Crisis in Action

Rosemarie's Everyday Heroes post reminded me of the value of crisis in not only leadership, but also in teamwork. When crisis occurs, we are often brought above and beyond the call of duty. We see this behavior in police officers, firefighters, and emergency personnel in hospitals or ambulances. Adrenaline kicks in and our behaviors shift to support the situation at hand.

My mother recently suffered a respiratory attack while visiting my sisters in Georgia to celebrate Easter. "Respiratory failure" is the medical term, but in the eyes of my sisters and my dad, she stopped breathing. This was terribly frightening and it called my sister into action to use her nursing skills and perform CPR to bring her back to life essentially. The family-team there in Georgia worked together doing whatever was necessary to save my mom's life. A crisis at hand indeed.

In Patrick Lencioni's book, Silos, Politics, and Turf Wars, he uses the crisis situation as an opportunity to support teamwork and leadership. While no organization wants to have crises all the time (except for those in trauma wards where they have little choice perhaps), there is the indirect benefit of teamwork. Patrick calls this the "Rallying Cry" that brings a leadership team together to focus on a critical issue or goal and bring it to conclusion.

You could say the rallying cry for Cate's heroes Kim, Doug, and Bob was "Help the Hiker". Without being deliberate in stating that cry, these heroes jumped into teamwork and action to manage the situation at hand. In fact, I think that Kim, Doug, and Bob are probably an informal team of hikers. You can imagine that their planning for a hike might even be a rallying cry. They may be thinking things like "Take the Hill" (we've heard that before in civil war history), or "Climb the Highest Peak" to drive their efforts and bring their thinking and actions together.

With the context of crisis and teamwork at hand, it is helpful to review Lencioni's models and see what a rallying cry (or Thematic Goal to be more organizationally proper) might be for your team/company/business. In my work as a consultant, the unintended outcome of silos between functions, politics in an organization, and resulting turf wars seems to be quite prevalent in the work place. The roles and responsibilities of an organization typically drive this behavior. However, the crisis mentality can support a changing of the face in an organization and how teams work together toward a common goal. It looks at how roles and responsibilities support one another versus differentiate or separate one another.

I highly recommend Silos, Politics, and Turf Wars if you would like to drive proactive crisis into your organization. Click here for the Amazon link. The rallying cry model drives teamwork, leadership, and results.

By the way, my mom is back home in Florida and doing great. Apparently, the Atlanta area had the worst pollen they had seen in 10 - 15 years! Not a good time for anyone with respiratory issues.

Questions to Ponder: When have you been called into crisis unintentionally, and how was the teamwork? Did one particular person emerge the leader, or was everyone a leader? How did this crisis affect how the group of individuals acted after the crisis was cleared?