What can you do when something goes up in flames at work? More than you might think, although it isn’t always easy. Here’s the problem: Our very human instinct is to join the action, aka to call it code red and act fast, hard, determined. This is less often a good idea than you might think. Here are the reasons why and what you can consider instead.
Your emergency mode is not as good as you think.
… and it’s basically invisible to you. Because it works and you could (and probably used to) stop here. I mean, never change a running system, right? You need your “best self” in an emergency, no wiggle room.
So why on earth should you think beyond what works well enough? Why should you implement steps you haven’t in the past that possibly even slow you down at first?
Here’s why: There are a lot of (hidden) disadvantages to any well-oiled emergency protocol you function on as a human. Side note: I’m not speaking stuff like a literal fire alarm here. I’m speaking highly complex, nuanced leadership situations.
Here are the top 3 disadvantages of your best crisis strategy:
- You will fall into your most familiar brain patterns, but these are narrow. Like… You know A will cause B and you want B? You won’t fool around with anything other than A instead. No experiments, no room, even if the result could be way better. So you will happily do A ten times instead of once, and live with the mediocre quality of B for a long time Because. They. Work. Well. Enough.
- The solution patterns in your brain are inevitably narrow, because emergency = fast and there’s literally no room to get broad and creative. Also, you can only cobble together so many aspects of a situation when time is of importance. Lastly, these aspects tend to be the loud, screaming ones that stick out to you. However, the power for sustainable change lies in the voices you can’t even hear.
- Especially if you excel at crisis mode, you will actually (unconsciously) contribute to causing more emergency-like situation without even noticing it. Like de-prioritising everything that doesn’t burn YET, because once they burn, you shine. So why make a decision before you can play out your genius? It will save you the energy of needing to choose more actively as opposed to just let things run.
Let me use a metaphor here: You are really good at wielding a hammer, so everything becomes sort of a nail. With enough effort, you can hammer a screw into a piece of wood, and you can do it times and times again. Everyone sees the screw hammered in, so you don’t risk using a screwdriver (imagine using the wrong size!!! Eek!). Instead you keep using the hammer, no matter the fact that longer term, you waste a lot of energy, time and other resources – barely noticing it.
Alternative leadership steps for a better result:
One thing before we take tangible steps: Don’t practice when stuff already burns hot. You may not be able to cope. Try them in smaller, lower stakes situations. But here goes:
Step 1: Make sure your brain is online.
When you go down the emergency lane, you get into tunnel vision, narrow down, focus on the essential right in front of you. But I just mentioned it: This is literally narrow and takes away a lot of possibility to solve a problem differently, with more perspective and creativity and unusual angles. All of these only work when your have brain space to look left and right to the obvious.
Here are a couple of actions you can take to help you you getting as much as possible of your brain online and maximise its capacity:
Make sure the bare necessities are met: When you are hungry and sleep-deprived, you will not be at your best. Make sure you meet your most basic physical needs. We can push them away for a bit, but they come back around and greatly diminish your capacity. While this may sound trivial, I invite you to really check – it’s something we neglect a LOT because it is kind of easy to ignore. But it sabotages you from behind more than you can imagine.
Breathe: There is a LOT that can be done with breath and it goes way beyond this article to write it down, but for right now, here’s the simplest possible thing to start with: Focus on your breathing as many times as you can during the day. Remind yourself with a post-it. First notice it – no changes. And second deepen it by a couple of percent.
Move your body: Even if it’s just getting up and walking a couple of steps, but it’s astonishing what a few steps can do to your brain. Again: We are physical creatures – act accordingly. Find out what is good for you and do as much as you can of that.
Cross the midline: When you go into tunnel vision, you get stuck on one half of the brain, and an incredibly simple thing you can do is to stand up and swing your arms like a pendulum, and watch them go left and right. So this isn’t just movement, it also reminds your brain to connect its halves. Literal anti-tunnel action.
Emote: Go scream somewhere remote, or into a cushion. Let yourself have that moment and cry, wail, complain loudly. Whatever wants to get physically and loudly out of your system. This leads me right to step 2:
Step 2: Forgive yourself first, and others second.
This is an incredibly powerful piece to move through crises IF you are willing to forgive how things have gone so far. You may not be and it’s better to admit that than to try anyway. You don’t have to see how you may get rid of any intense feeling, but are you genuinely willing to give it a try?
Here’s the thing about doing it over the top of not being ready: The whole practice is one of getting honest with yourself, your feelings, the facts. If you aren’t honest to begin with, it can’t work, because you just defied its very purpose.
Willingness implied, this is what you can do:
Get a piece of paper, a writing app, a recorder and set aside an hour. It might take you less (rarely more, but an hour is a solid start). If you feel you can’t take an hour, go do it all the more. Do NOT go through it in your mind, you will stay stuck in your usual thinking patterns. It needs to be physically written down or at least spoken out loud. And do NOT hold back, because you’ll destroy it after.
First, get allllllll your grudges & any other feelings out. Write them down (again, delete after to be as free as possible). The more judgemental, angry and disappointed you are the better. You need it OUT in the open.
After, move on to writing down the facts & responsibilities. What was the chronicle? Who was supposed to do what? Bone dry, as a news reporter would who is hired to exclusively tell people about measurable, visible or otherwise objective occurrences. Also, write down what you can see to own: Where did you not say no? Where did you not listen to your intuition? If that’s hard, get more of your feels out.
Lastly, acknowledge yourself and others. Again, if this is hard, go back to the feelings. There is always something you did well even when things went super wrong. You tried hard, you did the best you could. You assessed the situation to the best of your abilities etc. Same goes for others involved. Write down everything you can honestly see now.
Reminder: Delete or burn everything once you wrote it down.
Doing this can be both hard and incredibly freeing. I personally do it a lot and it helps me to clear my head and find fresh ways out of a misery every single time.
(Credits: I learnt the original version of this practice from Accomplishment coaching)
Step 3: Have the conversations you need to move things forward
When you have done 1) and 2), this is actually less of a huge step. The first two steps are FAR more important in terms of getting a fresh angle. Still: You need to take action to make use of your internal insights, otherwise they will quickly fade away.
So for step 3, do this: Make a list of the conversations you need to have next with what you can see now. Write down what you need to talk about, what you want to get across you haven’t before. Get super clear on your end. And then go, say the courageous thing and have those conversations in a way that moves things forward differently – as opposed to getting stuck in the same rut again.
Want more? You can read more about getting stuck in similar ways with similar people and how to say the tough shit without making people hate you
For even more depth and learnings on this topic, sign up for the workshop I on conflict and crises on September 24, 2025 right here: