MIT Sloan Management Review Article on The Two Roles Leaders Must Play in a Crisis

The coronavirus pandemic has already proved to be a litmus test of leadership as organizations around the world fight for their survival under unprecedented circumstances. In such dire straits, managing is in many ways dramatic — that is, it shares the qualities of onstage drama. As sociologist Erving Goffman put it, crisis managers need to present different faces at different times.

We often expect leaders to perform in predefined ways: Chief executives should be courageous, for example, and financial controllers conservative. Disaster managers, though, must be sufficiently flexible to don myriad masks, depending on the situation. We must, for instance, be humble with those who expect humility, and tough with those who expect toughness. Or, in other words, we must conform to expectations or risk backlash.