The key is persistence and being helpful. Not just asking for something, but offering something. You always have something to offer if you’re curious and engaged. You can always trade and barter good ideas; you can always be kind and find a way to help.

4.6. Crisis

“You will encounter a crisis eventually. Everyone does. If you don’t, you’re not doing anything

important or pushing any boundaries. When you’re creating something disruptive and new, you will at some point be blindsided by a complete disaster.

It may be an external crisis that you have no control over, or an internal screwup or just the kinds of growing pains that hit every company. [See also: Chapter 5.2: Breakpoints.] Either way, when the time comes, here’s the basic playbook:

1. Keep your focus on how to fix the problem, not who to blame. That will come later and is far too distracting early on.

1. As a leader, you’ll have to get into the weeds. Don’t be worried about micromanagement—as the crisis unfolds your job is to tell people what to do and how to do it. However, very quickly after everyone has calmed down and gotten to work, let them do their jobs without you breathing down their necks.

1. Get advice. From mentors, investors, your board, or anyone else you know who’s gone through something similar. Don’t try to solve your problems alone.

1. Your job once people get over the initial shock will be constant communication. You need to talktalktalk (with your team, the rest of the company, the board, investors, and potentially press and customers) and listenlistenlisten (hear what your team is worried about and the issues that are bubbling up, calm down panicked employees and stressed-out PR people). Don’t worry about overcommunicating.

1. It doesn’t matter if the crisis was caused by your mistake or your team or a fluke accident: accept responsibility for how it has affected customers and apologize.

It’s your responsibility as a leader not to try to deal with a disaster on your own. Don’t lock yourself in a room, alone, frantically trying to fix it. Don’t hide. Don’t disappear. Don’t imagine that by working for a week straight and not sleeping you can solve the problem yourself and nobody ever has to know. Get advice. Take deep breaths. Make a plan.

Then put on your rain boots and walk into the tidal wave.

The silver lining is that once the crisis is past—assuming you survived it, of course—you’ll have a team that’s gone through hell and back and is stronger for it. You’ll have time to go figure out the why—why did this happen in the first place? And what can we do so it doesn’t happen again? That may mean someone gets fired or the team reorganizes or the way you

communicate with each other drastically changes. The process may be lengthy and unpleasant.

Just don’t ignore the hard stuff simply because it’s hard. Don’t forget to talk about culture just because nobody quite knows how to talk about culture.

After my crisis, everyone became more supportive and realised I was vulnerable. I learnt how to cope better by expressing myself when I felt too much pressure instead of pretending I was invincible. For me, it was the beginning of the realisation that I don’t have to sound like Aretha or anyone else. I just have to sound like me.