Welcome to Loden’s Leadership Conversations.
Today, let’s explore: Why crisis leadership is never improvised, and what it actually requires.
Gather Around, Growth Alliance Members.
When a crisis arrives, leaders discover something they rarely had time to fully examine before.
Who they actually are under pressure.
Not who they intended to be. Not who they performed as in the good weeks. Who they actually are when the margin is gone, the information is incomplete, the stakes are real, and the people watching them need something steady to hold onto.
That discovery is either confirming or clarifying. And which one it is depends almost entirely on what was built before the crisis came.
Here’s what I’ve observed across years of leading through difficult seasons and coaching leaders through their own.
Crisis does not change a leader’s character. It reveals it.
The leader who has built consistency, who has communicated honestly, who has held standards when it was inconvenient, who has had the hard conversations and kept the commitments and been the same leader in the hard weeks as in the easy ones, that leader tends to move through crisis with their team intact. Not because the crisis is less severe. Because the trust that was built before the pressure arrived is now the thing that carries them through it.
The leader who has been inconsistent, who has managed perception more than they’ve managed reality, who has let standards drift and avoided the difficult conversations, that leader discovers during a crisis that they are carrying the weight alone. Because the team has been quietly calibrating their trust for months, and when the moment of real reliance arrives, what is there is smaller than what the leader assumed.
This is the most important thing I want you to take from this.
You cannot build crisis leadership during a crisis. You can only draw on what was already there.
Every conversation you have today that is slightly uncomfortable but necessary. Every standard you hold this week when letting it go would have been easier. Every commitment you keep when keeping it costs you something. All of it is going into an account that you will draw from the moment things get genuinely hard.
The good news is this. That account is open right now. Every Tuesday is an ordinary week in which the next crisis is being prepared for, whether you are thinking about it that way or not.
The leader your team needs when everything breaks is not a different version of you. It is the version you built in all the weeks when nothing was breaking.
Todd Gongwer’s work has shaped how a generation of leaders thinks about conviction and calling. His endorsement names what conviction alone can’t finish:
“Lead for God’s Sake! reminds us that leadership begins on the inside. Before It Breaks shows what must come next. Conviction alone does not sustain trust, structure does. These seven pillars translate purpose into disciplined, visible behavior so when pressure mounts, leaders don’t drift and teams don’t fracture. This is leadership built to hold.”
— Todd Gongwer, Author of Lead for God’s Sake!
Every ordinary Tuesday is a deposit into the account you will draw from when the pressure arrives. Before It Breaks names the seven deposits that matter most. Releases July 7. Click here to pre-order your copy and start depositing no. The companion workbook and a seat at the live Seven Pillars in Practice masterclass on July 14 are yours at no cost.
Reflection Questions:
• Think back to the last genuine crisis you navigated as a leader. Did your team move through it with you, or did you find yourself carrying it largely alone? What does that answer tell you?
• What is one habit you are building right now in ordinary weeks that will serve your team when the extraordinary ones arrive?
May your leadership journey be rich with purpose, relationships, resilience, and discovery. I look forward to exploring new insights together in our next issue.
Lead Deilberately,
Gearl Loden
Superintendent | Executive Coach | Author, Before It Breaks
