Leadership in times of crisis

Abstract

When organisations encounter a crisis, the most senior executives are at the spotlight and have responsibility to lead the organisation to safe grounds. This necessitates mental focus to instill confidence and resilience to staff, customers and external stakeholders. In August 2015, a large medical centre in the Saudi Arabia faced a major outbreak with the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), and cases accumulated in an unprecedented rate, triggered by a hospital-acquired transmission in the overcrowded Emergency Department. This article summarises the leadership learning from the MERS-CoV outbreak and draws on principles from leadership in extremis studies, a perspective that emphasises specific personality traits, attitudes and styles of individual leaders. It describes phases of the crisis starting with the phase 1 of crisis escalation, which included the emergency response along with measures for building confidence and ending with phase 2 of crisis resolution in which the crisis is used to make permanent and lasting change.