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
84: Crisis Leadership—Balancing Empathy and Effective Crisis Management, with Ken Jenkins
How can leaders effectively manage crisis situations while maintaining empathy?
In this next episode in our Crisis Leadership series, crisis response strategist Ken Jenkins shares his insights on crisis leadership. Discover the critical importance of understanding company priorities, fostering transparent communication, and recognizing the humanity of both the crisis responders and those affected. We talk about how adaptability in crisis situations can make the difference between chaos and control
We also discuss the emotional toll on responders, strategies to balance swift decision-making with a visionary outlook, and why having a flexible plan is crucial. We explore key qualities for crisis management, such as having a servant's heart and the ability to humanize command and control.
Ken is a coach, author, and crisis response strategist who has responded to seventeen mass casualty events, including the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He has incorporated the lessons learned responding to those events into his coaching practice and daily life. You can learn more about Ken on his website Ken Jenkins LLC.
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Producer / Editor: Neel Panji
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Knowing what your company's priorities are. There's a saying within transportation emergency response we say if you've seen one accident, you've seen one accident. They're so different, each one is different, and yet there are commonalities between all of them. The kinds of information that people want is very similar, but how you may disseminate it's different depending on where you are and what's available to you.
Manya Chylinski:Hello and welcome to Notes on Resilience. I'm your host, Manya Chylinski. Welcome to another episode in our series on crisis leadership. My guest today is Ken Jenkins. He's a crisis response strategist, an author and a coach, and he has responded to 17 mass casualty events in his career. We had a conversation today about understanding your company's priorities to help you in the response to a crisis, and the importance of communication and transparency and trust in a response. I think you're going to find this episode very interesting. Hi, Ken, I am so glad to have you as a guest on the podcast. Thank you for being here.
Ken Jenkins:You're most welcome. Thank you for having me on your show.
Manya Chylinski:Hey, before we get into the topic of the day, the question I start with if you could have dinner with any historical figure, who would it be and why?
Ken Jenkins:So that's easy for me to answer, because this has been on my mind for some time now and it's historic. I am going to add an S to the figure because it's an entity. I would want to have dinner with the founding fathers. I have so many questions about the intent of things on the Constitution. I would really just love to go to the horse's mouth and find out what did you mean when you wrote this and what did you mean when you wrote that? I'd really like to know.
Manya Chylinski:I think a lot of people would like to know I was going to say I think many of us would like to join you in this dinner and ask some of these questions. That is a great one.
Ken Jenkins:Ken, and it's funny. I'm not overtly political or anything like that, and it's not even so much about the politics as it is. I just want to understand because there's so many interpretations of the Constitution, yes that if we could talk to the folks that wrote it, I think that would be very beneficial.
Manya Chylinski:Yes, and there's conversation these days about well, this is what they meant, and it would be quite interesting to find out if those interpretations are actually correct.
Ken Jenkins:Yeah, it's like we don't know exactly what they meant when they wrote, what their intent was.
Manya Chylinski:Yeah.
Ken Jenkins:Yeah.
Manya Chylinski:Very good one, Ken. Thank you.
Ken Jenkins:Thank you.
Manya Chylinski:All right. Well, speaking of crises, we that's what you and I are talking about today crisis leadership. And just to get us started, how do you define leadership in a crisis?
Ken Jenkins:I find that by itself an interesting question because there are lots of ways to approach it. I think of crisis leadership as individuals that are able to balance the response with a servant's heart and a deep focus as to the response itself, and that is meaning they're able to see the big picture of the priorities that need to be accomplished and they're able to perform those priorities with the ability to be compassionate and empathetic to the responders. So I think that's a really delicate balance. It's one I learned the hard way, so I'm very type A in the first initial days of a response, and then I somewhat mellow out, if you will, once the routine gets settled. And I had lost sight in the first, those first few days, of the people that were responding in their humanity and forgot that they were human beings. And I don't think we can ever forget that. The other side of the crisis, there's the crisis, the event itself, and there are those that are responding and we can't lose sight of their humanity. So when I think of crisis leadership, I think of that.
Manya Chylinski:You mentioned those first few days in the heat of the initial part of the crisis, and you mention your own not feeling like you've seen the humanity. Is that something that's common in the I want to say panic of the initial crisis?
