In a crisis situation, it can be so easy to fall into a victim mindset or let fear carry us away, but instead what we want to do is manage our emotions and prepare for the next correct stage in a crisis situation.
In this episode I’m discussing the psychology behind a crisis and how to know where you want to be so you can not just survive, but thrive.
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WHAT YOU WILL DISCOVER
Understanding the psychology behind a crisis situation
Which stage you are in now and which one you want to get to quick
How to respond with love, instead of fear and panic
FEATURED ON THE SHOW
Free Training on Tapping Your Emotional Strength
Additional Tools for business owners
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Hello hello, this is Jennifer Dawn. Welcome to Happy Productive episode No. 9. And today I would love to discuss leadership through crisis. This is actually a little piece of a full training that I did for all of my business coaching clients last week. Obviously, we’re all going through crisis right now and what better opportunity to learn, right, how to lead ourselves and lead others through crisis and we just happen to have a crisis going on. So I wanted to take this opportunity to help as many of my clients as possible, and I want to share a little piece of that training with you today in Happy Productive.
I’m also recording this for YouTube because there are slides that go along with it. So you’re listening, that’s fine. You’re going to get all the information but if you’d like to see the slides, you can also check out this episode on YouTube. And so we have this massive global pandemic crisis going on right now we’re seeing all sorts of fear. We’re seeing a lot of panic. We’re seeing businesses going under. We’re seeing people hoarding. We’re seeing people loving and going the extra mile and just doing amazing things. We are seeing all sorts of things right now. And what I wanted to dive into today is the psychology behind what happens in a crisis event. And for me, when I learned the psychology, it really helped me to just chill the hell out and understand better what was happening, so I was better informed and I could take the best action possible.
Okay, so the psychology behind it is that we first have a trigger event and you guys this is not our first trigger event. So back in 2001, there was a trigger event, the 9/11 attacks, and that of course triggered a market collapse in 2008. We had a housing market collapse. And that of course also triggered a recession. And so right now in 2020, the trigger event is this COVID-19 or the Coronavirus and so that’s our trigger event. I think it’s important to understand. Okay, so what’s caused all this? The trigger event is the Coronavirus. Now, if you’re listening to this, you won’t be able to see this graph. If you’re watching you’ll be able to see it and so just think of it like this that you’ve got an initial Stage 1 and you’re going to see the graph dip down and then it comes back up. Okay, so it’s just a curved line.
And so I want to just go into these different stages and this was great information that came to me through Mike Michalowicz for those of you who don’t know Mike Michalowicz is the author of “Profit First,” the toilet paper entrepreneur, the pumpkin plan. I’m a Certified Profit First Professional. I worked with Mike for several years launching his mastery program. I use the Profit First system with really almost all of my business clients. I use it in my own businesses I absolutely love it! So if you’re a business owner if you’ve not heard of it you might want to check it out, Profit First with Mike Michalowicz. And so Mike now has a great website filled with wonderful resources. And you can visit that at recessionresponse.com, all one word, recessionresponse.com. And that’s where this chart comes from. So if you want a copy for yourself, you can visit recessionresponse.com and grab it for yourself.
And I just want to dive into these different stages again, so we can all understand the psychology behind a crisis. So we’ve got Stage 1 and in state stage one is like the shock, right? Something happens we’re not expecting, everybody is a little startled, we kind of freeze up. We’re not really sure what to do. And for some business owners and so for some people, they take inaction, meaning they just don’t do anything. They just ignore it. They bury their head in the sand they don’t take any action whatsoever. After stage one the shock stage, we move fairly quickly into what’s called the Desperation Stage. And in the Desperation Stage, this is where logic starts to become superseded by overreaction or that Stampede Effect. We’ve seen this with the run on toilet paper right? Where everybody, not everybody you know, went and completely has bought out all of the toilet paper and the hand sanitizer, soap cleaning products, okay? Certain things that people overreacted. And from there we saw this Stampede Effect where things were just completely bought off and in some situations haven’t been restocked on the shelves.
So if you’re a business owner, this is where business owners will also at the Desperation Stage respond illogically. And when they do this by taking big, huge, wrong massive, massively wrong actions. So this is where they’re just like, oh my God, they panic and they start taking out massive loans, they pull all their cash out of the business, they run up the credit cards, they fire the entire staff, right? They discount all their prices way, way too low. Like all of these. Now, I’m not saying that some of these actions are not necessary, but we’re talking about the business owners who overreact and just go start making huge, massive wrong actions, okay? And what’s happening is they’re taking actions without understanding the logic behind it. And this is why we see very early on some businesses already starting to go under, and they’re going under because of inaction or by taking huge massive wrong actions.
