Choosing a Successful Crisis Management Team for Your Organization

In the event of a crisis, it’s vital to have a team of people in place who are aware of protocols, ready and willing to act under pressure, quick on their feet, and collaborative. This is your crisis management team and every successful crisis management plan requires one. So, how do you go about choosing your team? Here are some quick, useful tips:

Draw from the correct departments.

Your team should consist of at least one person from each of these departments:

• Communications
• Legal
• Human resources
• Facilities
• Risk management
• Finance

It’s always a good idea to include both your head of communications and a media relations professional on the team as you’ll need to compile media contacts and media relations best practices for crises. Another vital individual on your crisis team is your CEO. During crises, important business decisions often need to be made and your CEO needs to be prepared to make those decisions at a moment’s notice.

Choose empathetic spokespersons.

In addition to making important decisions, an organization’s CEO will likely need to hold press conferences. It’s important to ensure the CEO is able to appear genuine and sympathetic through media training exercises. There should also be other individuals ready and able to speak to the press as not all statements will need to be given by the CEO. Although the PR officer or press secretary is the most obvious fit for this job, it’s worth selecting other leadership staff members as well.

Ensure the individuals on your team are confident but not egotistical.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking you’ll automatically know precisely what to do in a crisis situation and the result can be an overly-simplistic plan that doesn’t account for enough variable factors. That’s why it’s important to choose people who are not egotistical — it’s not uncommon to find that people who exhibit excessive bravado in their planning, botch the execution.

Choose quick-thinking problem-solvers.

You need people who are able to make speedy determinations based on the information at hand. This doesn’t mean their recommendations have to be brazen — a strategy to ‘act cautiously and avoid going too far into detail’ can be a good one if the circumstances require it. The point is that they have to be ready to take action, as opposed to doing nothing.

Ensure your team is collaborative.

While this may sound trivial in comparison to other considerations, in practice, it really can make all the difference. If members on your team do not work well together, you may have a difficult time coming to agree on a course of action during an actual crisis. Although it’s alright if there isn’t a consensus reached, it does matter that there isn’t full-blown discord and that decisions are still able to be made and ultimately supported by all.

Once you’ve chosen the right team, they should begin the work of contributing to the crisis management plan (which will likely be led by the corporate communications head). Beyond that, ensure your team is adequately trained to implement the plan if and when crisis occurs.