Notes on Resilience
Conversations about trauma, resilience, and compassion.
How do we genuinely support individuals who have experienced trauma and build inclusive and safe environments? Trauma significantly affects the mental and physical health of those who experience it, and personal resiliency is only part of the solution. The rest lies in addressing organizational, systemic, and social determinants of health and wellness, and making the effort to genuinely understand the impact of trauma.
Here, we ask and answer the tough questions about how wellness is framed in an organizational context, what supports are available and why, what the barriers are to supporting trauma survivors, and what best practices contribute to mental wellness. These conversations provide a framework to identify areas for change and actionable steps to reshape organizations to be truly trauma sensitive.
Notes on Resilience
83: Crisis Leadership—Unpacking Resilience and Crisis Preparedness, with Eric McNulty
What truly constitutes a crisis, and how should effective leaders respond?
A crisis is an event that threatens life, reputation, operations, or financial stability and can strike at any time. Understanding how to lead and maintain resilience is critical for survival and recovery.
Join us as we sit down with Eric McNulty, the Associate Director of the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative at Harvard, to unpack the essentials of crisis leadership and societal resilience. You'll learn about the three core facets of resilience: the psychological strength of individuals, the robustness of our built environment, and our collective ability to adapt and evolve. Eric offers insights into why psychological preparedness and strong social networks are vital for community cohesion, the critical traits of effective crisis leadership, and the importance of strategic delegation to manage both the crisis and everyday operations. We also underscore the necessity of formal crisis planning and ensuring team members receive adequate rest and support, especially during prolonged emergencies.
Don't miss this engaging and informative episode that promises to equip you with the tools needed for effective crisis leadership.
Eric McNulty is a crisis leadership expert and Associate Director of the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative at Harvard. His work centers on leading in high stakes, high pressure situations. He is the co-author of the book, You’re It: Crisis, Change, and How to Lead When it Matters Most.
You can learn more about the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative on its website. Learn more about Eric on his website or LinkedIn.
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Producer / Editor: Neel Panji
Invite Manya to inspire and empower your teams + position your organization as a forward-thinking leader in fostering resilience and trauma sensitivity.
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Be really clear about your values and core principles, because they will guide you. If you can follow a checklist, it's not really a crisis. It's an emergency, but you'll know what to do, and you may have decision trees mapped out or whatever, but it's relatively straightforward. The true crisis is when the incident doesn't fit your plan, and so you've got to figure out what to do, and so that's where, again, if everyone is clear on what are those values and core principles and that those are the guardrails, that's what you want to adhere to.
Manya Chylinski:Hello and welcome to Notes on Resilience. I'm your host, manya Chylinski. My guest today is Eric McNulty for this episode in our series on crisis leadership. Eric is the Associate Director of the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative at Harvard and he's the co-author of the book You're it, crisis Change and how to Lead when it Matters Most. We talked about the three facets of societal resilience, how to lead in a crisis and what are the things you need to be thinking about, and how hope is not a strategy. I think you're going to find this episode really interesting. Thanks for joining us today, hi, eric. I'm so thrilled to get a chance to talk to you. Thanks for being here today.
Eric McNulty:My pleasure. Thank you, Manya. I'm delighted to be with you.
Manya Chylinski:Well before we dig into the topic of crisis leadership, I want to know if you could have dinner with any historical figure. Who would it be and why?
Eric McNulty:Oh, wow. I think this is a bit obvious, but the situation we find ourselves in right now, I think I'd like to sit down with Abraham Lincoln. Oh, that's a good one. Yeah, you know, he's led through a lot of dysfunction and polarization in the country and I would want to say hey, Abe, what are you seeing and what do you think?
Manya Chylinski:Yes, oh, that would be a good one. I so wish I could make these happen for you guys. If I couldn't be a fly on the wall in the room, I'd at least want to hear about it afterwards. I think you would have some insights. Thank you so much. So we're just going to dive right in, because we're talking about crisis leadership and resilience, and that's something you know a lot about. So let's just dive in. And what are the three facets of societal resilience?
