In this episode of the Managing Uncertainty Podcast, Bryghtpath Principal & Chief Executive Bryan Strawser discusses Part 2 of ‘Suiting Up for the Crisis’, focusing on being a part of the Crisis Management Team.  This series is dedicated to helping crisis team leaders and crisis management team members prepare for their next crisis.

Related Episodes & Blog Posts

Blog Post: Suiting Up for a Crisis Part I: The Crisis Leader

Blog Post: Suiting Up for a Crisis Part II: The Crisis Management Team

Episode #55: Crisis Leadership Roundtable

Episode #105: Taking care of yourself during a crisis

Episode #117: What Successful Crisis Management Looks Like Internally

Episode #130: Suiting up for the Crisis – The Crisis Leader

Episode Transcript

Hello, and Welcome to the Managing Uncertainty podcast. This is Bryan Strawser, Principal and Chief Executive here at Bryghtpath, and in this week’s episode, I want to take us to part two of our series, Suiting Up For A Crisis. This series is dedicated to helping crisis team leaders and team members prepare for their next crisis. Part one was about being the crisis leader, and in part two, I want to talk about being a part of your organization’s crisis management team, or CMT.

As a newly minted member of your crisis management team, it’s normal to have a lot of questions and probably some anxiety about what does it mean to be a part of this team? What are the expectations of me as a crisis management team member? How does my role as a member of the crisis management team impact my normal job responsibilities? What, if anything, can I do to prepare?

Like me and many others who walked this path before you, you’re quickly going to learn that there’s no substitute for experience, but you can still take some simple steps to help you suit up, so to speak, to respond to your next crisis. So here’s what we think you need to know.

First, what can you expect as a crisis management team member? Well, as a member of the CMT, you probably understand that it’s your job to run into the metaphorical burning building and help put out the fire. But there are many hours of training and conditioning that come beforehand, and the painstaking hours of mop-up and investigation and debriefing that are necessary to make sure that a fire is really out and that it doesn’t happen again. Your role on the crisis management team extends far before the crisis and well after its resolution. Here’s what you can expect at each stage.

Prior to a disruption, I would expect a crisis management team member to participate in discussions and activities calculated at improving the organization’s overall preparedness because this is your only chance to be able to do that.

My friend Juliette Kayyem at Harvard University describes this as being left of boom. You’re on the left side of the incident of the crisis, and so you have this opportunity to invest in preparedness. This might include things like participating in building developing plans for potential disruptions, integrating an