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Coaching Emergency Response Team Leaders
NGOs have always been involved in emergency relief efforts. However, in recent years, a growing number of emergency relief situations have become increasingly horrific and immense. The Indian Ocean Tsunami and the genocide nightmare in Darfur are cases in point. It has become clear that aid workers trying to deal with events on this scale have larger support needs than those in more traditional assignments. One significant response to that need has been the development of coaching services for this population. We provide the following array of services to address these mounting needs.
Size, speed, and impact make an emergency response team leader’s job different from that of leaders elsewhere in the enterprise. Disasters may come in an instant or be anticipated in advance, but they always require a prompt and accurate response. Unfortunately, these incidents are almost always shrouded by uncertain information and massive failures in communication. Resources may be insufficient or their arrival poorly timed. Technical or long distance managerial support may be uneven or insufficient. Leaders are confronted with making decisions, moving forward and making a difference under hugely devastating conditions against great odds and in the face of great need.
Both the toll of responding to the emergency and bearing witness to the suffering of those being served rest on the shoulders of the emergency team leader.
The result is unimaginable pressure on these leaders. In this type of emergency post, people report frequently feeling isolated, overwhelmed, understaffed and highly stressed. The coaching we provide in these cases differs from that which we provide other leaders in these ways:
- The coaching is much more flexible and is typically tailored by the coach on-the-spot to meet the needs expressed by the response team leader
- Its logistics are also more flexible in terms of timing, frequency and who initiates each contact, so that these encounters mesh with the ever-changing environment that the leaders find themselves in
- The content of the coaching deals with both the personal and professional needs of the leader, since the two are always blended
- Part of the coaching is aimed at the leader’s needs for problem solving and decision making, because that is, understandably, always first in their order of priorities. The coaching connection gives the team leader an astute, knowledgeable expert to partner with. Together they can examine options find fresh opportunities in situations that often feel initially like they are only obstacles and begin the process of forming transition strategies. In this way, the coach becomes an anchor, sounding board and colleague.
- Another part of this coaching deals with feelings and emotions. It gives leaders a chance to air their concerns and frustrations, acknowledge their periodic anger or confusion and raise issues and concerns that they don’t for the moment wish to share with their teams. It also gives them a vehicle to examine their worries and anxieties and view them in a more manageable perspective.
- Crisis and emergency conditions also tend to bring out or highlight interpersonal problems that exist between members of the leader’s team or with partners they are expected to work with on short notice. Coaches are extremely useful in surfacing these problems, analyzing them and offering behavioral insights that lead to workable and lasting solutions.
There is, of course, much more.
Even beyond the content and thrust of such coaching, it is important to note the overwhelming evidence that such coaching interventions are enormously helpful to individual team leaders who experience them. Even more noteworthy is the equivalent evidence that such coaching has measurable payoff for the sponsoring Agencies, because it dramatically reduces the turnover and burnout otherwise experienced.
This sort of coaching may be initiated by those who supervise team leaders or by team leaders themselves. There are many situations that tend to trigger the need for a coach. Here are the six most common ones:
- Team leaders who get stuck in the decision making process; problems chronically appear to them to be unsolvable and begin to wear on them, exacting an emotional toll
- Team leaders who face complicated staff problems within the teams themselves and need help in figuring out what next action steps to take
- Reports from a variety of sources that the team leader shows signs of increasing emotional and physical stress or situations in which team leaders become isolated from their staffs
- A decline in the quality of the team leader’s management practices, marked by unacceptable ways of handling conflict, displays of temper, reversion to a peremptory or abrasive personal style, extremely limited delegation and increasingly difficult communications with almost everyone
- A team leader’s worsening interpersonal style with people outside the team. A situation that contributes to partner organizations, donors or relevant government groups viewing the team in a dim light
- The inability of demanding team leaders to balance conflicting needs: their need to accomplish much at a critical time and the need for staff to periodically rest and relax; often this results in the decline of morale and group cohesion.
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Advanced Management Practices