Eric McNulty:Societal resilience is made up of three things. One is the psychological resilience of individuals. How much grit do we have? Then you also want to look at your infrastructure, your systems, the built environment, so our highways, tunnels, water lines, sewer pipes, all those things which, again, if they don't fail in a crisis then we don't have to be quite so gritty. But then I think the really well, I hate to say more important. But the third is our ability to adapt and evolve, and that comes from the study of resilience in environmental sciences. So can we change form to preserve function? Can we adapt to a crisis situation? So, if we can maintain a good attitude and we're strong individually and as a group, I would say resilience also starts with a group and then leads to individuals. But there's a built environment, that place we've put ourselves, that hold up, and then are we able to adapt over time and adapt to the contingencies of the crisis so we continue to have community, we feel safe, we secure and we're able to move forward.
Manya Chylinski:Right, and how do those interact when we are dealing with a crisis?
Eric McNulty:Depends on the type of crisis. So when you look at so Hurricane Beryl it's just come through, devastated the Caribbean. Now Texas can be coming in other parts of the country in the next few days. That is one that is really threatening a lot of built infrastructure. And so it sort of starts there. People's homes are flooded. If you no longer have sewer water, food, those kinds of things, the more quickly we can restore those, the better off we are going to be.
Eric McNulty:And then if people were prepared mentally for the possibility of this happening, they physically got prepared. They also steeled themselves psychologically to say I may be out of my house, I may be separated from my family. The more you've anticipated those contingencies, I think, the more resilient you're going to be. And then having a strong social network again, a family or you're checking on, they're checking on you, or neighbors you can reach out to, Again, that really plays into maintaining societal resilience. And then we'll see the adaptation is more long-term. To say, how do we build back, how do we get ready for that next storm? Yes, Will we make smart choices or not? It might be a little bit different with a terror attack, for example, because there your psychological impact can be much, much different than a predictable surprise like a, like a hurricane.
Manya Chylinski:Right, I was thinking that weather event. You might have at least a little bit of time to prepare physically and mentally. Other kinds of things just happen suddenly and you don't have that opportunity to prepare. How does that affect how we deal with a crisis, something sudden like an accident or a terrorist attack?
Eric McNulty:So we do know that any kind of common foe, be it an individual, an organization or just an event, can trigger natural altruism in humans. We pull together in the face of a common threat. So you could be with a group of strangers who suddenly become a very cohesive unit because you're facing the same danger. And how long that lasts depends on a lot of factors. But I would say for most of us, if we are cultivating those relationships with our neighbors, with those around us, we then have those to draw upon when the bad thing happens. So we've thought about that.
Eric McNulty:I was called down to brief the National Security Council at the White House several years ago when they were looking to establish some resilience policy and they said what do you recommend?
Eric McNulty:And my colleagues and I said we recommend the president declare September, which is National Preparedness Month, the month of barbecues and block parties, because if people get to know each other they will form stronger bonds and they will take care of each other. Now we kind of get laughed out of the room because they didn't think that sounded serious enough. Yes, but resilience is a natural human trait, so we shouldn't try and overthink it Like how do we foster those relationships that bring us together as communities, bring us together as a block, a neighborhood, a town, a city, whatever it is. Look at after the Boston Marathon bombings. All of a sudden it was Boston Strong and it was everybody. Even if you weren't directly impacted by those explosions, you felt it and you pulled together as one. So we ought to be thinking how do we play into those natural human instincts to come together to support each other, to be a community, and make sure we're not triggering those things that can pull us apart?
Manya Chylinski:Yes, I have two thoughts as you're saying this. So one is as a survivor of the bombing, I remember feeling very disconnected from the community and really struggling with that. I think that is part of what made me struggle with it is I felt very disconnected from the people around me in that moment. The response was not so much on the mental health side of things, so then I felt disconnected from community because it wasn't part of the conversation and it was when I was able to sort of slot into my own community my friends, my family, who very much smaller group, but that is what helped me get through. So when you mentioned that, I think Boston Strong the phrase is a little problematic for survivors, but I do think it had some value for the community.
