Most organizations will be familiar with a manager who continually “saves” projects at the eleventh hour. They jump into firefights in the middle of the night, drive people hard towards deadlines, escalate fiercely, and come out the other side appearing irreplaceable. While such behavior may look like effective crisis management from an executive perspective, organizational behavior researchers suggest the repetitive nature might mean something quite different: it reflects a culture where being the person who saves the day is valued more highly than being someone who prevents the need for a rescue in the first place.
The problem is not that all crisis leadership behavior is bad; crises do happen, and there are leaders who excel in challenging times. However, it becomes an issue when crises cease becoming less frequent and instead start to form part of regular operations.
The leader who saves many projects might look very successful since such acts of saving are very conspicuous and noticeable. But what about quiet operations? They tend not to attract attention in any way. When everything goes according to plan without any deadline delays, and no one ever hears about those problems or how they were solved, no one at higher leadership levels will ever appreciate such preventive actions.
Employees often confuse intensity with competence
One factor that makes crisis leadership possible in its own right lies in the way even the teams will be able to misinterpret the pattern itself. Employees will often respect the leaders who seem fearless in dealing with stressful situations and who often tend to jump in whenever there is an issue.
However, Gallup's studies on workplace trust and employee burnout show that constant stress, uncertainty, and ineffective communication can negatively affect the team environment in the long run. The real question is not about the ability of the leader to manage crises but rather about the frequency of such situations.
According to APA's findings on the workplace, stressful environments with continued pressure create strains and exhaustion, and lead to instability among team members. Workers who are continuously working in an emergency setting will find themselves adopting that reactive nature due to their environment, where the system emphasizes urgency more than planning.
This means that when chaos occurs frequently, it may end up creating authority from it. It happens when the leader solves the crisis and is hence respected because they are now perceived as a solution to every problem.
The key question is whether the workplace keeps recreating the same emergencies
There is an increasing body of literature recommending that organizations focus on pattern recognition rather than on the occurrence of the individual heroic event. As stated by the research presented within the source materials, organizations must recognize whether their organizational issues are indeed decreasing in frequency or just being silenced in a quicker and louder fashion with every passing cycle.
The latter can be recognized because eventually, with good leadership, the organization would become stabilized as processes are streamlined, communication becomes efficient, and emergencies are less frequent.
Employees benefit as well when urgency is separated from the qualities that make a great leader. There are those leaders who perform admirably even in times of crisis but don’t stir up any chaos in doing so. Then there are others who end up fostering an environment in which prevention isn’t valued as much as rescue efforts.
It isn’t the occasional difficult quarter or the short-term stress period that serves as a warning. Instead, it’s when the organization operates in a permanent state of emergency mode.
