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.

Schacht’s advice is especially pertinent during a crisis. In troubled times you need to have as many brains as possible working on the issues, but those brains have to agree on what they are doing and why. “You have to have agreement on definition of duties,” he says. “You’ve got to have roles and responsibilities and none of that is easily apparent, particularly in a crisis and particularly when you have to make changes.” Listening and talking to people takes time, a precious commodity when everyone is breathing down your neck and demanding answers, direction, and a strategy for salvation. Nonetheless, Schacht declares, “This is not a luxury, it’s critically important. It’s the most important thing you can do.

If your people don’t know what the direction is, they won’t know where to go. The result: Energy dissipates, momentum slows, morale plummets, and the company drifts. It’s not a pretty picture. Making sure everyone sees the same picture and then understands what that picture means, Parson says, requires “more contact with people, more opportunities to meet them, and more communication.

If you are in a leadership position in a visible company, especially in a time of crisis, stories will be written regardless of what you do. Reporters have a job to do, and they will do it whether you like it or not. Treating them forthrightly, consistently, and with facts is considered best practice in crisis situations.

[Carly] Fiorina, who in fact had done such an in-depth study of the company and the situation that she had many of the answers, probably meant to reassure people by her knowledge. But by not asking questions and by not failing to have some answers, she scared many of the employees. Fortunately, when this feedback was delivered and received, Fiorina adapted her active listening and allowed her natural gift for communication to flourish. This increased her credibility and at the same time deepened her insights into the company, its challenges, and its opportunities.