Eric McNulty:Well, I think you raise a really important point because there are, with levels of proximity to the trauma, there obviously are very different experiences and we shouldn't assume they're the same.
Eric McNulty:And I know we've done some work with One World Strong, which is a group that came out of marathon survivors who were visited by survivors of combat injuries from iraq and afghanistan, people who've been through ieds and other kinds of explosions, who came with amputees and others who were had similar outcomes as the people who were affected by the boston marathon and they came in you know, off the record, no big hoopla around it came and talked and said, hey, okay, we actually we probably do have an understanding of what you're feeling because we went through that exact thing, those of us who, like I, was three and a half miles from the bombings. So, yeah, I saw them, heard them, know a lot of people involved in it. My experience is very different than somebody who was on the course at the finish line. Anywhere, they're directly impacted it's we have to realize we'll come together in different ways and we need to be very sensitive as to how we support each other and, I think, acknowledge that.
Manya Chylinski:Yes.
Eric McNulty:Those differences of experience.
Manya Chylinski:Yes, absolutely, you know. And the other thing I was thinking about when you mentioned community I mean you mentioned let's have National Barbecue Month and let's get people to come closer is how difficult the pandemic was, because it ripped us from our communities and put us all in our home and, afraid be part of our communities, and it feels like that was a crisis that proved your point about how important community is.
Eric McNulty:Yes, and again realizing that people, although we're pulled apart, we still can be there for each other, and one of the things we perhaps because I have done a lot in the field of resilience. In the early days of the pandemic I quickly put together a group of about 50 households in my immediate area that we were all connected by email and we said if anybody detests positive and you need something, reach out somebody to get you groceries, farming whatever, walk your dog, whatever it is, and, by the way, anybody on here. Don't feel obligated that you have to if you're not comfortable doing it, but at least we should know who's been affected and if you need something, we can try and figure out how to get it to you right and it was very simple, anybody could do that.
Eric McNulty:and all those get it to you Right. And it was very simple, Anybody could do that. And all those phone trees from soccer leagues and things, all those connections are there. The PTA, whatever your particular social connection, is to remember to activate those. And and again, don't, don't force anybody into it, but when you know there's support there you'll be stronger individually.
Manya Chylinski:Right, absolutely Well. You know how do you define crisis leadership.
Eric McNulty:First of all, I want to define crisis, if that's okay.
Manya Chylinski:Yes.
Eric McNulty:Because I think a true crisis is that which presents some sort of existential threat. It could be to your, obviously life and limb to an individual, but reputationally to an organization, your operational capacity or your financial viability. So it's not the routine emergency, it isn't the bad thunderstorm, it is the hurricane kind of thing that causes a major threat. The bad thunderstorm, it is the hurricane kind of thing that causes a major threat. And then I see, leading through that is the ability to bring people into an uncertain future with hope and confidence. Right, there's a lot of uncertainty, but you can bring them through with hope and confidence. We will get through this, We'll be better on the other side.
Eric McNulty:So a lot of that is about having a high emotional intelligence. It's about explaining the why we're doing things and that we're together. I think one of the things we I teach people who are going to be leading crisis teams is to stop in a moment with you, with your team, and just say this may be horrible, but we will get through it. And I'm really glad this is the team we have put together to get us through it, because just that helps instill the confidence in people. Okay, we got this. It looks horrible, but we'll figure it out and that really helps energize people and get them out of a shock response to a true crisis.
Manya Chylinski:Yes, and validates. The experience of this is hard. It is hard for me, it's hard for you Maybe not in the same ways, but I think that validation is a critical piece. And how can so, if we're thinking of someone who's leading through a crisis? When I say that, I'm thinking of people in official leadership roles, I'm thinking of the mayor, I'm thinking of the CEO. The crisis you know the crisis team in the organization, but I know that individuals can certainly step up and lead as well. But how do we lead through a crisis in ways that will enhance our resilience?