So we’re still kind of continuing down the curve. And at the bottom of this curve, we get to Stage 3 which is the Evaluation Stage and this is the stage we want to get to quickly. And guys, whether you are you know the CEO of your own company or the CEO of your family. All of this applies, we want to get to Stage 3, which is the Evaluation Stage as quickly as possible. And this is where we make thoughtful consideration or put thoughtful consideration into the actions that we need to move our businesses forward. Or it might be our households forward.
And this is where we start to look at, you know, what are the what are the appropriate marketing to continue doing? How can we possibly increase our margin? How do we maximize the cash coming in? And how do we minimize the cash going out? Now in this evaluation stage where we are looking at all of our options, and considering we do want to make sure that we don’t get into a stagnation, where we’re overthinking and over evaluating, right, and it kind of just keeps us stuck in a negative loop. So we do want to get to the Evaluation Stage as quickly as possible where we’re putting thoughtful consideration into what’s our next best action. But we don’t want to get stuck in the evaluation like over evaluating overthinking.
Okay, after Stage 3, we’re going to now start to head back up the curve, which is a good thing. And this is where we get to Stage 4, which is deliberate action. And this right now for where we’re at with Coronavirus is where we all want to be. And when we’re taking deliberate action, we’re choosing very specific actions that are going to get us to whatever the next need of our business is. And then we’re going to focus on that. So we’re going to focus on one appropriate action. We’re going to fix it, do whatever we have to do. We’re going to do that right now. And then after that’s taken care of, we’re going to then move to the next one appropriate need. This is the deliberate action stage.
This is different than being in a panic and flying around going in a million different directions trying to do a million different things. Okay? If we’re doing that, that’s gonna really lead us into, you know, small, recurring wrong actions and the business could in fact collapse. And so we want to avoid that. We want to instead focus on deliberate action, or being clear headed. We’re focusing on the next one appropriate action that we want to take. We’re doing that now. And then we’re moving to the next appropriate action.
The good news is that if you stick with this, your business will most likely survive, you will survive. And you’re going to set yourself up for Stage 5, which is at the top of our curve, because now it’s come back and then Stage 5, the economy rebounds. And it always does, it will again, and what happens is that as the economy comes back, there’s a huge increase in demand. And at the same time, we have a lower supply because a lot of businesses have gone under right. But if we have been really effective at leading through crisis, we’ve been taking deliberate action, we’ve set ourselves up and prepared for Stage 5, which is the burst of the economy, we’re going to be in a really good place. And we’re going to be prepared for that rebound, and it is coming.
And so you can use this time right now to really do the groundwork to prepare, you can look at your technology. Now, I’m not saying that it’s the right time to invest in technology, but it can absolutely be the right time to research it. Figure out you know, which programs do I need to implement which software programs do I need to replace and do that research and getting those things figured out. Same thing with staffing, now’s an excellent time to look at your staffing. Most business owners are running with limited staff and starting to ask the question, you know, “do I need as many people? “How could we be more efficient?” “Are there certain things that could be eliminated?” “Are there’s certain roles that need to be added that we didn’t account for?
And again, it doesn’t mean that we’re hiring these people but we’re doing that groundwork to prepare for when the economy comes back. Processes, systems, all of those things, now’s an excellent time to be preparing for that surge, which is absolutely going to come. Now again, I’ll mention it one more time. There were a lot of resources on the website recessionresponse.com from Mike Michalowicz, I encourage you, especially for business owners, for you guys to check that out.
Right now, while we’re in Stage 4, we’re taking deliberate action, and we’re looking at areas of our business that we can improve. And obviously the first area is going to be the finances, looking at your budget, maximizing cash that’s coming in minimizing cash that’s going out. That would definitely be appropriate action right now. And once you’ve done everything that you need to do to make sure that the finances of the business are as stable as they can be, then you can turn yourself attention to other areas of your business that may need to be improved.
Now, for some of you, you might be like, “that sounds great, and I really wish I could use this time more effectively because hey, we’re not that busy. I’ve actually got the time.” But let’s say your energy or your or your emotions are just really getting the best of you and you’re just not feeling it right. You’re just like, “there’s just no way right now, I can do this.” One of the things that I’d love to encourage you to do is actually manage your emotions, manage your thinking so that you can tap into the energy that you need to take advantage of this time. And to prepare yourself for that surge of in the economy that is going to happen.
