What Managerial Competencies are Required to Tackle an Organizational Crisis?
In normal circumstances, various competencies are needed for top management to be successful. Besides (!) these regular competencies, certain specific skills and knowledge are crucial to recover from a crisis. The following
special crisis management skills are of particular importance:
1. A crisis manager should have a
well developed business sense combined with confrontational and professional capabilities. A crisis managers should well understand the circumstances and be able to perform under abnormal situations
2.
Business experience is important. Also, a crisis manager should have a lot of experience with rehabilitation projects for all kinds of decision making.
3.
Negotiations/communication skills and experience on a local and international level is important, particularly in extraordinary situations.
4. Knowledge needed to employ in the
judgement of employees’ and other interest groups’ responses; a crisis manager shoud be able to estimate the results after the recovery process.
5. A crisis manager should be ready to expect a function as
moderator/mediator.
In view of the complexity of the management of a company undergoing serious difficulties, crisis management is denoted as a "composite” discipline", because a multi-disciplinary approach to problem solving is required in order to achieve the objectives of managing a company undergoing a crisis.
Source: Dubrovski, D. “Additional Knowledge Needed in Crisis Management”, at International Conference Management, Knowledge and Learning, 2011