Describe why a senior leader’s physical presence is critical during a crisis

Crises need to be resolved with a senior leader present for them to put their expertise to work to help the organization achieve their goals and help resolve crises. The senior leaders should have roles of management and leadership that help identify crises early enough to prevent adverse effects from occurring. The senior leader needs to be in visible control for other members of the team that are under them to work together to overcome the challenge. A senior leader needs to make use of the available resources and collaborate with the team members to find an optimal solution to the challenges that they are faced with (McCleskey, 2014).

2. Please give an example from your own experience with a leader in a crisis.

I have worked as a database administrator and while training some interns who had come to work in the company I let one of them use my computer to run some of the commands I was teaching them about database management activities. The intern made a mistake and input a wrong command which deleted a table in the database. The result was the entire system that the company relied on coming to a screeching halt. The management and other entities that relied on the database called in to find an explanation for the stall in operations. I managed to recover the database by running a recovery command on the database to restore the database to the last known saved state which helped recover the missing table and put the company system back in work. The erroneous deletion resulted in creating safeguards such as periodic backups after every transaction to ensure that the database could be easily recovered.

3. What are the benefits of creating a comprehensive crisis response plan before a crisis happens?

Having an early crisis identification system and crisis management for early identification can help avert the high costs and other high costs associated with a crises failing to being identified early. The organization also needs security policies and risk prevention plans in place so that the crises can be effectively avoided (Northouse, 2018). Failure to have a plan in place would affect the process of detection and quick response. The team members should also be trained on the possible occurrences and how to overcome them effectively to avoid the high costs of recovery.

4. What advice would you give a leader who wants to improve his or her communications function so that it may be more effective during a crisis?

I would advise the leader to take up a class for self-improvement classes after carrying out a self-analysis to determine their strengths and weaknesses and areas that need adjustment for effectiveness to be achieved. The leader should learn that identification and acceptance of weakness is the first step to achieving change and improvement (Lussier & Achua, 2015).

5. What message does it send when the organizational culture encourages employees to view mistakes or problems as opportunities for improvement rather than the reasons to blame or punish those involved. Please give a specific example in your career of such a situation.

Encouraging employees to look at challenges as a positive opportunity for growth and development sends a positive message for employees to learn from their mistakes and to learn that challenges occur and that having a positive outlook to challenges is key for learning and development. A positive outlook and attitude helps the employees feel motivated despite challenges occurring and they learn to convert their challenges to positive outcomes while learning on the job (Northouse, 2018). Employees are also able to be more accountable and responsible as opposed to an environment where employees or team members are looked down upon because of making a mistake or being faced with a problem. The intern who deleted a working table in the company database despite having caused a stall in operations was able to learn the different commands to use and which to avoid using to prevent similar future occurrences.

References

Lussier, R. N., & Achua, C. F. (2015). Leadership: Theory, application, & skill development. Nelson Education.

McCleskey, J. A. (2014). Situational, transformational, and transactional leadership and leadership development. Journal of Business Studies Quarterly, 5(4), 117.

Northouse, P. G. (2018). Leadership: Theory and practice. Sage publications.