we're going to get through this and here's what we're going to do. And they over-communicate. So whatever little decisions you've made, changes you're going, or things that you just want to instill in everyone, because it's important that as a leader, you define a vision and you communicate it over and over. And then they point to milestone victories because everybody needs to see that they're making progress. They demonstrate decisiveness. This is how people, they follow you because you're a leader and it's important that you can't hide away from decisions. You know, in crisis management, be quick with facts and slow with the blame. This is a great quote from Leonard Safir, public relations executive. And we thank you for being a part of this. And remember, work on the three steps, but start on stage one. You're in the middle of a crisis right now. If you're listening to this, then stage two, start evaluating, taking notes and making assessments because get ready to make changes as you come through. We want to thank you for attending. If you'd like to email, our email is mark at markvillareal.com. If you have questions about additional courses, you can send that to contact at markvillareal.com. My website is markvillareal.com, my phone number is listed there. And please subscribe to our YouTube, which this will be posted. 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