In a crisis, information is oxygen. When people can’t breathe, they can’t think; when they can’t think, they can’t act. That is why the most decisive advantage a leader can create in the first hours and days of disruption is an honest, rhythmic flow of communication: clear words going out, real listening coming back. It sounds simple. It is not. Under pressure, our instincts push us toward vague reassurances, technical hedging, or defensive silence, exactly the behaviors that, in a crisis, corrode trust and slow action.
This post distills how to communicate in a way that accelerates trust and coordination, drawing on Stephen M. R. Covey’s trust behaviors, especially talking straight and listening first, and the field lessons from The Crisis Leader. We’ll walk through the leadership moments when communication either strengthens your response or fractures it, the traps that catch even seasoned executives, and a practical cadence you can adopt so your people always know what’s true, what’s next, and what you need from them.
Why “honest communication” is more than telling the truth
Honesty in a crisis is not merely the absence of lies. It is the active practice of making reality understandable and actionable. That means three things:
- Clarity over completeness. You won’t have all the facts. Your job is to make the best-known facts useful and to label uncertainty plainly.
- Cadence over polish. People prefer frequent, imperfect updates to infrequent, perfect ones. Time is the currency of trust.
- Dialogue over broadcast. Communication that doesn’t listen is just noise. If people can’t respond, correct you, or ask for help, they will make up their own narratives.
These principles align precisely with Covey’s behaviors. Talk straight is about clarity without spin. Listening first turns communication into a two-way operating system. Create transparency and confront reality, anchor cadence and content: show your work, name the hard things. Clarify expectations, practice accountability, and keep commitments; these turn words into coordination. “Deliver results” and “get better” make your communication believable because people can see it changing outcomes.
Most importantly, honest communication intersects with human need. In The Crisis Leader, I emphasize how crises puncture certainty and connection, two of the six fundamental needs that govern our behavior. Straight talk restores a measure of certainty; listening restores connection. Put differently, people will give you their best if they can trust your words and feel that you hear them.
Talk straight: plain language that shortens the path to action
“Talk straight” is Covey’s invitation to drop the protective fog we tend to generate when stakes are high. In practice, it means:
- Use everyday words. No euphemisms. No acronyms without translation. Say “the water is unsafe to drink,” not “potable water service has been impacted.”
- Lead with what matters. Start with decisions, not background. “We are evacuating Zone B by 18:00. Buses will stage at the library in 45 minutes.”
- Show your uncertainty labels. Use simple tags like confirmed, probable, and unconfirmed to help people understand how to treat your information.
- State the why. A decision without context feels arbitrary; a decision with a clear rationale feels trustworthy, even if it’s hard.
In my book, I describe how, in the wake of sudden-onset disasters, straight talk saved time and lives. The leaders who resisted the urge to manage optics and instead narrated reality, what we know, what we don’t, and what we will do next, became anchors for everyone else. People do not require perfect news; they require intelligible news.
Micro-script you can use today (three sentences):
- “Here’s what we know right now…”
- “Here’s what we don’t know yet (and how we’ll find out)…”
- “Here’s what we’re doing in the next [time window], and what we need from you…”
Use this script in every briefing, email, or announcement in the first 24–72 hours. Repetition is not redundancy; it is relief.
The traps Straight Talk avoids
- False reassurance. Downplaying risk to soothe in the moment creates an explosion later when reality contradicts you. People forgive bad news faster than broken trust.
- Technical fog. Jargon can protect egos, but it paralyzes action. Translate complexity; people will repay you with better decisions.
- Hedging as a habit. Precision is good; tentativeness without decisions is not. It’s possible to be precise and decisive: “Given X and Y, we’re choosing A. If Z happens, we’ll pivot to B.”
Listen first: the operational discipline that multiplies insight
Listening is not passive. In crisis, it is a disciplined method of gathering the intelligence your response requires and the empathy your people deserve. Covey’s “listen first” has three layers in practice:
- Frontline intelligence. Create explicit channels for those nearest the problem to talk to those with authority. That might be a rotating liaison in the shelter, a single SMS number for field reports, or a standing five-minute “reports from the edge” segment in each briefing.
- Social listening. Monitor what communities are saying among themselves. Rumors reveal gaps in your messaging. Repeated questions identify unmet needs. Listening to local leaders (formally or informally recognized) will save you from tone-deaf decisions.
