When facing a crisis, how do you organize your leaders, talk to your people, and move forward with empathy? According to recent guest Albrey Brown, VP of Strategy and GM of New York at Joonko, it takes an intentional approach to get through it with grace. Read on to learn how self-reflection and personal connection can inform your leadership as you take on crises.
GUEST AT A GLANCE
Albrey Brown is the Vice President of Strategy and General Manager of New York at Joonko, a diversity recruiting platform. He is a diversity, equity, and inclusion thought leader dedicated to building belonging in the workplace.
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🔊 Podcast: Transform Your Workplace, sponsored by Xenium HR
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GAINING PERSPECTIVE
When a crisis hits, it’s tempting to jump the gun with press releases and emails to staff, all without taking a deep breath and thinking it through. According to recent guest Albrey Brown, a crisis lurks just around the corner, so “it’s a really important thing for leaders to think about.” His advice? Senior leaders need to be introspective and reflective before “gathering everyone and figuring out a plan.” At the end of the day, it’s about addressing the “human side of things” and determining what our role is when it comes to supporting our people through crisis.
PODCAST EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS
The Power in Waiting
“The first instinct for a leader is to just go for it, to be agile, to be nimble, and act quickly. But often when it comes to a crisis, taking a deep breath and slowing down so that you can speed up faster allows you to avoid those critical mistakes like alienating groups or alienating people because you didn’t take a beat just to understand, ‘Well, what am I feeling in this moment?’”
Employees as Customers
“A lot of founders and executives are […] very product- and sales-focused, and they focus on their customers. Your employees are your customers. They’re customers of the business. And if you treat employees as you would your customers, the outcomes that you’ll see when you’re addressing things like a crisis are gonna be much, much, much different and much more effective.”
The Hierarchy of Trust
“Trust in an organization is hierarchical. As much as we like to think that it isn’t, you have a direct conversation with your manager almost every week, maybe every two weeks. Your team trusts your management. So equipping both executive leaders to equip their direct reports and direct reports to equip the folks, the individual contributors on the ground, is a very, very important part of this conversation.”
More Seats at the Table
“So when you [talk about] who’s at the table, I think the table starts small. And then it expands into maybe a banquet, a banquet of folks who are approaching this crisis together. And then the organization can move in lockstep for days, weeks, and months to come.”
Long Term Support
“The kinda slow roll, non-scalable approach is the way that you show altruism and empathy over time. Empathy is not scalable. It’s not something that you can just put into software as a service and inject into your organization. It’s something that folks have to spend time on and be willing to spend the time on so that folks don’t feel like, ‘Yes, we did this donation campaign,’ or ‘Yes, we brought in this therapist one time.’ Over time, you want folks to make sure that there are multiple touchpoints so that they feel supported over the long term.”
Ready at a Moment’s Notice
“Crisis to me looks different than crisis to you. So while empathy is not scalable, the framework for teaching both your managers and your peers and other individual contributors how to respond and notice crises is scalable. And I think that’s where the work of a Chief People Officer, a Learning and Development Officer, and a Diversity and Inclusion person can come together [so] that, before a crisis happens, folks are trained and ready and understand it’s their duty as a leader to check in with folks on a small scale.”
Getting Personal
“Get to know your employees on a personal level so that you can really gauge how a crisis, no matter what it is, might affect them. And you know, that seems very obvious, but I also think that […] we’re all trying to work hard, we’re all trying to make our organizations better, and sometimes the human element gets lost in translation. So really just get to know your employees so that you can understand a little bit better and be proactive about understanding when a crisis is going to affect them.”
LEARN MORE
Want to dig deeper into crisis management? Connect with Albrey Brown on LinkedIn and Twitter.