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Following a difficult, traumatic, or violent incident, there are a lot of challenges to work through. But when planning and thinking through how to handle these situations, we often focus almost wholly on the response and tend to ignore the short and long-term recovery challenges.
In this episode of the Managing Uncertainty Podcast, Bryghtpath Principal & CEO Bryan Strawser and Senior Consultant Jennifer Otremba talk through their own experiences in the aftermath of major crisis situations. Topics discussed include grief counseling, post-traumatic stress, managing the press, post-disaster payroll policies, and more.
Episode Transcript
| Jen: | I read this article where there was a grief counselor that was interviewed and taking specifically around the aftermath of a situation and how its managed and how its handled. This grief counselor actually would get called onsite for various different high-level incidents, much like the shooting in Florida, 9-11, things like that. The grief counselor would come onsite and they would help the people involved through the situation. We saw that at our previous employer where if there was a big incident that happened we would have counselors that were onsite. |
| Bryan: | It was part of our SOP really. |
| Jen: | Absolutely, and help out. I just thought this would be a great topic to talk about to kind of educate those around what it’s like to go through an aftermath. Bryan and I have both gone through many situations- |
| Bryan: | Numerous. |
| Jen: | Where we dealt with an aftermath of a traumatic incident so we thought it would be a good idea to talk about what that looks like. |
| Bryan: | For me it always … This kind of is just … This issue gets overlooked a lot, but because of what I’ve learned through my experience and our experiences together is that this always seems to be part of the right of boom process. When I talk about left of boom, right of boom, you’ve got the bad thing that happened, the boom, and there’s what you can do before that, the preparation and the training and the exercises and whatever, but then the bad thing happens, you respond to it and then part of your long-term recovery, which what we’re talking about here falls right on getting out of that immediate response stage, is how do you deal with the aftermath of the situation in terms of taking care of the team, taking care of the survivors or the victims and their families and the organization, how do you make sure that people are okay through this. |
| Jen: | Right, and like you said, this should actually be part of your crisis planning. |
| Bryan: | It should be. |
| Jen: | It should be part of the plan. |
| Bryan: | It needs to be one of the first things that you do once you’ve gotten to that immediate response and we’re sure that people are safe and the immediate danger has passed, is how do you start to help people with the immediate and long-term aftermath of the situation that has impacted them. |
| Jen: | Yeah, and understanding some of the things you can expect to see. Some individuals may need to take some time off. They might need to take some time away from where it happened before they can … Yeah. |
| Bryan: | If you’re a multi-facility company they may want to work at a different facility moving forward. |
| Jen: | Yeah. It might be temporary or that might be permanent, but you need to take that in consideration and understand that that might be part of your planning process. |
| Bryan: | You’ll find … And this is definitely not … This is something that you need to involve a professional organization, outside organization, to do and there’s a number of companies that provide this, it’s really kind of in the medical field. Whether you call it grief counseling or you call it just kind of the post-traumatic incident counseling, there’s a lot of terminology to be used. But what you often see is these services will come in and they will do a combination of kind of group conversation, of working through what has happened, and some individual conversation. |
| It’s not … I wouldn’t characterize this as you’re hiring counselors for everyone, but you are bringing somebody in that’s an expert in dealing with these situations and helping your team talk through that. And then you may have folks, as Jen says, may need some time off and in an ethical organization you’re going to find a way to accommodate that, regardless of what your policy is. Say that you’re going to help them through the situation, and you may have folks that will need, through your medical coverage, long-term psychological, psychiatric counseling in order to deal with the aftermath of the situation. | |
| Jen: | Right. I think one of the big things is you need to understand that there’s a short-term and a long-term recovery process. |
| Bryan: | Right. |
| Jen: | There’s what happens in the aftermath as far as the immediate aftermath, within days or weeks of something happening, but then understanding what that looks like long-term for people because everyone handles it differently. |
| Bryan: | I know one thing to consider, whatever the incident is that causes this workplace trauma, this traumatic incident that occurred. It can be a shooting situation, it could be an industrial accident, it could be a natural disaster, a tornado or whatever. What often I have done in my experience is we have made sure that folks are safe and we realize that we’ve had this horrible thing has happened, whatever it is. It’s going to bring media attention, it’s likely going to involve law enforcement and the emergency services. We would often think about how can we get the team out of that situation and somewhere safe. |