- Human listening. People need to be heard. Survivors, staff, and volunteers being present for their grief, fear, and anger is not a distraction from operations; it is the ground on which operations can continue. In The Crisis Leader, I argue that empathy is a tool: it reduces panic, increases cooperation, and builds resilience.
Two questions to institutionalize:
- “What is the single biggest constraint where you are?”
- “If I remove it, what will you do in the next two hours?”
These questions transform listening into action. They respect local knowledge and make decisions at the point of need, a core principle of crisis leadership.
How to build a listening architecture in hours
- Name a listener. Assign someone on your core team to own inbound information. If everyone owns it, no one does.
- Make it trivially easy to report. A phone, a QR code, a Slack channel, a paper drop. Remove friction.
- Close loops publicly. “We heard X; here’s what we’re doing about it.” This is Covey’s practice of accountability in a single sentence, and it builds durable trust.
Create transparency: show your logic, show your constraints
Transparency is straight talk with receipts. It transforms suspicion into patience because people can see how you think. In practice:
- Explain your decision criteria. “We’re prioritizing clinics within a 10 km radius of the shelter because they serve the highest-risk populations.” People can argue the requirements; they can’t argue ghosts.
- Publish simple dashboards. Whiteboard tallies of water delivered, beds available, and power restored. In emergency operations centers and community spaces, these visuals become truth anchors.
- Expose constraints. “We have fuel for 36 hours at current consumption.” When you hide constraints, you guarantee backlash. When you show them, you invite help and creativity.
Transparency is also a remedy for organizational turf wars. In The Crisis Leader, I note how, at the disaster level, organizations often become the problem while people become the solution. Transparency forces collaboration to be about outcomes, not brand.
Confront reality: the dual message of gravity and agency
Leaders must name hard truths without freezing the room. The formula I teach is gravity + agency:
- Gravity: “The hospital backup generator will fail in eight hours without fuel.”
- Agency: “We have two viable options: reduce load by 30% in the next hour and buy us 12 hours; or secure a 2,000-liter delivery through [partner]. We’re moving on both. Here’s who’s doing what.”
Confronting reality is not catastrophizing. It is the disciplined naming of constraints and consequences, paired with the immediate articulation of action. People need to feel the weight of the moment and the possibility of meaningful contribution.
Clarify expectations: words that become coordination
Ambiguity is a hidden cost center. In the absence of crystal clarity, people do what seems best to them, and you get drift. Clarifying expectations is how communication becomes coordination:
- Who is doing what, by when, with what resources, and how we’ll know it’s done. Say it out loud. Write it down. Confirm it.
- Define your communication rhythm. “Updates at 15 past the hour; urgent alerts via text.” Rhythm creates certainty, the first human need you must address.
- Set decision rights. “For the next 24 hours, logistics decisions under $X are at the field lead’s discretion.” This is also an act of extending trust.
This is where the distinctions from The Crisis Leader, leadership versus management, matter most. Management likes process; crisis leadership loves clarity. The former is about doing things right; the latter is about making the right things happen now.
Practice accountability and right wrongs: your credibility repair kit
In a crisis, you will get things wrong. The question is not “if,” but “how you respond when.” Accountability is how you convert mistakes into more trust rather than less:
- Own the error publicly. “We misrouted yesterday’s delivery. That’s on me.”
- Explain the fix. “We adjusted the route assignment protocol and added a second check.”
- Make amends where possible. Reallocate resources, apologize to the harmed party, and compensate if appropriate.
Accountability shortens the half-life of mistakes. It also signals a culture where people can speak up without fear, essential for honest communication.
Show loyalty: protect your people, credit generously
Loyalty builds a reservoir of discretionary effort. It looks like:
- Shielding frontline workers from unfair external criticism. If you throw your people under the bus when pressure rises, you will never get their best again.
- Crediting contributions publicly. Name the volunteers, nurses, drivers, and shopkeepers. Recognition is fuel; it turns a collection of individuals into a community.
The “two women” in Padang from a previous post are a case in point. They were not the highest-ranked, but they were the connective tissue between government and international teams. Public recognition of such leaders not only honors them; it teaches everyone who and what matters in your culture.
