aureolin (4/2/2009)
In an emergency you must remember to panic!!Well, not really, but people who *are* panicking often get really angry at your failure to panic along with them. They see your calmness not as competence in the face of an emergency, but as a "failure" on your part to "understand the seriousness" of the situation. If you're not careful (and sometimes even if you are), you can suddenly find yourself defending your actions and your attitude from a frustrated and angry person instead of solving the problem.
In my experience, the best bet is to remove the panicky people from the area where you are trying to problem-solve. This can help break the escalation of their panic (and give them a chance to calm down) and remove a fairly serious distraction while you're in an emergency situation.
I disagree. In almost every case I've been in, as long as people saw that I understood the urgency, they became calmer. I tend to do something to the effect of:
- Say, "All right, let's stay calm or become calm because emotion is going to cloud our thinking and we need to solve this as fast as possible. That means we've got to be able to think as clearly as possible."
- Then say, "Okay, very quickly, what do we know?"
- Then say, "Okay, shortly and succinctly, what have tried and what were the results?"
I use words like "very quickly" and "shortly and succinctly" to communicate that I understand the urgency and gravity of the situation but that we're in control of the situation. And if I know that they are the types who need/demand status reports, I then set a schedule. Usually on the hour, of if necessary, every 15 minutes. I make sure that I tell them if we find something significant, they'll get a status report sooner. That seems to stop the pacing outside the cube.
K. Brian Kelley
@kbriankelley