Crisis Consulting

That means that your brain and body are programmed to stop thinking and start reacting to protect you.
And it’s almost never a good idea to go with your fight, flight, or freeze instinct when a crisis hits.
 

That’s because the crises you’ll encounter aren’t just about you. They affect your customers, your team, your employees, your boss, your investors, your community. We are never completely unconnected in a crisis. And if we let our instincts take over, we act in ways that only protect ourselves, and don’t consider the needs of the other people affected by the crisis.
 
That’s why companies in crisis struggle with people playing politics. The crisis makes everyone – very rightly – concerned about their jobs, their security, whether or not they’ll have health insurance next month, whether they’ll lose everything they invested. And their instincts push them to focus on self-preservation.

It’s not voluntary.  Your body is programmed to react that way in a crisis, and your body sucks at nuance. It doesn’t matter if it’s someone pulling a gun on us, or a scandal threatening our corporate finances, or a sudden drop in the economy. We’re biologically wired to respond to any perceived threat that way. Your body’s stress response doesn’t differentiate between an immediate threat – like a gun to your face – and a non-physical threat to your business or finances. A threat is a threat, and you should expect to react the way you’re programmed to react.  With out special training, it’s almost impossible to walk into a crisis without triggering those responses.