How to Lead a Team Through a Crisis

When the pandemic arrived, I was leading in healthcare staffing, which put our company in the middle of it. Hospitals and care communities needed nurses and caregivers more urgently than ever, the rules seemed to change every week, and the people we placed were walking into some of the hardest working conditions of their careers. Every leader in healthcare had to learn, very quickly, how to keep people steady while everything around them kept moving.

I learned more about leadership in that stretch than in any training I have ever taken. Most of it came down to a few simple things done consistently, on the days it was hard and on the days it was harder.

Be visible, especially when you do not have answers

The instinct many leaders have in a crisis is to wait until they know more before they say anything. That silence is almost always a mistake. When people do not hear from their leader, they fill the gap with worry and rumor, and the worry spreads faster than any update.

You do not need every answer to communicate. You need to say what you know, what you do not know yet and when you expect to know more. That third part does more to calm people than leaders expect. It tells them someone is paying attention and that they will not be left guessing.

Make decisions with the information you have

A crisis rarely gives you complete information, and waiting for it can be the most expensive decision of all. Make the best call you can with what you know, explain your reasoning and be willing to adjust when new information arrives. People will forgive a decision that turns out to need changing. They struggle much more with a leader who will not decide.

When you do change course, say so plainly. “Here is what we decided last week, here is what changed, and here is what we are doing now” is a sign of good leadership, not weakness.

Narrow the focus

Everything feels urgent in a crisis, and a team that tries to do everything will exhaust itself. One of the most helpful things a leader can do is decide what matters most right now and give people permission to set the rest aside. For us, the priorities were clear: take care of the caregivers and get help to the facilities that needed it. Almost every decision could be measured against those two things.

Take care of the people carrying the heaviest load

In every crisis, some people carry more than others. In healthcare, it was the nurses and aides at the bedside, working long shifts in difficult conditions. Leaders cannot remove that weight, but they can make sure those people feel seen, supported and appreciated. That means checking in personally, listening without rushing to fix, removing whatever obstacles you can and saying thank you specifically and often.

It also means watching for burnout in the people who care most, because they are usually the last to say they are struggling. I wrote about that in The People Most Likely To Burn Out Are The Ones Who Care Most.

Take care of yourself so you can keep showing up

Leaders often forget themselves in a crisis. But a team takes its emotional cues from the person leading it, and an exhausted leader has less patience, less clarity and less to give. Protect a little time to rest and think. Lean on other leaders. It is not selfish. It is part of being able to show up steady for the people who are counting on you.

What remains after the crisis

Teams remember how they were led through hard times long after the hard times pass. The leaders who were honest, visible and caring earn a kind of trust that is difficult to build any other way. Some of the strongest relationships I have at work today were formed in that season, because we went through something difficult together and came out the other side.

I talk about leading through uncertainty in my leadership workshop, You Are Capable of More: Leadership, and about ownership on the hardest days in You Are Capable of More. For leading through a different kind of change, see How to Lead a Team Through an Acquisition.