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Navigate-Crises

Context Coaching: 5 Leadership Tools for CLOs to Navigate Crises

Navigate Your Executives Through Crisis

Perhaps one of the most interesting, demanding, and downright scary roles for Chief Legal Officers (CLO) is crisis management.  Name the crisis of the moment – from legal to financial to political to environmental to garden variety scandals – and CLOs will or should be in the thick of it. With our Context Coaching tools, CLOs will not only survive but thrive.

Tool #1: Remain Calm

It is quite remarkable but by setting aside the natural fear, drama, and usual blame game associated with a given crisis, calmness allows one a zen-like focus on problem-solving.  It sets the right tone, lowers the temperature, and enables your peers and teams to actually handle the crisis.

It is also an admirable quality that inspires confidence, builds credibility, maintains morale, and is often what is remembered most as the crisis plays out.

Tool #2: Learn the Key Available Facts

In the early stages of most crises, “available” is the operative word. It very often takes time, relentlessness, and resources to get to the bottom of the true key facts. By focusing early on “The Available Facts,” CLOs drive a rational process to determine and implement the best course of action. This helps even when the news is not as bad as initially understood or downright awful without paralysis or overreaction.

Tool #3: Assemble the Right Team

Expertise, diverse perspectives, and problem solvers both internally and externally ensure multiple points of inquiry, action, and potential solutions. In this regard, humility goes a long way as collaboration does not work unless CLOs solicit and value the input, empower teams, and together drive to the best course of action with a shared sense of ownership.

Tool #4: Adapt and Decide

The available facts will develop and evolve so your tactics and strategies must be flexible to adapt as well. In this regard, the second part of deciding can be a bit tricky.  It is essential to analyze the available information in real-time, prioritize, and make decisions to take control of the situation.

Like tool #1, making decisions inspires confidence and enables the organization to stabilize the situation and move forward. As the available information evolves, however, it may become clear that initial decision-making had been suboptimal or simply wrong-headed, so be prepared to pivot with courage and conviction.

Tool #5: Ongoing Communications

This is a well-regarded tool but not always easy to follow, especially in the early days of a crisis when the available facts may be unclear and the strategy to address even less clear. Ongoing Communication is a process where you need to constantly evaluate what is known and can be communicated in a reasonable, open, correct, and concise fashion.

This also keeps stakeholders informed without risking harmful misstatements or impeding solutions. It builds internal and external trust, fills the information vacuum that will otherwise be filled (generally negatively), and reduces uncertainty by letting stakeholders know the organization is on the job.

Schedule a Consultation With Hattem Advisors to Improve Your Abilities as a Leader

With these 5 Context Coaching Tools, CLOs seize the opportunity to become enterprise leaders, serve the enterprise well, and thrive. Contact Hattem Advisors to learn more today.

Dave Hattem
Dave Hattem

Dave Hattem, former Chief Legal Officer at Equitable, brings extensive leadership experience from both private and public sectors. His career highlights include guiding Equitable through transformative phases and championing diversity and talent development. Currently, he chairs Baryshnikov Art, aligning his passion for community engagement with artistic inspiration.

“Dave is a natural coach. From the time I met Dave, he quickly became a go-to confidant whenever I needed to be a trusted advisor. His ability to balance care and compassion with challenging me to see things from a different perspective has been invaluable to my growth. He’s authentic, direct, and kind - and I’m thankful to have him as a member of my ‘personal board of directors.’”

- Brittanie Plasters | Learning and Talent Leader at Equitable | 2022

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