Ken Jenkins:In my humble opinion, I believe so. I think it's more common than it isn't and that, I think, is in itself an issue. I do believe, over time, once that initial hit if you will, the first, I say the first 72 hours things start to settle down because processes are in place, procedures are being followed, we've got a good lay of the land. Then you start to see that, however, if you know ahead of time, like I learned by the time I had my third or fourth response, I knew ahead of time. I needed to learn to settle myself down earlier than 72 hours, because the folks that that you're leading are impacted by the crisis too, and they don't need to be treated necessarily by type A, if you will. They need some empathy and some compassion, as well as those that you're serving.
Manya Chylinski:Right, Well, I imagine. Are there any crises where the people who come in and are dealing with a crisis are not actually directly impacted by the crisis? I feel like that's just the nature of the beast.
Ken Jenkins:No, and you're right. I think, though, from a responder's perspective, we come in thinking here are the people that we're bringing in to address the crisis. We tend to focus on those we're addressing and not those that are doing the addressing, and it's the fine line. And it's not everybody in the organization, because it's not just one person that's leading the response, it's a number of people. I would just say that, philosophically, a company needs to have that reminder that the employees that they're sending out to do the response, or the volunteers that are responding on behalf of that organization, aren't necessarily police, fire and military that grow up and work in a command and control type of environment and this is new for many people and when they get slapped in the face with this response, there needs to be some sensitivity to the responders themselves.
Manya Chylinski:What personal qualities or skills do you think are essential for that leadership during a crisis?
Ken Jenkins:Well, I mentioned servant's heart, and there are a number of other things as well. Patience certainly is one, and even though there are times where decisions need to be made quickly, you can always take 60, 90, 120 seconds to step back and think about your response before you blurt it out, I think also having a clear vision of what the end is for you. You know, begin, stephen Covey said in one of his seven habits of highly effective people begin with the end in mind. So what is the end game? What is it that you're trying to accomplish?
Ken Jenkins:Certainly, knowing your organization's priorities are key and processes and procedures are really important. You have to have your procedures in place and there has to be the flexibility and adaptability to understand that not all emergencies that you plan for are going to fall within that neat little box you plan for. So how do you adapt your processes to meet the priority? And sometimes organizations get stuck there. They're not looking at that adaptability and flexibility between the priority and the process, and I think that's really, really important.
Ken Jenkins:The other thing is and I coined this term a number of years ago is to humanize your command and control. Remember that the people that are responding are human beings that are impacted by the crisis and respect that and treat them as you would treat the people that you're responding to, so that everyone has some level of comfort and can lessen their anxiety. And I also think one other quality and there's a hundred that I can think of is to balance the head and the heart. It's not a response, it's not all head and brain. There's a balance with the heart and compassion and empathy too.
Manya Chylinski:Yes, and you know, not being a crisis professional myself, but someone who's lived through a crisis, as you know, many of us have I just think back to my own emotions and think how difficult it would be to kind of stop that process and then have to be thinking and, you know, using the head and not just the heart. So that's quite an amazing skill for someone in your profession.
Ken Jenkins:And it's one that I personally. I think some folks it's an innate ability and others that can become a learned ability. So, knowing where you fall on the spectrum innate versus learned work yourself along that scale.
Manya Chylinski:Yes, after my experience at the bombing I remember thinking to myself I don't know how anybody lives, works, is in the military. If you're in a place where there's a war zone or there's bombing, I remember thinking to myself I have no idea how you can experience that and then go back to the same place the next day and expect that potentially this thing could happen again. And I remember thinking that must be a lot of training, especially if you're thinking of the military. That must be training for the most part, for most people.
Ken Jenkins:It is to a large degree and I think, as part of the processes and procedures within a crisis response, is how you take care of your responders, post the response and what that follow-up looks like and what services are provided to them as well.
Manya Chylinski:Yes, Now, you mentioned something earlier talking about, as you're in the moment, having the end in mind. We're dealing with this crisis, but what do we want it to look like? Or said it's not following the checklist that you had for certain types of crises. So how are you able to actually think of what you want the end result to be?
Ken Jenkins:And possibly within transportation. It's a little Well I example have to follow in terms of services that they provide to the families and survivors in the aftermath of an accident. One of the ways that we did that was we just stepped back and said to ourselves if we were the person that had been on the plane that crashed, for example, what information would we want to know? And you just start brainstorming all of these and nothing is off base. Come up with all the questions Where's my loved one? Are they alive or dead? Are they missing? Are they at a hospital? If they're at a hospital, which hospital are they in? When can I have their personal belongings back? When will I get the body back for burial? Are all things that, if you start anticipating what questions are going to be, you can start to anticipate the stakeholders that you're going to need to talk to to get those questions answered, so that then you're prepared and you're already thinking ahead of the game of. These are some of the areas where we're going to have to respond, and so you don't wait for the crisis to happen. You start anticipating what kind of crisis are there in your business other than your line of business? If you were the one impacted what would you want to know? And then you kind of back end it from there and work your way forward to see what it is you would want to respond with. You're not going to capture everything. You won't cross every T and dot every I, but you can get a good majority of that information so that when the crisis happens, you know what to anticipate and expect.
