Bruce T. Blythe
Crisis Management Expert
Featured Topics
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Bruce T. Blythe
Featured Keynote Programs
Strategic Crisis Leadership
The three fundamentals of leading in a crisis
When serious crises hit, senior management’s responsibilities are to protect the organization’s core assets, e.g., people, reputation, brand, and finances. Most crisis planning, however, focuses only on tactical response. It is vital to the well being of the organization that crisis managers at all levels be prepared to make high-leverage, defining moment decisions when needed. This calls for strong Strategic Crisis Leadership, which involves being the right kind of person during stressful times, knowing what to do to lead effectively, and executing decisions with efficiency. This presentation will provide take-and-use guidelines based on latest crisis leadership research, case histories, and the speaker’s vast Strategic Crisis Leadership consulting experience.
Workplace Violence
Effectively Mitigating Threatening Situations in the Workplace
Corporate managers must utilize an effective and defensible method for handling threats of violence. This includes a defensible workplace violence policy, guidelines on what to do immediately upon initial notification, and field-tested methods for assessing and defusing dangerous situations. A structured and legally compliant documentation method is also a vital component. Unfortunately, many corporate workplace violence programs cannot withstand public and legal scrutiny following a serious violent incident. This presentation provides guidelines for bringing your workplace violence program up to today’s compliance standards, with established best practices for effectiveness and defensibility. Most importantly, this presentation will truly help managers protect the lives of people that they care about in the workplace.
Objectives:
- Learn take-and-use methods for effectively assessing and defusing threatening situations
- Understand the components of a structured threat management
methodology from initial notification to purposeful disengagement
- Meet today’s compliance standards in a defensible manner
Hostility Management...in the Workplace and Beyond
In the time it takes you to read this presentation description, an average of 1 murder, 5 rapes, 40-armed robberies, and 60 aggravated assaults will take place in the United States.
In order to effectively manage hostile situations in the workplace or in daily living, you must program your mind as to how you will respond if such a situation should arise. Having a plan will:
- Help you effectively defuse hostile people and avoid aggression or violence
- Confidently anticipate the aggressor’s moves for avoidance advantage
- Allow you to comply with legal and corporate guidelines re: hostility in the workplace
This training program teaches take-and-use strategies for reducing and defusing verbal and physical hostility through a variety of communication skills, spacing principles and escape responses.
During this program you will:
- Learn usable methods and strategies for reducing and defusing hostile behavior
- Better understand and manage the mindset of potentially violent individuals
- Develop a plan for effectively handling threatening situations within various levels of severity
Crisis Team Leadership
Effective crisis management is a team process.
It is easy for Crisis Management Teams to lose effectiveness in the midst of unexpected high-velocity crises. While some CMTs function effectively during crisis situations, most do not function optimally. This presentation will sequentially identify and discuss the components and practices of successful Crisis Management Teams from notification to de-escalation.
Participants will have an opportunity to interactively practice field-tested methods for optimal skill transfer from world recognized thought leader, Bruce T. Blythe, CEO, Crisis Management International. Take-and-use methods will be provided for optimizing crisis management capabilities, such as, crisis communications, crisis information management, identifying and addressing stakeholder needs, staying ahead of the “curve”, crisis team leadership, and making effective crisis team decisions.
The Human Side of Crisis
In its simplest form, crisis management is about effectively addressing the needs and concerns of impacted people. When stakeholders perceive that the company isn't meeting their needs or doesn’t care, human-related complications and barriers to crisis resolution will arise, e.g., misunderstandings, hostilities, outrage, fear, revenge and blame.
The top lesson learned from 9/11, to the Indonesia Tsunami, to Hurricane Katrina has been that companies weren’t prepared to address the human-side of crisis. Effective preparedness and response for the human-side of catastrophe management is absolutely vital component for crisis recovery. In addition, NFPA 1600 (Section 3.3) requires that corporate crisis preparedness include not only damage assessment and mitigation for economic resources and physical assets, but also for people impacted by disasters. So, what can a company do to assure they are prepared to meet the needs of impacted stakeholders during serious crises from Avian Flu pandemic to workplace violence? Take-and-use concepts and guidelines will be provided to equip attendees in better addressing the needs of impacted stakeholders who may be adversely affected by crisis incidents. Best practice components for a corporate crisis-related Human Impact Program will be highlighted.
The Crisis Whisperer
Effectively Managing the Unexpected
Some people are better at handling unexpected, high-consequence situations than others. What is the formula that guides successful crisis teams and effective individual crisis response?
Generally, teams and leaders who are successful at managing the unexpected place principles over circumstances. They typically have one good overarching reason for choosing the path to follow. They balance intuitive decision-making with thoughtful consideration. They emulate the “state” they want from impacted stakeholders.
Learn how to enhance your calm and assertive ability to effectively handle the unexpected through a time and experience-tested “inside out” and an “outside in” process.
The goal of this session is to assist crisis leaders (whether they want to be or not) in effectively managing catastrophes of disastrous proportions, down through unexpected incidents of daily living. Content draws on the vast worldwide crisis management experience of the presenter in a take-and-use manner that can be applied immediately when needed.
Crisis Decision-Making
An unexpected, high-consequence crisis situation arises. Early information is incomplete and most often inaccurate. In the early hours, the velocity of necessary crisis-related decisions typically comes fast. Timing is of the essence in order to stay ahead of the developing, wide-spreading reactions of impacted stakeholders.
With insufficient time to gather and verify facts, organizational leaders must be make vital decisions with only partial knowledge. Important decisions must be made when (1) partially informed; (2) time is limited; and (3) the future is uncertain.
Some leaders are much more proficient at making and implementing effective decisions during these uncertain times than others. For many teams and individuals, crises magnify the significance of their small weaknesses. To address this problem, several scientific studies have analyzed and identified “Simple Rules of Thumb” that help organizational leaders make high-quality decisions during turbulent, unstable times.
When can these gut-level decisions (based on partial knowledge) be trusted? Research has shown that decisions made using Simple Rules of Thumb in unexpected high-consequence, fast moving situations lead to superior decision-making. These decisions are less prone to estimation and calculation errors than decisions that are “over thought.”
What are the concrete “Simple Rules of Thumb” that highly effective leaders focus upon during unexpected crisis situations . . . from frequent, less severe crises to incidents of disastrous proportions? This presentation will help each participant obtain take-and-use methods for increasing the quality of decision-making during uncertain, high-consequence situations that inevitably occur from time to time in one’s career and personal life.