Communicating in a crisis or at pivotal moment for a company is never something to take lightly. It demands skill, experience, and above all deep trust and confidence in the people standing beside you in the response team.

And here’s the thing, a crisis will rarely wait for business hours. It will happen on a Sunday afternoon.  As you’re boarding a plane. In the middle of an 800km drive on New Year’s Day. Or while you’re dancing at your best friend’s wedding.

Some incidents hit like a Mike Tyson punch. It may be an injury or fatality that forces the team to set aside their own shock and emotion to focus on the job at hand. Often, it’s hours, or days, before you have space to process what’s just happened.

Other times you walk into a room buzzing with frantic activity, and your role is to slow the heartbeat of the situation, bringing calm, clarity, and structure. You ensure plans are followed, roles are understood, and the best course of action is taken.

While the experience of being on a crisis team is valuable, crisis management is best not learned in the middle of a crisis. Yes, hard-earned experience is invaluable, but you also need to walk in with the right skills, training, and preparation. The goal is to protect people, deliver the best outcome, and avoid putting the organisation at further risk.

This isn’t just about technical skills. You might have the best lawyer, safety expert, or finance lead in the room, but without crisis training, they may not know how to operate in that high-pressure environment. They need to understand the structure of a crisis response, their role within it, the roles of others, and the behaviours the organisation expects in those moments.

The same goes for communications. You don’t just need “a comms person.” You need someone who understands that while media engagement is important, the role goes far beyond press statements. It’s about mapping the ripple effects of an incident and engaging every stakeholder who needs to know. They need to know how to do this quickly, clearly, and appropriately. They need to have practiced it, participated in drills and be ready.

In the thick of an incident, leaders have dozens of decisions and demands coming at them at once. To succeed, they need people they can trust, people they’ve trained with, planned with, and who share their commitment to the best possible outcome.

If you’re a business leader, ask yourself now: When the call comes, whatever the hour, do you have the right people beside you? The ones who can help you protect lives, safeguard your organisation, and lead with calm under pressure?

And it’s not just about a crisis situation, it’s about those high stakes moments that change the future of a company. When these moments present themselves, you don’t want to be thinking, “I wish we’d been ready.” You want to be saying, “Thank God you’re here.”

Author: Chandran Vigneswaran