Ken Jenkins:And there is one thing that I have found that is the same from crisis to crisis One thing that those impacted want and it's very simple and in its simplicity becomes the intricacy of the answer. The number one thing that family members and those impacted by a crisis want in the aftermath of that crisis is information. How quickly can you get information to people? How quickly can you get information to people? And then it becomes what information do they want? Yes, and then how quickly do you provide that information to people? And usually, where you find a company not doing well in their responses, they're not providing information. And if they are providing information and it doesn't feel transparent or truthful, then there's a whole nother issue that comes up from that.
Manya Chylinski:Right and if you're providing the information in the right way and in the way somebody needs to hear it and we know that when we're dealing with emotions, it can be very difficult to intake information. Even if that's information I am specifically looking for, it can still be hard for me to hear it and understand it and remember it. You're fighting against that as well.
Ken Jenkins:That's right and that's, I mean, you just keyed in on a really important point is people are listening differently. The internal noise, as we call it in community, you know, with your communication styles your internal noise may be so high that you don't hear the message the first time. So I mean I've been in family assistance center briefings before Manya where somebody would go to the front to the microphone and ask an NTSB, a National Transportation Safety Board investigator, a question about the investigation and then the next four or five people that would come up would ask the exact same question. And it's simply because that internal noise is so high they weren't listening to what the first people. So that's where that patience comes in.
Ken Jenkins:Yes, and I've also seen from doing my own debriefs of team members that are responding, the same thing applies their own internal noise may be so high. I would do a briefing with 400 to 500 people in the auditorium and I would get the same question over and over and over again and I had to remember it's because they're thinking of things. They didn't hear the first question, they were thinking of something else at the time and so it's hard to be patient when you're getting that over and over and over again, but remembering the why behind it is critical.
Manya Chylinski:Right, or they heard the words that you said, but they weren't the words they were expecting to hear, so, even though it was the same message, it didn't quite click. I think that's a. I mean, you have a challenge from both sides. You and your team are dealing with the emotions and having to make decisions in this difficult environment, and it's harder for people to hear the messages, even if they're looking for them. So I imagine you have to have a lot of trust in your team.
Ken Jenkins:You do, and there needs to be trust within the organization and you know that lends itself to. I have a little bit of a tangent about this and that is senior management. For example, senior officials need to have trust in their team and I was very fortunate where I worked with the airline that I worked for, where that existed. So our senior officers, for the most part, while they had their list of things and tasks that they needed to complete, one of their main objectives and goals was to support us. They didn't want to be tied up with so many tasks that if we needed them to run interference for us, they couldn't because they were too busy. So they allowed us to do our job and do our work and trusted that since we did it day in, day out.
Ken Jenkins:Now, mind you, we're not always responding to a crisis every day, but we're planning and we're training and we're drilling and we're exercising and we're practicing and we're exercising and we're practicing and we're refining and fine tuning and talking to other companies that do similar work to see what are the best practices. We know what we're talking about, that when we did get hit with something that we didn't know what to do, all I had to do was tap the shoulder of a senior officer and they were immediately available to go run interference for us. And yet I've seen organizations where that doesn't happen. When the crisis occurs and all of a sudden, senior management starts to take it over and they forget they have a whole emergency response team in place to do the work and there's conflicting messages. There's conflict going on between the teams over who's supposed to do what, because people are doing things that they weren't asked to do Right, and so trust is very key. If you're going to have a team in place, trust their ability to do the work.
Manya Chylinski:I imagine for some leaders that can be difficult if you're used to kind of being in charge and the one that people turn to when there's a question or a concern. And now this you really have to trust your crisis team and kind of not step on any toes.
Ken Jenkins:Well, it agreed. And remember the number one thing that people want in the aftermath of a crisis is information, right? Well, that's the same for your senior management too. Well, that's the same for your senior management too. So we have to be able to provide information from the ground and from from where we're responding back to them, so that they know what's going on, so that they're in the loop and not out of the loop. Yes, they know what questions we're getting on the ground and how we're responding, so that they know that, if we come to them, they have an idea of what's going on. We don't have to spend a lot of time on a backstory telling them this is what's happening. So there's a lot of communication that needs to be occurring from at the site to your responders and then from at the site to those at your headquarters.
