Bidiversity

The answer is yes and no. All men or women are not one way or the other, but according to Davia B. Temin, president and CEO of Temin & Co. Inc., a strategic marketing, public affairs and crisis management firm, each gender does share certain tendencies.

“I don’t think that men and women always handle crisis differently,” Temin said. “A lot of it has to do with whether you deny a problem exists or not. How quickly do you face the problem, and how quickly do you start to put in some fixes? The question is: How do you lead through crisis? How do you manage crisis best?”

Temin said women are often more willing to admit there is a crisis, and they don’t go into denial to the same level that men do. Men find it easier to decide on a path of action quickly, though she said that path may not always be the correct one.

“Long ago, it was thought that girls were less ethical than boys because boys were more decisive and girls were slower and had less of a moral center. It turns out that wasn’t it at all,” she explained. “Girls were thinking much more holistically. They see all sides of an issue in a crisis more easily, but then it’s harder to decide what to do because complexity makes it more difficult to act.”

Perhaps more important than deciphering who does what best, Temin said it’s powerful to have a combination of men and women on crisis management teams.

“Most places have a crisis plan in place depending on what your business is, and crisis teams are not necessarily the usual suspects: the heads of communications, IT, public health, legal, the CEO. There are people who work well under pressure and who are nimble in extreme times,” she said.

The diversity executive can help identify who those leaders are by using performance evaluations, where Temin said information – such as:

How good are they in tough situations?

Are they innovative?

Can they come up with things on the fly and really understand the crux of the problem and fix it? – typically resides.

“You can’t afford to make a mistake in a crisis, but you also can’t afford to be a deer in headlights,” she said. ”

A good crisis manager is going to deny denial. They’ll be one of the first to spot trouble brewing, not the last. They’ll also be one of the first to acknowledge it. Then, [it's about]:

Who are the people who get to the bottom of an issue?

You need to understand what’s going on, who’s affected, who’s not affected, what are the root and immediate causes, is there anything we can do in seconds, minutes, hours, days to stop or fix it?

How do we communicate around these issues?

Who’s an excellent communicator to many different kinds of constituencies? For example, if it’s a local plant accident, who can get out there on the 5 o’clock news and speak with authenticity about what’s going on?

Who is powerful enough to get people to change and do the right thing?”

Ultimately, successful crisis resolution depends more on an individual’s qualities than gender.

Souce: Diversity Executive