| I’m often reminded of an issue we dealt with in my experience in 2010 where I had an individual come into a location and shoot and kill an employee and then took his own life. There’s the immediate response, which is there’s as run-hide-fight process and even before that was popular, everybody got out of the building. The first thing that the local leadership did for my employer at the time was: Okay, I’m going to account for everybody. I’ve got a competitor next door, we’re going in there, they’ve offered us a conference room. We’re going to get in there. We’re going to sit down. We’re going to get our families in here. We’re going to make the call to the outside counselors to come help us out. We’re going to be over here shielded from the media and all of the crazy stuff that comes in. I thought that was extremely astute work by the young leader that was there that day. Did everything right, but that’s what we had taught them how to do. | |
| Jen: | Yeah. I’ve experienced, aside from some of the ones that Bryan and I have experienced together, definitely experienced a lot of these types of scenarios, particularly at the beginning of the war when I was responding to mass casualty events. Some of the things that we used to do is, immediately following a mass casualty event we would get everyone together and talk about it and make sure everyone was doing okay. |
| Bryan: | That’s right. |
| Jen: | But one thing we don’t always do great on is the long-term and how that can affect people long-term. There’s no way of knowing how it’s going to affect any one person, but there is definitely going to be some kind of effect one way or another, whether it’s conscious or subconscious. With good leaders, it’s a matter of continuing to check in with your people, make sure they’re doing okay and they have the resources that they need. |
| Bryan: | When I was a young leader, I was in New England for 9-11 and I had locations that were in southwestern Connecticut near New York City and that’s where I was, I was in the Hartford area on the morning of 9-11 when all of those events transpired. I remember, my counterpart and I went back the next day and toured all of our Connecticut stores, not because we really cared about what was going on in terms of the business, but we were worried about the team. Folks there knew people who worked at the World Trade Center, had family members. They had this deep connection to the events in New York City in particular and all we really did was go from location to location and just talk with everybody, like: Is everybody okay? How are you doing? Is there anything we can do? |
| Years later, this still comes up when I talk to people from Connecticut that they had my counterpart and I kind of making this circuit throughout the area to make sure that folks were okay. That was a conversation that we continued as leaders for years, all tied back to that traumatic incident that many of us experienced on the morning of 9-11. | |
| Jen: | Yeah. You find when you go through something as traumatic as that, people really come together and create bonds that never go away, which is great because with those bonds, years down the road … I know I can call some of my buddies that I was involved in some of those mass casualty incidents with, that I can call them any time and we can talk through things. There’s kind of an untold bond between you because you were together. Those relationships are excellent to keep to continue to help each other through things like this, even down the road. |
| That’s a good way to talk about through getting your employees and that through those types of situations, but the one thing we don’t always talk about is leaders. | |
| Bryan: | We are not immune from this. |
| Jen: | Not immune to it at all. Leaders also experience the same levels of stress as anyone else does, plus they have the responsibility to take care of all of these people. |
| Bryan: | I think when we’re talking about leaders, it’s not just leaders at the site because I think of them as being directly impacted, but I’ve worked in crisis management for almost 20 years and it doesn’t go away. Even if you’re leading at a enterprise level and you’re thousands of miles away from the incident that you’re managing, it’s that you still have impact from that, particularly if it’s … For me if it’s one of two things: It’s that sharp, traumatic incident, particularly if lives were lost, but it’s also the … Okay, we’ve had this major incident and we’ve dodged the … We’ve not had people seriously injured, we’ve not lost anyone or a family member, but we have all of this work that has to be done to get the business back up and running and make sure that the team is made as whole as they can through the process because of damage to their community and homes and schools and what have you. |
| Man, that takes a lot out of people and honestly most companies don’t really put a lot of resources into crisis management, so it’s often one, two, three people that are trying to manage this or with the help of a place like ours. I think it’s very challenging and we miss this a lot, as it happens. | |
| Jen: | And it’s a high burnout career. |
| Bryan: | Oh, totally, as we know. |
| Jen: | Yes. That chronic stress, chronic fatigue takes a toll on you, both mentally and physically, for not just leaders but for everyone, but definitely leaders probably experience it the most because they’re also trying to manage people that are experience it. You can see where the domino effect would happen. |
| Bryan: | We’ve talked before about the National Preparedness Leadership program at Harvard. |
| Jen: | Yes. |
| Bryan: | And their idea of meta-leadership through a crisis situation, the emergency situation. I remember that a big part of what we learned going through that program and a big part of their research is the psychology of being that leader in the critical moment and how do you make the decisions and what have you. But the question that Dr. Lenny Marcus would always ask, when he would get in the room and … So there you are at Deep Water Horizon and you’ve got admiral Thad Allen from the Coast Guard is now the incident commander and calling the shots is, when they’re in private: How are you doing? How are you feeling about this? I just saw you do X, Y, Z. Why did you make those decisions? It always came back to: How are you feeling? What are you thinking about emotionally as a leader as you’re going through that? Those things are hard to manage through. |
| Jen: | Yeah. And what do you need? |
| Bryan: | What do you need? |
