When Crisis Comes

How do you act when a crisis comes? Does it motivates you to find unused resources of energy and creativity or rather overwhelms and tires you? Answer yourself honestly. You are not on the interview.

How do your people act when a crisis comes? Who performs well and who don’t deal well with pressure? Think about that before you need to choose those who would help you in a difficult situation.

Ask people how they deal with stressful situations and virtually everyone will tell you that’s not a problem for him. Look at people working under pressure and at least half of them won’t perform very well. A differentiator here is a mixture of several traits including creativity, ambition, general attitude (pessimist/optimist) and engagement.

I don’t say everyone should have the mixture or not being that kind of person is bad. No. But there are roles out there which are much easier to fulfill when you deal well with crisis. Project manager, support engineer, fire fighter, marine... Oops, wrong branches.

Although some of us are more predisposed to deal with stress than others it can be learned to a certain level by anyone. And even when you’re not willing to learn that there are a bunch of positions where it isn’t needed as much. Most of development or quality assurance roles (although not all them) to take the most obvious ones.

When a crisis comes you look for people who will perform well in the situation. When a crisis comes it’s better to know whether you can count on each person in your team. Including yourself. Answering the questions stated at the beginning isn’t a waste of time.