Guest post by James E. Lukaszewski

One of the most common weaknesses I see in crisis response is the lack of specific roles and assignments for top management. The result of this gap in crisis management is mismanagement, lack of management, or paralysis that afflicts leaders as they try to figure out what to do while things are leaking, stinking, burning, foaming and worse.

Rather than running the crisis response, six powerful leadership tasks need to be undertaken before, during and after a crisis erupts. In the course of directing client’s crisis responses and analyzing past failed management responses, it’s clear to me that crisis response success depends on having essential leadership responsibilities spelled out carefully for your senior team (or the leaders who survive):

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