Helping leaders motivate their people to a higher level of performance through strong human relations, team building, and golajiving. This is the seven Minute Leadership Podcast with your host Paul fella Aledo. Hello everyone, and welcome to the seven Minute Leadership Podcast. It's episode six twenty two. Let me take you into a moment. Every leader eventually faces the phone rings earlier than it should. A text hits your screen with too few details. Someone says we've got a situation.
Your heart rate jumps, your brain races ahead to worst case outcomes, and people look at you waiting. Here's the part most leadership books never prepare you for. Crises are not one in the first ten hours. They are one or lost in the first ten minutes. I call this the first ten minutes crisis protocol. It's not fancy, it's not theoretical. It works in boardrooms, hospitals, fire scenes, airlines, nonprofits, startups, and family businesses. I learned this on the front lines,
where confusion multiplies fast in bad decisions, age poorly. So let's walk through it. Minute one is about stopping the mental free fall. The biggest threat in the opening minute of a crisis is not the problem itself. It's panic dressed up as urgency. Your job in minute one is simple. Slow yourself down before you speed anything else up. Take a breath that you can feel in your chest, Sit or stand still, Say nothing for five seconds longer than
feels comfortable. That pause is not weakness, It is command presence. Leaders who rush to usually regret the first things they say. Leaders who pause set the tone for everyone else. Minute two is about owning the moment. You do not need answers, yet you need ownership. Say this out loud, clearly, I've got this. We're going to work the problem. That sentence does two things. It anchors the room and it tells your team someone is at the wheel. Avoid blaming language,
avoid speculation, avoid storytelling. Ownership does not mean you caused it. Ownership means you're responsible for what happens next. Minute three is about defining what actually matters. Crises create noise, emails, texts, opinions, and panic flood in all at the same time. Your job is to cut through it. Ask three grounding questions slowly. What happened, What is happening right now? What will get worse in the next hour? If we do nothing, that's it.
Not ten questions, not a full briefing deck. These three questions for uce clarity when chaos wants to take over. Minute four is about stabilizing people, not fixing the problem. Most leaders make this mistake. They rush to solutions before they stabilize their team. In minute four, your only goal is this lower the emotional temperature. Look at your people, Acknowledge the stress without amplifying it. Say things like, I know this is tense. We're going to take this step
by step. No one is alone in this. When people feel steady, they think better. When they think better, outcomes improve. Minute five is about assigning a single point of control. Every crisis needs one operational lead, not a committee, not a group. Chat one person. That person might be you, it might not be you. Say their name, say their role, say that decisions flow through them. This prevents duplication, turf wars and well meaning chaos. Clarity here saves hours later.
Trust me on that one. Minute six is about protecting the edges. Crises leak information, leaks, emotions, leak rumors leak. Minute six is when you decide what does not leave the room yet, who speaks externally, What information is confirmed, What is off limits? Until verified. This protects your credibility. One's credibility is damaged. No protocol fixes that. Minute seven is about buying time the right way. Not all time
is created equal, sometime creates option, sometime creates damage. In minute seven, you choose one small stabilizing action that buys you thinking room, pause a process, secure a system, pull a team out of harm's way. It does not solve the crisis, it prevents it from accelerating. Minute eight is about setting the next checkpoint. Crises feel endless when there is no horizon. Set a clear near term checkpoint. We regroup in thirty minutes. We reassess at the top of
the hour, or I'll update everyone by three pm. This gives people psychological oxygen. They know when the next moment of clarity is coming. Minute nine is about documenting reality, memory, lies, under stress. Write things down, what decisions were made, who owns what? What facts are confirmed? This protection you later when emotions fade and narratives try to rewrite events. Minute ten is about leadership visibility. Before you move on, be seen,
walk the floor, make the call, show your face. Presence is not micromanagement. Presence is reassurance. People do not remember every decision you made in a crisis, they remember whether you showed up. And here's the truth. Most leaders learn the hard way. If you handle the first ten minutes well, the next ten hours become manageable. If you blow the first ten minutes, you spend weeks cleaning up secondary damage. The first ten minutes crisis protocol is not about being perfect,
it's about being steady. You will never eliminate crises, you can control how they start under your watch. So if you take nothing else from this episode, please take this. In the first ten minutes of a crisis, your calm becomes the ceiling for everyone else. Your clarity becomes the map, Your presence becomes the anchor train for those ten minutes before you need them, because when the call comes, there
is no time to learn, only time to lead. This has been the seven Minute Leadership Podcast, and I thank you for listening. For more Paul Fell of Alito Podcasts, visit paulfellowalito dot com.