This wasn’t a moment to stand back and let the team figure out what to do on their own. I needed to make sure people knew exactly what they were working on and had the tools to find solutions as fast as possible. I had to command and control.

In a crisis, everyone has their job:

• If you’re an individual contributor, you need to take your marching orders and start marching. Do your core job while continuing to look for and suggest other options to solve the issue. Try not to speculate or gossip. If you have concerns or suspicions, report them up the chain, then get back to work.

• If you’re a manager, you need to relay information from leadership without overwhelming or distracting your team. Check in with the team a couple of times a day—try not to harass them more than that (hourly messages just freak everyone out). You need to be there for them, not just to ensure that the work is getting done, but also to make sure they’re okay. You’re the first line of defense against burnout. The pressure, stress, red-eyes, and bad food in the middle of the night will get to people. You may need to give everyone a break—even during a crisis. Remember to set expectations and limits. You’ll probably have to work over the weekend. Okay. That happens. But tell your team what the plan is: we’ll work hard on Saturday but everyone needs to get out of the office at 5 p.m. and then we’ll have a check-in on Sunday night.

• If you’re the leader of a broader group or company, you probably spent years of your life unlearning the tendencies of micromanagement. Well, if you’re in a crisis then it’s time to be a micromanager again.

You’ll need to dig into the details—all the details. But you can’t make every decision on your own or fix everything single-handedly. You have experts, so you’ll need to delegate to them. Agree on the microsteps that need to be taken, but allow them to take those steps without you. Schedule check-ins in the morning and at the end of the day and instead of getting the usual weekly or biweekly reports from your team, start going to their daily meetings. You have to be in there, listening, asking questions, and getting necessary information in real time. You might have to be the conduit of that information to the rest of the company, to investors or reporters or whoever else is watching this situation like a hawk. You need to be able to answer their questions. You need to keep up their confidence that you’re getting somewhere.

Clear your calendar of nonessential meetings. Focus entirely on fixing the problem. And don’t let yourself get knocked off balance— you’re human. Don’t make things worse by losing your mind and ignoring the things you need to keep your head on straight. That might be exercising or resting or having dinner with your family or lying on the floor under your desk for ten minutes quietly singing show tunes. Whatever you need. And remember, your team is human, too—people need to go home. They need to sleep. They need to eat. And they need to feel like things are getting better.

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.

As a manager, you are judged on your team’s outcomes, so your job is to do whatever most helps them succeed. If your team is lacking key skills, then you need to spend your time training or hiring. If someone is creating problems for others, then you need to get him to stop. If people don’t know what they should be doing, then you need to construct a plan. A lot of this work is unglamorous. But because it’s important, it must be done, and if nobody else does it, then it falls to you.

This is why adaptability is a key trait of great managers. As your team changes—whether it’s goals shifting, people joining or leaving, or processes evolving—what you do every day will also change.

When the sailing gets rocky, the manager is often the first person others turn to, so it’s common to feel an intense pressure to know what to do or say. When you don’t, you naturally think: Am I cut out for this job?

The second reason is that you are constantly put in the position of doing things you haven’t done before. For example, say you have to fire someone. How do you prepare yourself for such a task? It’s not like improving your skills in drawing or writing, where you can invest time on nights and weekends to sketch or compose short stories. You can’t just snap your fingers and say, “I’m going to practice firing a lot of people this month.” You must actually go through the real thing in order to gain the experience you need.

Management isn’t an innate skill. There is no such thing as an “all-around great manager” who can transition effortlessly between different leadership roles. We must look at the specific context.

Even in the vast majority of cases when no malfeasance occurs, trying to do it all alone is still a serious trap. If you operate as a lone wolf who refuses to ask for help or involve others, you will cut yourself off from valuable input and feedback. Even if you are on the right track, you will invariably burn out, which will only further hurt the organization. Furthermore, you will only make your managers feel disenfranchised, alienated, and impotent. After all, as Jim Kilts of Gillette points out, “You can lead, but ultimately it is the people in the company who have to deliver.