Gene Klann (Center for Creative Leadership): "If You Realize that You May Have a Difficult Time Leading in a Crisis Situation than Maybe You Should Not Have Yourself in a Leadership or Management Position because People Are Going to Count on You"

Gene Klann, Senior Program Associate at the Center for Creative Leadership, shares with us his knowledge of how to behave in a crisis situation: he believes that a good leader should be an effective communicator, that he should not forget to share even negative information, because, in crisis information is a valuable tool to reduce emotional stress, and that crisis is the time when leaders really need to be visible.

1. What is your strongest competency?

There is a couple of things but the first one I think that all good leaders must be very effective communicators to share information, give information, communicate with their body language, communicate with their presence, how they present themselves. They must communicate strength, authority, competence and so forth; the skill to be an effective verbal communicator. We just had our presidential election in the United States, and Barak Obhama became president elect and he's extraordinary skilled at verbal communications. If you remember from history: John Kennedy, he was very effective verbal communicator, and Ronald Reagan. I'm sure that in Russian history there is many effective communicators also, but the idea to be able to express your ideas very clearly, so that people would be able to understand them, I think this is hugely important for a leader.

2. How you can explain the importance of communication skill?

I ask people what are the three lards of real estate - location, location, location. Than I say, ok, what are the three lards of leadership, people think about this and I say it's - communication, communication, communication. Because, leadership: you have the leader and you have those people being led, and these are all human beings. There has to be some sort of relationship. It's automatically a relationship situation between the leader and those being led. So, how do you establish good, strong and trustful relationships - through the process of communication.

3. Can you give an example?

I was battalion commander of six hundred soldiers, per troupers, airborne soldiers in the First Gulf War in Desert Shield and Desert Storm. What I would do was, every night I would have all my leaders, my company commanders and my sergeant major and my company first sergeant, my staff - we would have a meeting before dinner, and we had a staff meeting. Every person would have an opportunity to share their activities of the day and what they are planning tomorrow. I was always the last one to speak. Because of my rank and position I was able to get information that they didn't have access to, so, I shared this information with them. Now, this is the point - 80% of the information I shared had no application to them.

4. Why you were sharing this information?

I share it because when they got the information in a crisis situation, in a difficult situation people need information to provide them with emotional stability. If they knew what's going on and they feel more comfortable and capable, and they're more incline to not be emotionally stressed, so I would give them information, because, in crisis information is a valuable tool to reduce emotional stress. So, what happened is that my subordinates would go and share with their subordinates the same information. Again, it would have no application to them but information provides security. The lack of information in a crisis situation causes people to come up with gossip and rumors. I always call it MSU - make stuff up. What they make up is always going to be worse than reality no matter how bad the reality is. So, by giving them information it reduces the gossip and rumors and provides an element of stability.

5. What if the information is negative?

Even if it's negative information, because negative information is better than no information. The imagination is amazing. I mean the person's imagination can imagine all these things, okay, things are not hundred percent and they are not working ok, you tell them, but the reality is - if you don't tell them that, what they can imagine and create in their mind and than they start sharing it with people, and I saw this too. That's one of the reasons I feel it's important. When I wrote this book on crisis leadership, one of the key things I put in and out some of the rules of effective crisis leader is to share information and pass information. Does that mean everything that you should share? No, maybe 95%, but the reality is if you are going to air, air on the side of passing too much information than not enough information.

6. Are there any specific ways of communication?

I emphasize when I just shared like verbal communications, which is good in a larger group, but also verbal communications one-on-one. In a crisis situation even now with the economic situation the leaders need to be seen by the people. Another words, the biggest problem that many leaders have is when the crisis occurs they go in to a conference room or an operation center and they are invisible to the people, but in a crisis that's the time when leaders really need to be visible.

7. Do you have an example?

There is a great example in a military history: there was a British general named Sir Brian Horrocks and he was the core commander for General Montgomery on number of occasions. What his method was, he would have two vehicles and he'd had this huge map and he would drive around, where ever he sees some British soldiers in his command he would stop, pull out his map and he would explain to them the situation. It would do a couple of things: number one, they would see their sir general, core commander, but hey would also see that this guy knows what's going one. So, I always say a leader in a crisis must be present, must be visible and must be available. What that means is present - he must be at situation where there is a crisis; visible - people must be able to see him, I mean, he can be at the crisis but maybe he's in an office somewhere and they have to be able to see him, he must be visible, and available if people would want to talk to him - they should be able to come up and he should be able to talk to them. I always trained my subordinates to take care of operations while I was going around and talking to my soldiers. I give the vision, mission for the day and I would go see the soldiers and my operations officer and executive officer and they would take care of the activities of the day, but it was my mission to be present, visible and available and to go out and see the troops and to talk to them.