Manya Chylinski:They want to feel connected to the response as well. So there's a lot of work to do in that realm, wow. So communication and trust feel like the two key things, elements that you need to be thinking about on the team when you're dealing with a crisis.
Ken Jenkins:And there's certainly two, I think two at the front of it.
Manya Chylinski:Yes, so, ken, you have been involved with some pretty significant crises in your career. What's one or two key lessons you've learned from being on the ground and dealing with some of these things in the moment?
Ken Jenkins:Wow, I hesitate there because there's so many, so many things I could think of. One of them we've already talked about Well, actually I think both of them we've talked about is knowing what your company's priorities are. There's a saying within transportation emergency response we say if you've seen one accident, you've seen one accident. They're so different, each one is different, yet there are commonalities between all of them. The kinds of information that people want is very similar, but how you may disseminate it's different depending on where you are and what's available to you.
Ken Jenkins:I remember, for example, in one of our responses, the NTSB was trying to set up a communications line where people could dial in If they didn't come to the Family Assistance Center. They could call into the Family Assistance Center and hear the briefing. Ok, we were in such a small town. The technology wasn't available at this little hotel and I even hesitate to call it a hotel that we were in. It was pretty basic services communications piece plug it in and they had to duct tape it to the podium and then dial it in in order for people to be able to hear, versus anything else that was of any kind of higher tech, because that's all there was.
Manya Chylinski:Right right.
Ken Jenkins:And so the priority was for people to be able to hear what was going on. How you do it didn't fit their mode and their model Right, so you have to go to a plan B and sometimes a plan C and sometimes a plan D. Yes, the priority didn't change, but the process did. Yes, and that was something that we learned. You know, it was very unfortunate for us we had eight fatality events in 10 years and the benefit to those responses was we learned a lot because of the frequency of them. Worked what didn't work and then it made it.
Ken Jenkins:The definition of flexibility really came into play and that not everything that worked in that first accident worked in the second accident or the third, but we knew that the priorities stayed the same.
Ken Jenkins:So I would say, understanding your priorities is really key, and knowing that there are a thousand ways to get from point A to point B is important.
Ken Jenkins:Yes, the second is and this is a personal thing for me, manya is if you're the department that writes the plan, drills the plan, exercises the plan, communicates the plan to senior management, I also think you should be the ones that go to the actual scene to live out the plan, because you know it better than anybody else, and I've seen some organizations and this is just my personal preference I've seen some organizations where the people who write it and live it stay back at headquarters and they send volunteers that are trained in it to go do it. The volunteers don't do it every single day, though, so send your best people forward to be at the scene to take care of what needs to be done and let them communicate to you back via headquarters through teleconferencing and things like that. I think that's just a personal preference for me. I've seen it work both ways. My personal preference is to send those that know the plan the best.
Manya Chylinski:Absolutely, and I imagine for those on the ground if we're thinking of the victims or survivors or the people who've been most impacted by the crash having someone senior, having someone trained also feels more respectful, Like, oh, somebody important is coming to take care of us in terms of their skill and knowledge.
Ken Jenkins:It's also the senior officer from the organization that comes on behalf of the organization to speak to those individuals the first time. They shouldn't have a first time where they get up in front of families without being briefed and practiced and exercised. That should be part of the plan. Yeah, and not and don't have just one person. Have a cadre of people that have been through simulated briefings with the questions that they get an idea and it's not so that they're rehearsed. It's all to help lessen that internal noise. Yes, because it is scary to get up in front of fifteen hundred family members and say I'm sorry, we're the ones that had the crash Right. That's really scary to do and I can't imagine the level of emotion that they would have doing it. So the more skilled they are and having those sets of those words at least once or twice, even in practice, is a good thing.
Manya Chylinski:Absolutely, absolutely. Ken, we are coming up on the end of our time and I wish we weren't, but we are. Before we leave, can you let our listeners know who you are and what do you do, and how can they get in touch with you?
Ken Jenkins:Sure, Thank you very much, Manya. Well, my name is Ken Jenkins. I am a crisis response strategist and I primarily work in the field of aviation emergency response with airports and airlines around the world. You can find my information on my website, which is KenJenkinsLLCcom.
Manya Chylinski:Excellent. I'll put the link to that in the show notes so people can find you and Ken. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me today.
Ken Jenkins:You're more than welcome. I appreciate visiting with you today.
Manya Chylinski:Thanks All. Right Bye everyone. 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, or email me at manya at manyachylinski. com, or stop by my social media on LinkedIn and Twitter. Thanks so much.
