How to respond when a crisis becomes the new normal
As the world comes to grips with the effects of COVID-19, businesses can focus on six areas in order to help both their people and their bottom line.
A fresh approach to crisis leadership training
Organisations often spend considerable time and finances on putting response plans in place to prepare for crises. Central to effective implementation of these crisis response plans are resilient leaders, who need to make decisions, manage teams and set strategy in a challenging, rapidly unfolding situation, where information is often incomplete and pressure mounts both internally and externally. Organisations must prepare their leaders to operate in these conditions and strengthen their personal resilience, to allow them to implement crisis plans, structures and processes effectively, enabling the organisation to evolve and emerge stronger from crisis.
At PwC’s Crisis Leadership Centre, we take a holistic, innovative approach to professional training. Our curriculum focuses on building the personal competencies and honing the intuitive skills at the heart of an effective crisis response. Our instructors and guests bring both academic insights and real life experience to bring the content to life. Our programmes allow participants to:
- Develop the skills necessary to guide a team through disruption.
- Learn to adapt quickly and seamlessly through quickly changing circumstances.
- Build a core of personal resilience.
Equip future leaders with the latest innovative academic and professional insights
Encourage future leaders to cultivate habits that fuel meaningful, lasting resilience
Empower future leaders to build a trusted and resilient peer community
Elevate organisations’ ability to manage turbulence, adversity, and crisis
From our founder: Dr. Claudia van den Heuvel
Personal resilience, emotional intelligence, adaptability and flexibility – although not traditionally top of mind in the crisis training ecosystem, these attributes are at the heart of a successful organisational crisis response and recovery strategy. That’s why our curriculum at the Crisis Leadership Centre includes these traits, as core elements. With our innovative, holistic approach to professional training, research-based; and grounded in decades of real-world experience, we equip future leaders to guide their teams in a world with increasingly urgent challenges – and to thrive, personally and professionally, in the face of adversity, challenge and crisis.
Our flagship programmes
PwC’s proven approach to leadership training is rooted in the latest rigorous scientific and academic research. We combine clinical psychology, social-psychology and the tenets of team coaching in a curriculum that includes:
- Immersive learning
- In-person and virtual sessions
- Guest speakers
- Embedded learning
- Workshops and behavioural simulations
- Enhanced resilience, decision making, and crisis team leadership (2 days)
- Personal resilience and crisis leadership deep dive (4 days)
- Bespoke in house offerings for incident/crisis management teams
- Virtual foundations of personal resilience for future crisis leaders (half day)
- Optional one to one coaching following completion of any of our courses
Enhanced resilience, decision making, and crisis team leadership (2 days)
Pre assessment
Modules including theory and applied practice on personal resilience, crisis leadership and decision making, team and stakeholder management
Self reflection exercises
Guest speaker(s)
Networking & Peer group discussion
Individualised post-training follow-up
What can you expect from our training?
Our programme leaders bring deep experience in a wide spectrum of psychological theory, approaches to personal development, and training for resilience and well-being in times of adversity, challenge and crisis.
We serve as companion-guides for future leaders on their journey to leading with health, clarity and confidence in the face of disruption.
PwC’s Crisis Leadership Centre strives to build personal resilience through building immersive, innovative and transformational learning experiences and journeys.
Future risk and crisis leaders:
Understand the impact of stress and uncertainty on how you think, feel and behave
Build on strengths, shift unhelpful attitudes and create more choice in how you react to challenge
Learn how to apply your resilience strengths and life experience to inspire effective and strategic crisis leadership
Explore how stress affects team dynamics and performance
Identify how to use certain triggers to increase team performance and stakeholder responses
Foster more effective and resilient collective decision-making processes during disruption
Be better prepared to help your organisation meet its goals and objectives during a crisis, through increased efficiency and effectiveness.
Leaders and teams will gain:
- Mental resilience in the face of disruption and challenge
- Enhanced emotional intelligence and better ability to empathise
- Clarity regarding how to manage yourself and your teams under stress and pressure
- Knowledge to design a genuine, open and values-based leadership style when under pressure
- Skills for cultivating effective decision making when under time pressure and lack of information.
- An understanding of each other’s motivations, stressors and stress behaviors
- The ability to exhibit empathy, understanding and trust during uncertainty
Leaders who model effective and sustainable resilience strategies during both prepare and response
Staff are aware of the importance of crisis management and know why having the right skills, behaviours and mindsets are at the core of effective response and recovery efforts
Coordinated response teams, within which individuals understand their response remits and roles and are comfortable engaging with parallel functions.
Targeted and sustainable training programmes to continuously build and enhance operational resilience
95% of business leaders believe their crisis-management capabilities need improvement
"Upskilling future leaders in resilience” was the second most commonly identified resilience priority in a survey of over 1,800 Executives
