The most common leadership styles are autocratic, democratic and delegative. So, how does each style affect a crisis in a corporation?

The autocrat will need to make all the decisions in a crisis, keep everyone in fire-drill mode and require continuous updates. Many times they insist on being the point person for communications, not trusting anyone else to handle it. They may prefer to release very little information and keep full details close to the vest to be shared only with a few insiders. However, even an autocrat will need to involve, and even defer, to the Board of Directors if it’s a publicly held company.

A delegative leader will entrust the response to those in the best position to gather the data and craft the solution. They’ll readily accept the help of their Communications Team, outside counsel and PR Experts. One of the risks with this style is that someone needs to be named as the project leader, responsible for project managing and orchestrating all the players involved into a cogent crisis solution beyond the communication plan. Otherwise, folks can be running in different directions which is inefficient and wastes valuable time.

A democratic leader will summon their team, brainstorm responses and vote on the solution. This approach works if everyone is equally knowledgeable about the crisis at hand, causes and solutions. There are times where it makes more sense to take a democratic approach with a subset of the team, instead of involving everyone. The leader also has to be prepared to break ties or even just decide alone if the team is at a stalemate.

Less common is a servant leader, who in a crisis is focused on selecting the response that creates the greatest good for all stakeholders – even when it’s not the “company’s fault” at all. A good example here is the response to the Tylenol tampering case.

I help create leaders with an agile style. This is not the way the term is used in technology settings. Rather, we help leaders develop the 4 types of agility that enable them to handle whatever comes – be it a crisis, a pandemic or anything else they can’t predict. The most agile, or Catalyst leader, believes that a diversity of people and thoughts enables the co-creation of the best solution, one that no individual could have created alone. For Catalyst leaders, 1+1 truly does equal 5! With the increasing pace of change, the threats coming at us from all angles and the ever-enhanced global interconnectedness, leadership agility is really the only true model that is still relevant!

Hope that helps!