| Jen: | Leaders need time off too. |
| Bryan: | What do you need as a leader? |
| Jen: | Yeah. |
| Bryan: | I think back to that situation in 2010 with the … That was a violent crime with the employee that was killed. That was my first one managing something like that at that scale and even though I was an experienced crisis manager, I had never done that. I remember coming off the first conference call with the team down there that had just gone through this and lost one of their own and we’re trying to manage through the details and then calling a peer of mine that used to be in this job and just went: Okay, I have to … I’ve got to walk you through what I’m thinking and what I want to do, but can I talk to you about how I feel for a minute because I’m trying to figure out how to process this. |
| Jen: | Yeah. |
| Bryan: | I think we often don’t think about doing that and we don’t think about or have somebody that we can do that with, that understands what you’re going through. It’s not the same as going home and having this conversation with your spouse, unless you’re me and we work in the same field. |
| Jen: | That’s true. |
| Bryan: | You can’t just go to the random friend and say: Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah because they’re not in that same … They’ve never been in your shoes, they don’t really understand that. I think it’s important to find people that you can have that conversation with. |
| Jen: | Yeah. That’s where I go back to some of my old buddies that I used to work with because they’ve been through stressful situations too, so you really lean on each other when that happens. |
| Bryan: | One of the more moving things for me in the last hurricane season that was so big, and this goes back to the National Preparedness Leadership, the NPLI program at Harvard. There was about 800 and some alumni of the program and the faculty would send us updates during major situations because they go out and deploy and they’re walking with us. They sent a pretty heartfelt note one day about halfway through Hurricane Maria that said: Here’s some things we’re seeing and thinking about … But it ended with: Look, we know what it’s like to be at the tip of the spear as leading through these situations and that it’s important to have somebody to talk to. If you don’t have anybody to talk to, call us. Here’s the phone number. Promise not to make you a research subject, but call us or call somebody in the program that you know, or don’t know. |
| I think we could all do that for each other. It’s important to do that, but I think the bigger challenge is recognizing as a leader that you’re not going to be immune to the stress and you’re going to need to find ways to deal with this and seek help with this where necessary as it starts to impact you. | |
| Jen: | I think what’s good in this day and age, we have so many tools out there and there’s so much more education and knowledge around this than there once was. Things like meditation and yoga that used to get kind of balked at but they’re actually now … My doctor actually recommends meditation now and this is well-studied stuff, but some of the preventative things that you can do. We also know, and there’s been a lot of testing around this, that to reduce the effects of stress and fatigue as these things happen are the self-imposed stressors. Drugs, alcohol although you don’t want to be a Drunk Driver, exhaustion, tobacco and … |
| Bryan: | Too much coffee. |
| Jen: | Hypoglycemia. Exactly. All of these things can really amplify the effects of stress. Staying away from the excessive amounts of caffeine, which is laughable because I don’t know any crisis manager … |
| Bryan: | That is not addicted to coffee. |
| Jen: | … That does not drink copious amounts of coffee. |
| Bryan: | Totally. |
| Jen: | And then often times at the end of the day, enjoying a beer after the effects of things. But keeping in mind that anything in moderation is okay, but once you’ve gone to the excessive amounts, no good. Exhaustion is huge. Getting enough rest before incidents happen and then also during the incident you have to take a break, you have to take a step away. |
| Bryan: | We forget about this because there’s usually somebody in charge. There’s an incident commander, there’s … You’re the city emergency management director, you’re the director of crisis management for a company, but that does not mean that you have to be there all the time because it will dull your ability to make decisions and deal with stress. |
| Jen: | Right. Exactly. |
| Bryan: | You’ve got to go home and you have to let somebody else run the thing until tomorrow or whenever. |
| Jen: | Exactly. Yeah. Tobacco, I mean need I say more? Hypoglycemia. Okay, again, I don’t know an emergency manager out there that can’t enjoy a good piece of pizza during an incident, even if it means you’re shoving food in your mouth in between trying to get stuff done. It’s really important that you’re taking care of yourself one way or another. |
| Bryan: | Right. |
| Jen: | It doesn’t have to be pizza, but … |
| Bryan: | Our key message is here: As a part of your recovery, short- and long-term recovery following that immediate response is: Determine the need to bring in assistance to help with the team, understand the signs of stress, particularly post-traumatic stress and what that means and can look like. Make it a priority to touch base with the team as a leader and encourage others to do so to really just check in and just ask folks if they’re okay, if there’s anything they want to talk about or is there anything you can do to help them through that. You’d be surprised sometimes, I think, at the answers again. |
| Jen: | Agree. Make sure some of this is a part of your planning process, let’s not forget that. |
| Bryan: | Right. And get the vendor lined up. |
| Jen: | Yes, exactly. |
| Bryan: | And then for yourself, you’re not immune. We highly encourage you to find a partner in the field, a peer at another company, the person that held your job before you, or call us, we’d be happy to talk. |
| Jen: | Absolutely. |
| Bryan: | Best of luck. |
