As a Psychology major, these kinds of things are fascinating to me. The "hot water", as someone above put it, will affect people in different ways depending on the kind of situation and the people and personalities involved. Sometimes you can't tell a person just by looking.

There are a lot of contemplative personalities in IT such that we usually have given some thought towards disaster and disaster recovery. But we often find ourselves stretched by circumstances outside of our area of expertise. These situations are often reminders to me that we in technology, and I in particular, can never become inflexible and rigid, can never stop learning new ways of doing things and can never stop being open to doing things another way.

That speaks to the how of dealing with emergencies. The other issue is taking charge and being the leader, the influencer of the group. I think that comes naturally with some and with experience (thankfully) for others.