Tips for Coaching Leaders through a Crisis

By Rob Kjar, Ph.D.,
Senior Managing Consultant, Vaya Group

The story of The Endurance – the explorers’ ship that got stuck in the Antarctic ice in 1915 – is a compelling account of teamwork, resilience, and leadership. As the crew watched their ship get trapped in the ice, then crushed, then sunk, Captain Shackleton set up a camp they named Patience. He set a regular routine to keep the 28 men from losing hope in what certainly must have seemed an impossibly hopeless crisis.  

Steadiness in a crisis defines great leaders.  

During the pandemic, we all saw a master class in leadership. We saw great leaders rise while others got trapped in their own ice floes. Decisions about whether to allow employees to work from home, whether to allow fully remote jobs, and whether to abandon the old corporate office like the ship in the ice – these have become the tests of our time. True leaders, not the ones promoted to title-up their resumes, look to their teams and trust them to tend to the details while confidently pointing the way.   

How can coaches help good leaders be great in trying circumstances? Sometimes, particularly during a crisis phase in the leader’s career, the coach who is best is the one who is there as a steady confidant, thought partner, and proponent. Here are four tips for coaching leaders in a crisis:

1. Instill confidence: Help the leader identify the strengths they have relied on in the past, and to trust their skills and experience 
2. Encourage collaboration: Keep the leader from becoming isolated, and guide them to the technical experts, experienced sages, and front-line customer contacts who can get to root causes and recommendations quickly 
3. Foster trustworthiness: Help the leader open up lines of communication although they may lack complete certainty, and convey conviction to do what they believe is right 
4. Call out the stall: Point out persistent stalling behaviors and analysis paralysis, and encourage decisiveness, action, and boldness 

In the final leg of Shackleton’s escape from the ice floe, he and several of his inner circle found themselves on top of a summit looking down from their snowy perch into the mists that hid from view a whaling camp below. Given his exploring experience, and pressed by a creeping storm, he reasoned that at the bottom of the sheer, snowy drop there would be a smooth slide, and said to his colleagues, “Jump.” They jumped into the unknown, slid a couple of thousand feet to safety, and rescued their stranded crew with no loss of life. Help your leader make their own leap of faith in a crisis, and you will have helped them achieve their own enduring legacy.