Holding the crisis
Crisis decisions, communication, candour and apology.
Three and a half hours on holding a crisis: deciding under pressure, crisis communication, accountability and candour, three applied cases, and the anatomy of an apology.
- Level
- Focus
- Learning time
- 3 hours 30 minutes
- Where
- Complexity, decisions and innovation
- Price
- £69
When you step up to a higher level, what you paid in the last 12 months for lower-level courses inside the bigger course comes off its price, in proportion to how much of each is inside it, whichever topic it's from. Courses at the same or a lower level don't give credit against each other. A Focus course or above always costs at least £15. Read the full terms
Certificate of Completion, or Certificate of Completion and Assessment with a short assessment
Overview and Outcomes.
Who It's For
Senior leaders, emergency planners and communications leads in councils, health and public bodies
Overview
In the first hours of a crisis, people need leaders who decide quickly, speak humanely and tell the truth. This Focus comes from the Immerse The worst day and starts with deciding under pressure through Cynefin, Gary Klein's recognition primed decision model, Karl Weick's sensemaking and research on decision inertia. It then turns to crisis communication: the Civil Contingencies Act duty to warn, inform and advise, Coombs's situational crisis communication theory and Welsh Government communication during Covid-19. Accountability and candour follow, with the Hillsborough families' campaign and a capstone on Salisbury, Storm Arwen and the CrowdStrike outage. The closing section explores the anatomy of an apology.
Aims
The course exists to help leaders hold a crisis with judgement and humanity: making decisions they can defend, overcoming decision inertia, communicating in ways that are timely, credible and humane, and apologising in a way that begins repair rather than deepening harm.
In summary, you will be able to:
- Use Cynefin, recognition primed decision making and sensemaking to make crisis decisions you can defend and avoid decision inertia.
- Plan crisis communication that meets the duty to warn, inform and advise, using situational crisis communication theory.
- Apply the anatomy of an apology to acknowledge harm candidly and begin repair, learning from the Hillsborough families' campaign.
What you'll develop
Through this Focus course, you will build the ability to:
- Identify which Cynefin domain a situation sits in, and whether it calls for analysis or for action.
- Distinguish warning, informing and advising, and plan how to reach the whole public, including the people who are hardest to reach.
- Explain the powers and limits of public inquiries, why the implementation gap matters, and what the PPE high priority lane shows about fairness in emergencies.
- Apply a consistent set of leadership lenses to analyse emergencies that differ in cause, scale and speed.
- Identify the six apology components tested by Lewicki, Polin and Lount, and explain why responsibility and an offer of repair carry most weight.
- Explain Klein's recognition primed decision model and Weick's sensemaking, including when to act small in order to understand.
- Match your response to the responsibility people attribute to your organisation, using Coombs's situational crisis communication theory.
- Describe the duty of candour in Wales and the proposed Hillsborough Law, including what each requires of public bodies.
Built from 3 parts.
3 hours 30 minutes of learning.
- 01Clear heads, clear wordsDecision making and communication in a crisisBitesize · Crisis and Emergency Leadership2 modules
- 02Telling the truth afterwardsAccountability, candour and crisis case studiesBitesize · Crisis and Emergency Leadership2 modules
- 03Saying sorry wellThe anatomy of an apologyBitesize · The Apology Lab1 module