8. Do you have other examples?

Queen Elizabeth the First: Spanish Armada was coming to invade British Islands and British army was not very big and they were not as efficient as they probably could be. So, Armada was coming and they were going to land certain areas, so the British army was set up there. There was a lot of anxiety. Queen Elizabeth arrived riding a white horse in a silver breastplate, hair flowing, and gave a very rousing, inspirational speech. And the encouragement, the heart of the British army, you know, there were all "ok, come on, we can handle this". So, the idea of the leader being present at the most difficult point is really a huge idea in a crisis. There is another example, I believe, it was in 1986. There was release of chemicals at Union Carbide plant in Balpur, India. There was this large loss - thousands of people died. And results to that: there was a lot of people that were ill for years. Maybe still. But the CEO of Union Carbide immediately hearing this got in a plane and flew there and I think that's exactly what leaders need to do if there is a crisis. And it's ok if it's a local crisis like we experience right now financial, the leader still need to go and talk to the people, calm their fear, communicate information. Otherwise, people, like I said - MSU, make staff up - start with gossip and rumors and that's actually is going to be worse whatever the situation evolves in to.

9. Are there any other ways of communication?

Also, to send out information by every possible means: to have pieces of paper hanging on the wall, to have news letters, to have news papers, to send emails, and not just to say your employees, but to your stakeholders. Like suppose your company is the largest employer in community, so you give information to community officials, so that they understand what's going on in the company and what's going on with the crisis situation, to use, or maybe to have interviews on television or on the radio. Leader should take advantage of every means possible to pass out the information, because I don't think you can ever over communicate. I think you can always do more. So, take advantage of every means and continuously, because, in the crisis people's mind, your thought process actually changes. People are distressed, so they don't reason logically like they might in normal situation. I'd say that leaders need to remember three R's - review, repeat and repetition. In other words: ok, I already shared this information last week - well, share again, because the way people's mind is working, maybe they didn't grasp it, maybe they didn't understand it, maybe they didn't process it. So, if you keep repeating the same message, ultimately, people are going to get it. Like I said, you can't just communicate once, and than, - ok, I got my job done, I checked the box, I'm ok - no-no, it's a continuous process until whatever the crisis is over.

10. Can you, actually, be optimistic in a crisis situation?

I think, how I handle it in my war time situations, I would always say, "ok, this is what's happening and this is going to be difficult, and you have to do this and do this mission, and this is not going to be easy and I'm not going to kidd anybody. But ok, these are thing that we're going to do in order to make sure that these bad thing don't happen of if they do happen it's going to be minimum". You know, in US we had this serious hurricane with Katrina and half of the population of New Orleans left and they have never come back. That's a level of crisis that life ended as those people knew it. I mean, their whole life changed and, probably, is not going to change back. Ok, can that happen again? I mean if there is a serious terrorist attack in a major city, maybe nuclear weapon, chemical attack - those things are real and those things are serious. But the thing is, I believe from looking at human history that humans are resilient and they are survivors, and the leader has to have that kind of a mind set. When I give my seminars about crisis leadership I give assessments, leaders in my group have to assess themselves - ok now, where I am with communications and where I am with courage and so forth. And, I end by saying, "now look, you look at this and if you realize that maybe you will have a difficult time leading in a situation like this, maybe you should not have yourself in a leadership or management position, because people are going to count on you". In my wars that I was in difficult situations people look at you. If you're around them they are going to look at you to see how you're doing, how you are handling yourself - if you are under control, if you are calm, because that sends a major message to them. If the commander is ok or my leaders are ok, than everything must be ok, right? There is intangible idea about leadership that a real leader, actually, exudes some sort of an aura around them, how the leader is conducting him or herself - that example is than contagious to the people around them and within an organization. If some leaders don't want to do that or they are not capable of doing that than they really have a responsibility to move themselves in to a situation where they don't have to provide leadership.

11. What do you think about leadership by example?

That's the topic of my next book. The Center for Creative Leadership where I work, I think that this idea of leadership by example is - example is leadership. At the United States military West Point, that's what they say - example is leadership. Albert Schweitzer, great humanitarian, he said that if you look at all forms of leadership that example is the highest form of leadership. So, I think that in a crisis situation the personal example, physical example, presence bearing that a leader has, I think is huge in how other people respond or react to the crisis, because if you are going in to a difficult situation, like, say, in war - you're going to combat, the leader has to be the one that's stable, he can't be running around saying, "We're all gonna die!", because, otherwise, people are going to get very nervous, so he or she in this case, in our world today has to be a pillar of stability in a difficult situation.

Prepared by Katia Barzova, Good2Work Intern, on December 17, 2008