Partnerships are key to managing critical incidents in schools
Conventional wisdom in the field of crisis management is that critical incidents are managed well if the organisation’s exposure to risk is minimised. In schools, this conventional wisdom can be a blind alley.
Google ‘Crisis Management Books’ and a slew of offerings will present themselves, from consultants, organisational leaders, academics, and others. There is no shortage of texts offering guidance about how organisations should act when a situation emerges that threatens to cause harm or damage. Having read quite a few of these books, I can attest to some common threads in the advice they offer: Be careful what you say publicly… consult lawyers… protect the organisation’s reputation… be seen to be acting on the front foot…
There is a reason that in a corporate setting the main objective of managing a critical incident is seen to be the reduction of exposure to risk and liability – they can easily affect the bottom line. However, during my own experience of school leadership, including several critical incidents that I have been called upon to manage, I quickly learned that schools are very different places and that this requires different objectives to be met. Because schools are, first and foremost, communities of people, objectives that rise to the surface are the prevention or restoration of harm… the fostering of relationships… the confidence of stakeholders… the long-term vitality of the community.
It is not that more corporate objectives are invalid for schools – for instance, consulting a lawyer during a crisis that may involve legal issues is often a very wise move! But what effective school leaders recognise is that these corporate objectives are most useful when they support and strengthen the school’s response to what its community members need. This sometimes implies different actions to those that might be encouraged by the ‘conventional wisdom’ for corporate settings in all those crisis management books. For example, school leaders often navigate crises effectively by communicating constantly, rather than limiting communication for fear of inducing liability. Students, staff and parents want their school leadership to be in dialogue with them, even at moments where there isn’t much to say. They need to see the ethos of care that exists for all community members, and that it is motivated authentically and not merely as a device for protecting the organisation’s reputation. And in modelling ethical leadership, especially to students, effective critical incident response will be rooted in what is right, regardless of what it does to profitability. School leaders need to see community stakeholders as partners in the work of responding to a crisis, not as threats to reputation.
This partnership-based approach is not something that is readily found in the ‘conventional wisdom’. At Holono-Me we recognise there is a gap in what is available to schools to support them in this work, and that as a school leader or staff member taking responsibility for young lives every single day, it is easy to feel underprepared for or overwhelmed by the gravity of what can result from a critical incident. That’s why we are committed to building resources and opportunities for schools in this area as part of our work, and we look forward to sharing this further in the coming months.
In the meantime, if you are a school leader or staff member, we have a request. Please do take a moment to fill in this short survey – it takes less than 5 minutes and will help steer our work in support of schools. Thank you in anticipation!