3 minute read
Organisations today are facing a landscape where disruptions are more frequent, more complex and more tightly coupled to corporate risk. Whether it is a cyber attack, supply chain breakdown or a sudden operational disruption, the effectiveness of a crisis response often comes down to how leaders manage their focus. High pressure does not reliably elevate performance. And when that pressure rises, leaders tend to operate in one of two modes. I often describe them through the behaviour of two very different animals. A cheetah and a gazelle.
Before I moved into resilience, I worked as an intensive care paramedic, manager and educator, responsible for training and leading high-performance frontline teams in some of the most pressured conditions imaginable. In those situations, leadership was not about delivering the most technical intervention. It was about resisting the urge to dive into a complex task simply because it felt productive. A leader’s value is strategic oversight, clear delegation and maintaining a view of the entire scene. When people feel uncertain, they reach for what is familiar.
When we do not know what to do, we do what we know
We see the same behaviour across crisis management teams. Senior leaders who are normally strong strategic thinkers often get caught in operational detail and go down rabbit holes. It happens in the simulations we deliver, and it happens in real events. Pressure narrows focus and pushes leaders toward tactical activity. But the moment they drop into the weeds, the crisis team loses the strategic guidance that only they can provide.
Not every crisis involves a business continuity disruption
But when it does, the distinction between strategic and operational roles becomes critical. Leaders need to remain at the strategic level, monitoring the full landscape, anticipating consequences and enabling business continuity teams to execute without interference. When they drift into operational response, they lose the wide-field awareness their teams rely on and the organisation loses its strategic compass. But is that narrow response sometimes required?
Let’s look at the lens of our animals
A cheetah has eyes positioned at the front of its head, giving it depth perception and tunnel vision for pursuing a single target at speed. A gazelle has eyes along the sides of its head, creating a panoramic field of view that allows it to interpret movement and pattern across an entire landscape. Both modes have strengths, but only one resembles the type of awareness a leader must hold throughout a crisis.
Effective crisis leadership means almost always choosing the gazelle mode
It means staying strategic, delegating confidently, absorbing emerging information and keeping the organisation oriented toward what matters most. Leaders may dip briefly into cheetah, but those moments must be intentional, and only when they are truly the only person for the task. The real impact of leadership comes from creating clarity and enabling coordinated execution, not from personally solving operational problems.
Every crisis exposes the mode a leadership team defaults to
Some sprint toward the nearest task because it feels like action. Others stay aware, scanning the whole environment and guiding their organisation with purpose.
When the pressure rises, ask yourself the question. Are you leading like the cheetah, or like the gazelle?
In today’s unpredictable environment, mastering the balance between strategic awareness and operational execution is critical to building true resilience.
If you’d like to explore how your organisation can strengthen its crisis leadership and response capability, contact the experts at Battleground for more insight, tailored guidance, and practical support.