Eric McNulty:So you're right, not everyone who leads in a crisis is in an official leadership role and, in fact, sometimes the people who are in those very senior roles A I don't think should be leading the crisis. They should be leading whatever's left in those very senior roles A I don't think should be leading the crisis. They should be leading whatever's left of the day-to-day, perhaps more if they're going to lead the crisis. They put somebody else in charge of the day-to-day. But there's again, at an organizational level, a bunch of issues we can talk about if it's relevant.
Eric McNulty:But I think, to enhance resilience, I always go back to the Stockdale paradox and I mentioned a bit about this before which is to acknowledge how bad it is. So don't deny reality, because everyone, if they can see how bad it is and you're doing happy talks, they're not going to have any faith in you. Yeah, this is not good, we will get through it and we will be better off. On the other side, you think about, often, communities, organizations. They're at their best when times are worst, because people put down the politics, they put down the rivalries, they forget about the organizational boundaries that get in the way and they just get stuff done. We, as humans are a social species. Right, we are hardwired to work together, to collaborate and cooperate. We build a lot of impediments to that in our day-to-day lives.
Manya Chylinski:Yes, we do.
Eric McNulty:Unfortunately, and then when the crisis often brings us down, I have heard people, even as recently as COVID, say you know this was really awful, but we were good together. How can we be like this all the time? Yes, and it's hard. So I think, when you're thinking about enhancing resilience, again, reward people for figuring things out. Acknowledge the expertise and experience of all the people around you. Even the most junior person may figure out the solution you need. So make sure they feel like they're a valued part of the effort and then make sure to take care of each other. Short-duration crisis is one thing. People can sort of tough it out through that. We're finding there's damage in that. But if you've got something that lasts more than a couple of days, you've got to be able to give people rest. You've got to be able to onboard and offboard people from your crisis teams that people can actually unplug a little bit and not feel bad, not feel like you're letting the team down.
Eric McNulty:Yes, because you want people to be stronger longer, so you've got to be thinking about how do you do that. And again, part of that is giving people the time and the permission to unplug and routinizing it enough that it's okay that you know what. I'm going to go get some sleep and I don't feel like I'm letting everybody down, and I know when I step back in the room you're going to brief me back up. I can plug back in and be productive and somebody else can go take the rest, and so if that's part of the normal routine of how you handle adverse events, it will just feel normal and natural and people will be more resilient.
Manya Chylinski:Yes, and especially someone who is a helper by nature can be very hard to stop helping, even to take care of oneself. So I like the idea of kind of making sure you plan that in as a leader. But I want to go back to something you did mention you talked about. You know, maybe the leader of an organization isn't the person who should be leading the charge after a crisis or during a crisis that somebody needs to be taking care of the day-to-day. I'm thinking, if you're thinking about an organization or a workplace, that you need to have a formal crisis plan that plans that out and kind of sets that structure. What if you don't? What if you're just going through life hoping nothing bad happens? How do you rally and how do you make sure someone is taking care of the day-to-day?
Eric McNulty:Yeah, and hope is not a strategy, that's not a new insight, but it is very true to the crisis. People should recognize that you really should plan for it, have a team with designated roles and have people exercise and prepare, because they're going to have to cohere the team really quickly in the face of an adverse event. So you don't need fighting, you don't need misunderstanding. You need people to work really well together. But if you haven't done that, say if I'm the CEO or the senior most person and I say I'm going to run the crisis and then hand off to somebody who you trust and say and you run everything else, we're going to talk once a day or twice a day, whatever the right cadence is, but I'm not going to worry about that and you're not going to worry about this. We'll coordinate to make sure we're on the same page. But that because you can't do both of those things well.
Eric McNulty:Now, the reason I often recommend and this is somewhat controversial that the crisis leader not be the CEO or that senior most person is because if they fail for some reason, they're really hard to replace. If I've got a vice president who's running the crisis and reporting up and making sure the CEO is informed and make certain decisions. Only the CEO can make vice president fails, I can replace that vice president relatively easily. It's much harder to replace a CEO. But if I have to replace a CEO, I put a crisis on top of a crisis.
Manya Chylinski:Yes.
