It feels like we're having a crisis about every 20 seconds, and this week is no exception. Just at the beginning of the week we had another sudden, chaos-inducing announcement from the new administration that they were going to suspend all federal grant money for unspecified things for an unspecified period of time. 

I noticed that a number of nonprofit leaders started posting to social media almost immediately when this announcement was made, and they used words like “panic,” “terrified,” “this is doom.” There’s no question that it's bad. It is objectively, verifiably terrible. But the critical thing to understand is that the fear and the panic and the uncertainty are part of the strategy. 

The strategy is to create chaos as much as possible all the time. That strategy has multiple purposes. First and foremost it's designed to disorient, to demoralize, and to disable the opposition. 

It’s time for us to realize that this is going to be the daily reality for the foreseeable future. So one of the most strategic things we can do is to stop being surprised by this behavior!  Expect chaos, expect disorder, expect disruption, expect outrageous behavior. Understand that fear and panic and worry and stress are the goal.

The other thing we can do is become far more strategic and adept at responding to crisis. The truth is, a lot of times we focus on the wrong things when crisis strikes. There are three main things we need to do first, if we want the rest of our response to go well. 

In this episode, we share:

• What to do first when you get blindsided by a crisis situation
• The single most important decision we make as leaders when faced with a crisis
• The critical messages you’re sending to your team (and to the opposition), with your response to crisis
• How to identify your default modes of crisis response, and shift any that aren’t serving you
• Keys to leading your team effectively through a crisis
• How getting good at responding to crisis gives you a strategic advantage

If you found value in this episode, please share it with other progressive nonprofit leaders.  And I’d be grateful if you would leave a rating and review on Apple podcasts, which will help even more people find out about this podcast.

Thanks!