10 April Crisis and Leadership (...foul-weather...)

[Paul Terlemezian]

It is relatively easy (and perhaps boring) to be a leader in the absence of crisis.

 

If every learner attended class with the motivation and prerequisite knowledge and raised their hand to answer every question and always had the correct answer because they were always paying attention...

 

If every learner during gave full attention to the activity and avoided distractions such as the phone, email, co-workers, the internet....

 

If every social learner could trust everything they learned from others....

 

How do we prepare our leaders to be effective during a crisis?

 

Certainly we need to help them learn how to minimize the occurrences of a crisis and as much as possible to not be the creator of the crisis - but the real impact of a leader is to have the confidence of their team during and because of the crisis.

 

What are examples of a crisis that you can contemplate within the corporate training function?

[Paul Terlemezian]

Years ago I had the opportunity to visit a nuclear power plant and learn about how they delivered training. Training is quite important and the simulators used to support the training looked expensive and realistic. The biggest take-away I got was then when an actual crisis occurred in the plant - the class would stop - and the instructor would go into the plant - to lead the effort to resolve the crisis.

What could we learn and apply from this with other areas of workplace learning?

What would be required in order to trust the instructor to lead the effort?