Eric McNulty:And that can be very hard sometimes for the ego of the CEO. So you have to have that conversation ahead of time and say, okay, Manya is our crisis leader, she's going to run the crisis team. Let's make sure we're clear about. Okay, eric, ceo, here are the three decisions. If we have to make them, you want to make great, manu will bring you those. Everything else, she's empowered, she'll make them, she'll run the team and they'll let you know what's going on, and so you feel like you're informed, but you aren't putting that crisis, that CEO, in the hot seat.
Eric McNulty:I mean, think back to Deepwater Horizon, tony Hayward at BP, who came out many days into that crisis and said you know, I want my life back. 11 people died on that rig and that remark cost him his job. And I didn't know him personally, but I know people who work for him and around him. He was not a bad person. He's not an evil, thoughtless, careless person. He was tired and he put himself in the front of that and pushed himself, I think, beyond where he could even realize what he was saying, right To a certain extent, because he did want his normal routine back.
Eric McNulty:I got it. It was a poor choice of words and so you don't want to put somebody in that position. And again, if I've got somebody at a VP level, I can rotate them through. Okay, you run three or four days, next person steps in, or you do it every few hours, however, depending on the intensity of the crisis, and that allows that CEO to maintain and do what they need to do, and do it well, while having confidence that the people who are actually running the nuts and bolts, plus the CEO, at least in my experience, very rarely do they actually get in, involved in all the exercises and the drills to know what the crisis team is going to do.
Eric McNulty:So when somebody with that much authority steps in and starts giving orders, they just screw up the operational rhythm, they set people behind and now everybody nobody knows what to do because they're waiting to be told what to do and it just it really disrupts the response. So that's why I like to treat those that very pinnacle of positional power, give them a job to do, make sure they know they're very important, but not get them into the weeds of the response.
Manya Chylinski:That's very interesting, that the leaders you want in the crisis are not necessarily the most powerful people in the group, in the organization. They're not necessarily the ones with the formal leadership roles.
Eric McNulty:Right, and you want them, designated, to win that crisis. When you've called a crisis, you've given them whatever authority you've decided to give them. They can make decisions. Yeah, but they don't have to be the most senior person in the organization absolutely.
Manya Chylinski:We've talked about planning. We've I I like the term. You know, hope is not a strategy, but when you're faced with a high pressure situation like that, how do you make decisions, especially if it's a crisis that you've got your emotions involved in as well?
Eric McNulty:So the first step is very simple it's breathe.
Manya Chylinski:Yes.
Eric McNulty:Again, you have a lot of pressure and it always feels like things have to go faster. Take a couple of deep breaths. When you control your breathing, you control everything else in your body. You'll slow down your heart rate, you'll calm yourself down Again, unless you're in a situation where someone's walking in the front door with a weapon. You probably have the 30 or 40 seconds to take a few deep breaths and just okay, let me just get centered here. Everybody around the table, let's take three deep breaths together.
Eric McNulty:Okay, then what you want to do is be really clear about your values and core principles, because they will guide you. If you can follow a checklist, it's not really a crisis. It's an emergency, but you'll know what to do, and you may have decision trees mapped out or whatever, but it's relatively straightforward. The true crisis is when the incident doesn't fit your plan, and so you've got to figure out what to do. And so that's where, again, if everyone is clear on what are those values and core principles and that those are the guardrails, that's what you want to adhere to, and then that will give you the freedom to wrestle with the other contingencies.
Eric McNulty:So I worked with one large global organization and they were very clear. It was people, environment, assets. That was the priority. Take care of your people, worry about environmental damage because they're in the energy business and then worry about the business assets. If you're acting with those priorities in place, we'll back you up. We know you may have to do some unorthodox things, but this is how we want you to act.
Eric McNulty:And so in some crazy situations I can't get into because they were off the record but that really did guide people and again, and they had and everybody in the corporation, from the very top to the bottom, knew that was what you're supposed to do, and so that gives people a lot of agency in the situation, which helps them stay calm and actually take action, but it helps keep them consistent with what you want them to do, without trying to micromanage them. So the organizations that live into their values every day, that prepares them for crisis, those that just have it on the wall or in the annual report and don't actually worry about it it's much harder to call upon those values because they aren't baked into your everyday action and into the way you think and live and breathe in the company.