Deliver results and get better: the proof behind your words
Communication becomes believable when it changes reality. Focus on small, visible wins on the first day and keep a learning loop tight:
- Win visibly. Clear a road; open a shelter; power a clinic. Then tell people it happened and who made it happen.
- Learn loudly. After action mini-reviews, ten minutes at the end of a shift, answer three questions: What did we intend? What happened? What will we change next shift? Then communicate the change.
This loop is how you “get better” in Covey’s terms, and it keeps your messages alive because people see them updating behavior in real time.
Extending trust: decentralizing communication without losing coherence
The temptation in chaos is to centralize everything, especially messaging. Do that, and you create dangerous bottlenecks. Extend trust by:
- Authorizing multiple voices with shared messages. Create a short message bank (three to five core points, updated each shift). Encourage leaders at all levels to speak to their teams and communities using those points, adding local detail.
- Training micro-briefers. In The Crisis Leader, I discuss how influence spreads when many people can explain the plan in simple words. A three-minute “how-to” training pays exponential dividends.
- Letting the frontline report publicly. Photos of the water point opened, along with a short video from the shelter lead, serve as proof, not spin.
Centralize truth; decentralize telling it.
A practical cadence you can adopt today
Here is a communication rhythm you can copy and adapt:
Every hour (first 8–12 hours):
- 2–5 minute stand-up with the core team. Use the three-sentence script. Confirm the top three priorities. Assign and timestamp.
Every 2–4 hours:
- Community/employee update: what we know, what we’re doing next, what we need from you. Include one small win and one constraint.
End of each shift:
- Ten-minute learning loop. Publish one “we changed X because we learned Y.”
Anytime a rumor spreads:
- Single-source correction within 30 minutes: “We’ve heard X. Here are the facts. If you see this rumor, please share this correction.”
Daily (after day 1):
- Short dashboard: counters for services restored, people assisted, and resources moved. Update the message bank and redistribute.
This cadence balances speed and sanity. Its predictability creates certainty; its brevity respects exhaustion.
Communication as a leadership posture
Words are carriers, but posture is the broadcast tower. Three elements matter:
- Presence. Be seen where the stakes are highest: the shelter, the clinic, the operations room. Presence is not performative; it is connective.
- Humility. Say “I don’t know” when you don’t. Ask for help when you need it. People don’t expect omniscience; they expect honesty.
- Steadiness. Your nervous system is contagious. Slow your breathing before you speak. Stand still. Make eye contact. In The Crisis Leader, I emphasize how leaders who regulate themselves regulate the room.
These are not soft skills. They are force multipliers for every instruction you give.
Putting it together: a leadership moment
Imagine you’re twelve hours into a cascading outage. Generators are failing unevenly across your network. Rumors online say the hospital has gone dark. Here’s what “talk straight, listen first” looks like:
You step into the shift briefing and say: “Here’s what we know: three sites lost primary power at 09:40; the hospital is on backup and has four hours of fuel at current load. Here’s what we don’t know: the status of the north substation and the ETA of the fuel convoy; both are in progress. In the next two hours, we’re reducing hospital load by 25%, prioritizing ICU and ER, and staging a 2,000-liter delivery. We need maintenance leads to execute the load-shed protocol and report back by 45.”
Then you ask: “Frontline, what’s our single biggest constraint?” The shelter lead says: “Transport for vulnerable evacuees. We can move them if we get two vans.” You answer: “If I get you vans, how many by noon?” “Forty.” “Done. Logistics: confirm vans and radio back in 15 minutes. We’ll publish an update at 10:15, same channel, so the community knows the hospital remains operational and where transport is available. Message team, include the load-shed explanation in simple language.”
That’s it. Straight talk. First listen. Clear expectations. Visible action. Fast loop.
Final thoughts
In crisis, communication is not a task; it is the operating system on which every other task depends. Covey’s trust behaviors give you an ethic and a toolkit: talk straight so people can act; listen first so your actions fit reality; create transparency, confront reality, clarify expectations, practice accountability, keep commitments, and extend trust. Woven together, these behaviors convert panic into purpose and fragmented effort into coordinated movement.
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Lead plainly. Listen deeply. Say what is true, hear what is real, then move.
By Gisli Olafsson, Author of The Crisis Leader
