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I’ve been told that the most important thing in a crisis—the one that makes a life-or-death difference for many people—is how fast you can recognize when you are in serious danger. Leaders need the judgement to know when to announce that a crisis is at hand. Doing so too early risks being tagged as “the one who cried wolf.” Doing so too late, however, leaves you with fewer options—sometimes only the option to go down with the ship.
The best leaders attune themselves to a range of dangers, calibrating carefully the ones that can be dodged, resisted, or minimized. But they also have to decide when it’s time to pull the alarm to alert their community to the unpleasant fact that business as usual will not do.
Many academic leaders are wrestling with this right now as they witness attacks on academic autonomy, free expression, scientific research, and efforts to create a level playing field for all students. There’s no perfect answer to the question of when a slow burn crisis has reached its tipping point. Much of it depends on your mission and the ways it is being impacted. But it is a leader’s job to recognize and act on the signs at a moment that feels right.
In times of danger, our natural impulse is to flee, freeze, or fight. The first two can delay an open announcement of the crisis and are rarely useful in protecting the institution in your care. Fighting may be called for but if you fight impulsively and without a strategy, you risk personal failure and institutional destruction. Fortunately, there is another way—one that not only helps you meet the crisis head-on but sets the stage for future flourishing.
I’ve come to call this path “the way of communion,” that is the gathering together of those most deeply affected in an open exchange of support, resistance, and strategy. It means reaffirming the deepest values that shape the institution and encouraging responses that lift those values up. In practice, this is a willingness to boldly reject efforts to undermine the things that matter and an embracing of collective power and decision-making.
This was my strategy when COVID-19 arrived. It’s one that may be helpful to you now. To practice it, you need to think in terms of the collective power and wisdom of your stakeholders. Engage your community—trustees, faculty and staff, and students—in interpreting and responding to executive orders, in discerning and sharing accurate information, in defining appropriate strategies of resistance and/or compliance to mandated change, and in fostering your mission and vision even in the face of external attacks.
Special committees can be created and charged with these responsibilities. Teach-ins and other chances for the community to learn about democratic norms and structures are a possibility, as are opportunities for open debate about tough issues. Active campus-wide engagement is a way to seize the moment rather than flee from it.
Questions for reflection: How are recent federal actions affecting my campus? Am I ready to declare a campus state of emergency? Do I foresee that such a state might arrive soon? How will I know and what will I do if it does? When I am under threat, am I more likely to flee, freeze, or fight? (When under threat, is my board more likely to flee, freeze, or fight?) How can I help myself slow down and respond more strategically? What structures can I rely on or create in order to keep our campus informed and engaged? How can we involve more people in this work? How can we use this moment as a way to affirm our mission and values and create a path of communion toward a response?
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