Manya Chylinski:Yes, and this gets back to what you said at the beginning, talking about emotional intelligence, which I guess in a way like the emotional intelligence of the organization. Some of them have it, some of them don't.
Eric McNulty:That's right. That's right. And it also gives people a way to coalesce, who may be coming from different functions together, may or may not know each other very well, if they have to come together to meet up again. If we're all really clear, here are the values, here's what we stand for. We've all agreed to this and we live it every day. It makes it much, much easier to come together and make decisions, because one of the places you can really get into conflict is people thinking of different ways to make decisions and are using different criteria. And now, because we're under time pressure, it's like I'm arguing against you as opposed to trying to appreciate what you're saying and back and forth. And if we can always call back to remember we said we always take care of people first, yeah, boom, okay, now we know where to go.
Manya Chylinski:Right, that keeps pointing you. That's your North star. It keeps bringing you back to.
Eric McNulty:Exactly.
Manya Chylinski:That's fine, that's happening, but what does it mean for our people, for example? Wow, okay, so you have. We're getting close to the end of our time and I know you have been involved in all sorts of crises in different roles and you've seen a lot, and you've seen what works. You've seen what doesn't work. What's one lesson from the work that you've done that you would want to leave our listeners?
Eric McNulty:with several years ago now actually almost the 10-year anniversary of Superstorm Sandy in New York is never underestimate the potential of volunteers I deployed alongside the FEMA innovation team, which was a couple of folks from FEMA and then a whole group of volunteers who just showed up and said how can we help? There were some technology people, there were some designers, there were a whole range of skills, and what they showed up and tried to do was say let's see where the gaps are in the official response and see how we can plug ourselves in and solve problems. And the people from FEMA and a couple of the folks from the innovation team were really good, who had played both sides of the fence so they could be translators and bridge builders across in terms of language and regulations and what you could and couldn't do. And those folks went out and did amazing work. They weren't getting paid by anybody, they weren't getting recognized by anybody. So we can tend to think only the people in official roles can make a difference.
Eric McNulty:And you know, look for all your allies. Mr Rogers said look for the helpers. Yes, Look for the helpers. And how can you bring them in and help them? Help you be useful in the response, Don't just push them away, because you will get that. We've seen that in disaster after disaster. There are those volunteers. It was the Cajun Navy after Hurricane Harvey in 2017. Folks in Joplin after the tornado there in Harving in 2017, folks in Joplin after the tornado there. Every time you get a major disaster, folks emerge who are really good at helping. Help them, help you and don't push them away.
Manya Chylinski:Oh, that's a great thought to end on, eric, before we officially end, tell us a little bit about yourself and how our listeners can reach you and learn more about your work.
Eric McNulty:Well, thank you. So I'm the Associate Director of the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative at Harvard and we are at nplihsphharvardedu you can find all about. We have lots of resources there and folks who want to get them and find out about our programs. I'm easy to find on LinkedIn. I can't recite my LinkedIn profile, but Eric McNulty, you'll at Harvard those three words. You'll find me happy to connect with people and I'm always happy to hear from people and try and help out where I can.
Manya Chylinski:Excellent, and I'll put a link to those in the show notes to make it easier for people to find you. And Eric, thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate your insights.
Eric McNulty:My pleasure, Manya. Thank you so much.
Manya Chylinski:Thank you for listening. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I did. So if you'd like to learn more about me, manya Chylinski, I work with organizations to help understand how to create environments where people can thrive after difficult life experiences, and I do this through talks and consulting. I'm a survivor of mass violence and I use my experience to help leaders learn of resiliency, compassion and trauma-sensitive leadership to build strategies to enable teams to thrive and be engaged amidst difficulty and turmoil. If this is something you want to learn more about, visit my website, www. manyachylinski. com. Visit my website www. manyachylinskicom, or email me at manya@manyachylinski. com, or stop by my social media on LinkedIn and Twitter. Thanks so much.