So I did one Goal Achievers, I just did a training this month called Unlocking Your Emotional Strength. If you I actually made that training free to anybody and everybody who needed it just because of the crisis. And so I would really encourage you and I’ll put a link below I’ll put a link to it as well. But I would really encourage you to visit either of my websites, you can go to bestplannerever.com or jenniferdawncoaching.com, and just go to Goal Achievers, the membership for goal achievers.
And you’ll see our April lesson, which is Unlocking Emotional Strength is completely free, I would really encourage you to get in there and go through that. If you’re struggling with your emotions, if you’re struggling with your energy levels, like you just feel like you just can’t get it together if maybe like panic and fear are sort of carrying you away and you’re like, “hey, wait, I need to come back. I need to get myself back through this.” Just watch the Unlocking Emotional Strength and I’m giving you a lot of tools in there for exactly how to do that.
Okay, a quick little recap. So, right now, when we talk about leading through crisis, there are 4 key things that I feel like are the strongest formula for strong leadership and the first one is self-care. Make sure that you’re taking really good care of yourself, you guys, you know. A lot of us are slower and you have the time. So if you’re tired sleep, if you’re hungry, eat. Get outside into the sunshine, go for a walk, get some fresh air, be out in nature, even if it’s just for a few minutes every single day. So the first thing is taking care of yourself. So your batteries are charged and you’re in a position to set an example and lead others all the other people that are looking to you for leadership.
Number 2 is manage your emotions and your thinkig. Because right now, if you’re thinking really fear filled, panic filled thoughts right now, that’s going to take your emotions, you know, to a very unpleasant place. It is going to make it very difficult for you to have clear thinking and make good decisions right now in your business and in your personal life. So you want to do some work there to manage those emotions. You’re not sure how just watch my free training, Unlocking Your Emotional Strength.
Number 3 is taking appropriate action, okay? This is not like hoarding toilet paper, or this is not, you know, doing these things which actually hurt everybody. So we want to take appropriate action. That doesn’t mean doing nothing. That doesn’t mean doing a million different things. It means finding that balance, tapping into your intuition. And really just taking one thing at a time and focusing on it until it’s done and then moving to that next appropriate action.
And finally, respond with love. It’s really easy right now with everything going on to just get carried away and panic and, you know, put more panic and fear out into the world. It is not what the world needs right now. The world needs calm, the world needs peace. The world needs people who can lead through this. You’ve all seen examples of so many people going the extra mile and I don’t know about you, but it really warms my heart. And it makes me feel so much better. And it makes me feel connected to our global community when I see so many people responding with love, and I would encourage you to be one of those people out there responding with love. And not one of the people out there who is you know, taking more than they absolutely need so that others aren’t going to suffer.
Okay, you guys, that’s our Happy Productive for today. Just one more quick little thought. This is why when I said self-care is like our first most important thing we talk about leadership through crisis. It’s so important because it requires you to show up in a place where your batteries are fully charged. If you are showing up and you’re beat down and you’re being carried away with fear and you’re in a panic, it’s almost impossible, if not impossible to respond with love. But if you are taking appropriate action to take care of yourself, to manage your thinking, to manage your emotions, you’re taking appropriate action, right? Even just listening to this video of this podcast, you’re educating yourself, you’re learning. Yay, congratulations. Good for you! That is definitely appropriate action, right? You’re learning how to manage your emotions and you’re doing something about it, that’s going to be appropriate action. And when you’re doing those things, it’s going to be so much easier to respond with love, instead of coming at it from fear.
Okay, that’s my message for today. I truly hope that it helps you. I hope understanding and learning about the psychology behind this and of the 5 Stages where you want to get to as quickly as possible, which is deliberate action and starting to prepare for Stage No. 5 of the economy surging back and it absolutely will. And you want to be perfectly positioned to take advantage of that.
Okay, if you guys need any more love and support, especially if you’re business owners come check out my website, jenniferdawncoaching.com. And you can also learn about my other tools and resources from bestplannerever.com. And again, I encourage all of you to take advantage of Unlocking Emotional Strength and tapping into that, especially right now. Its free through the goal achievers for this month. And I encourage all of you to get in there and listen to it and hopefully use some of those tools to ease a little bit of your pain and suffering and help you step up as a leader in your business and your life. All right, that’s it you guys, thank you so much for being with me today. I love each and every one of you everybody. Stay safe and we’ll talk again soon!
xo
Jennifer