Tomorrow, 10th October, is World Mental Health Day, and this year the focus is on ensuring that people affected by conflict, disaster, and displacement have access to the mental health and psychosocial support they need in times of crisis.
Now, I won’t even try to speak to what those people must be going through, and the toll it must be taking on them, but I can speak about dealing with a crisis on a smaller scale: when something goes wrong at work, in your personal life, or close by.
In any situation, it’s easy to get caught up in the middle of everything and not recognise the risks and dangers till it’s too late. If life up till then has been going great, when things suddenly start getting hairy it’s easy to freeze, without any clue of what to do.
So this week I’m sharing my top tips on what I think are the best practices before, during and after a crisis:
- Remember the 5 D’s of a crisis
A crisis will unfold in a classic structure, on the whole.
First comes the Drama – whatever the crisis is, it’s happened. It might be a fire in your home, a car crash, a collapse of markets – it’s something that puts you at risk. All too often the immediate response is Denial – you don’t want to think about what’s happening or what the long-term consequences might be. So there you are, sitting with your fingers in your ears, saying ‘everything will be fine!’, which leads to Delay: rather than immediately dealing with the situation, you put off fixing things… which can ultimately make a problem bigger as it snowballs.
Eventually you arrive at Deliberation. Maybe you’ve seen other people reacting and realise you need to make a move. So you spend some more time thinking about what it is you should actually do.
You make a Decision and finally take action to deal with the crisis. Too often though, it’s too late, and you’re left with a 6th D: Damage.
If you can take a shortcut from Drama to Decision, you’ll hopefully avoid some of the Damage, so think about the strategies you need in place to help you move quicker.
- Be aware of your biases
There are usually two biases that come into play when you’re feeling panicked, and it’s really important to make sure you’re aware of them.
Confirmation bias is when you’re searching for positive signs to confirm that whatever decision you’ve made is the right one. You reject anything that goes against what you want to hear and keep looking evidence that you’re doing the right thing.
When we’re looking at finance and investment (which of course comes with its own inherent risks), you might be upset by someone telling you that an investment you’ve set your heart on is risky. That’s confirmation bias right there, which you may not recognise (or may not want to recognise!). Be careful – by not acknowledging when you’ve stopped being logical and become blinkered, you could get burned in the long run.
Continuity bias is a tendency to downplay risks and throw caution to the wind, and assuming things will stay as they are. When crypto collapsed a few years ago, people were advised to ‘buy the dip’ – to buy more during any drop, because the market would always bounce back… which worked for a while, until it didn’t, and loads of people lost money.
When a specific strategy is working, great – but you have to remember that it won’t work forever. Business models change. Habits change. Markets change.
At some point, things you’ve been doing consistently for the last few years will suddenly stop working. You may not initially recognise this, and think you’re in another ‘buy the dip’ situation, but eventually it’ll become clear that your strategies need to change.
When you’re caught up in something you might think that your thought processes are entirely rational, but be aware that your brain likes to play tricks on you! Check in with people you trust to get their perspective on things, if you think your own might be skewed.
- Focus on what you can control.
A friend once came to me facing a potentially career-ending crisis, without a clue of what he should do. The advice I gave him was to focus on what he could control, rather than fretting about what he couldn’t. That’s advice I’ve given to myself over the years (although earlier on in my career that wasn’t always the case, I must admit!)
Remember, each person has three circles of influence in life:
- The inner circle. This is you. You get total control over everything going on, ie your emotions and your behaviour. This is where your focus needs to be in a crisis.
- The outer circle. Friends and family. You might have influence here, but you can’t expect to have full control, nor should you try to have!
- The great beyond. Peers/society. You have absolutely zero control here, so it’s pointless spending time and energy worrying about things you have no bearing on.
Focus on what you can control in your own life, and don’t worry about the rest – some things (the 2008 crash, COVID) are going to unfold regardless of what action you take.
- Keep your emotions in check
One of the worst, but completely understandable, things you can do in a crisis is let your emotions take over. I really am talking about smaller scale issues here – for instance, your financial portfolio.
Don’t get emotional when you have volatile dips and rises, and don’t get sucked in if other people appear to be winning, when all you’re seeing is a loss.
A long time ago a friend of mine was doing really well in stocks and shares, telling me how much money he was making. Like a flash, I was in the market, trying to replicate his gains. Don’t react to other peoples’ wins: they might be selling you a filtered version of events rather than what’s actually going on. For all I really knew, my friend was up to his neck in losses and was trying to front it out.
- Plan for a rainy day
Scenario planning is vital in protecting yourself: you need a base case and a pessimistic case. As we saw with COVID-19, global events can appear out of nowhere to throw everything into chaos. If you always have a worst-case scenario in your back pocket and assume that something’s going to hit the fan, there’s a greater chance that you’ll make it out the other side if and when things do go wrong.
But what does this actually look like in practice?
Start by asking yourself: “What’s the worst thing that could realistically happen here?” Not the apocalyptic, everything-burns-down scenario, but a genuinely plausible bad outcome. Maybe you lose your job, or a relationship breaks down. Perhaps an investment tanks, or your health takes a turn.
Now work backwards: what would you need to survive that scenario? An emergency fund? A backup plan? Skills you could fall back on? People you could call? Write it down and actually map it out.
The goal here isn’t to become paralysed by pessimism – it’s to try and remove the element of surprise. When you’ve already thought through the worst case, you’re less likely to freeze when things go wrong. You’ve already got a playbook, even if it’s rough.
Look at it this way – fire drills aren’t fun, but they mean you know what to do when the alarm goes off.
- Take ownership
This can be hard to accept (and again, I’m really not talking about people caught up in geopolitical conflict), but you have to take total ownership for whatever situation you find yourself in.
Own your stuff, don’t blame other people. Yes, there may be other factors at play, other people acting against you, but the reality is that whatever situation you’re in, you’re the one who put yourself there. If you can accept that, then you can deal with it.
Say you go into a business deal that goes badly wrong. Your instinct is to blame the other party – they misled you, they changed the terms, they acted in bad faith. All of which may be true. But the uncomfortable reality is that you chose to work with them. You didn’t do enough due diligence. You ignored warning signs because you wanted the deal to work.
Once you stop pointing fingers and accept your role in the mess, you can actually start fixing it. You can’t control what someone else may have done, but you can control how you respond, what you learn, and what you do differently next time.
This doesn’t mean being harsh on yourself or wallowing in self-pity, blaming yourself. It means recognising that you have agency – that if you put yourself in a situation, you can get yourself out of it (or at the very least learn how to avoid it in future).
Remember: you can only get out of a problem if you accept that you’re a significant portion of that problem. It’s not about fault, it’s about power. By taking ownership, you take back control.
These tips may all feel a little gloomy and pessimistic, but take it from someone who’s been there, they won’t steer you wrong.
The truth is, crises are inevitable. You can’t avoid them entirely, no matter how carefully you plan or how well you prepare. But what you can control is how you respond when they hit.
The people who come through them best aren’t necessarily the smartest or the luckiest – they’re the ones who’ve done the work beforehand, who know their biases and have planned for worst-case scenarios. They’ve built the resilience and mental muscle needed to focus on what they can control and let go of what they can’t.
So don’t wait until you’re in the middle of a crisis to think about these things. Take some time now, while things are calm, to consider what you’ll do if and when things go wrong: after all, you won’t have the luxury of clear thinking and unlimited time when things really do go south.