Crisis Leadership, Crisis Communication,
& Crisis Negotiation 

Political instability?  An act of terrorism?  A hostage situation?  Natural disaster?  Product tampering?  Major scandal?  Crises cost companies and societies billions of dollars every year…

Every organisation experiences crises.  In fact, crisis situations often reveal an organisation’s ability to succeed – and to survive.  Some organisations are better than others at coping with crisis situations.  Those organisations that cope well with crises are more likely to succeed over time.  What makes the difference between an organization that deals effectively with crisis situations and one that does not?  The skill and the preparation of people at the top, the expert advice they receive, the guidance they give their people in times of crisis, and – perhaps most importantly – the investment in crisis management capacity before a crisis occurs.

Some crises result from mistakes within the organisation, some come from uncontrollable factors in the market, some from natural or political disasters, and some start at the frontier of the organisation where it interacts with its environment or with other organisations.

Sea-Change expertise in Crisis Management includes offerings in the fields of Crisis Leadership, Crisis Communication, and Crisis Negotiation.

Crisis Leadership

Crisis Leadership is the act of leading an organization through a crisis situation and of managing an organization in ways that make it more resilient and more prepared to deal with crises.  Taking the lead in a crisis does not always mean taking charge.  It means orchestrating an organization’s response to a crisis and managing the tensions and risks inherent in doing so.

Crisis Leadership takes two forms:

• Preparational — What executives and others can do to strengthen the capacity of their organizations to withstand unanticipated crises, and

• Operational — What positive role can executives and others play during a crisis?

Both in preparation and operationally, effective crisis leadership involves three key tasks; understanding the crisis and its causes, delegating appropriate productive tasks for managing all aspects of the crisis, and managing the behaviour of those in the organization dealing with the crisis.

Crisis Communication

An organization’s ability to survive a crisis depends almost as much on managing damage to its reputation as managing the damage to its actual operations.  Because perception is also reality, any organization that wants to build its crisis management capacity must also build its crisis communication capacity.  And no crisis management strategy is complete without crisis communication.

Crisis Communication is where crisis management and public relations meet.  It is primarily about representing the public face of an organization throughout a crisis by engaging with the media and other external observers for the purposes of conveying information, answering questions, dispelling myths, giving progress updates, and managing reputational risk.  Internally, crisis communication is about collecting accurate information about what is happening and ensuring that people within the organization are on the same page with a communication strategy.

Crisis Management capacity is one of the most critical needs in most organizations, yet many organizations learn the hard way…They don’t invest in their crisis management skills and strategies until after suffering through a crisis, unprepared…

Crisis Negotiation

Sea-Change Partners is one of the world’s leading firms providing Crisis Negotiation skills training, coaching, and strategic assistance.  We train some of the world’s top law enforcement agencies, militaries, and interior ministries in negotiating hostage and barricade crisis situations and we lecture widely on negotiating with terrorists.  Managing Director, Keith Fitzgerald, and Senior Consultant, Adam Dolnik, are co-authors of the acclaimed book, Negotiating Hostage Crises with the New Terrorists.  This book is required reading among crisis negotiators in the police and counter-terrorism community.

Our Crisis Negotiation services are not just limited to military and law enforcement, however.  We train diplomats, humanitarian aid workers, and others in international organizations, and we are called upon by multi-national corporations who experience – or might experience – crisis situations that require negotiation assistance; from acute or violent labor disputes, to hostage or other crises on their premises.

Our Qualifications

Sea-Change Partners are experienced crisis leadership and crisis communication professionals, practitioners, advisors, coaches and trainers.  From commercial crises, to hostage negotiations, war, major acts of terrorism, and political crises all over the world, we have experience teaching and advising senior officials, executives, and spokespeople in high stakes crisis situations.

Our senior professionals have delivered Crisis Leadership training to CEOs, senior executives, political leaders, diplomats, and senior military and police officers from over thirty countries.  We have also advised several governments, police forces, and families in hostage crises and siege situations on four continents.

Our crisis communications professionals have served in major international media organizations, corporations, and government offices, reporting from war zones and facing the media during major crisis situations.  The training and advice we offer is based on decades of experience in some of the world’s most extreme circumstances.