Assignment

"Leadership Effectiveness Paper

Your CEO from Assignment 1 bought you argument and has agreed that some type of crisis communications preparation is necessary. However, she has decided that is really not something that she needs to be involved in. Her words were "Let the PR people handle it!"

Your task now is to lay out for her why effective leadership in a crisis is critical for an organization. She asked you to wrrite a paper (memo format is fine) for the Board of Directors on why you see this as a good way for her to spend her time. You will need to address at least the following issues:

• Why should a leader be actively involved in responding to a crisis?
• Why is visibility of a leader in a crisis important?
• Why is openness and honesty key?
• What role can a leader play in renewal for an organization?
• What can a leader do to manage uncertainty?

Don't forget to include a strong introduction and conclusion.

Refer to material included in Chapter 7 of our readings, and also weave in examples from Chapter 8 to illustrate your points. Augment the readings with other news stories you find online to."

I'm having a difficult time stating both including the information from the attached chapter 7 topics and the story about the Route 91 Country Music Festival in Las Vegas, Nevada, a lone gunman fired over 1000 rounds of ammunition into a crowd of concert attendees that I also attached.

Chapter 7 LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Describe the importance of effective crisis leadership Explain why leaders should be visible following a crisis Discuss why networks of support are critical for leaders in their crisis communication Illustrate the importance of being available, open, and honest following a crisis Explain how effective leadership can impact the conditions for creating renewal following a crisis Discuss examples of ineffective leadership during crises Describe what makes an effective crisis leader Identify key communication strategies for effective leaders following a crisis

Citations:

Ulmer, Robert, R. et al. Effective Crisis Communication. Available from: VitalSource Bookshelf, (5th Edition). SAGE Publications, Inc. (US), 2022.

chapter 8 example

On October 1, 2017, the last day of the Route 91 Country Music Festival in Las Vegas, Nevada, a lone gunman fired over 1000 rounds of ammunition into a crowd of concert attendees. More than 850 people sustained injuries. Sixty-one people lost their lives, including the lone gunman (Hirim & Martin, 2021). The confusion, terror, and shooting lasted for 10 minutes. Leadership at the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department (LVMPD) needed to use effective leadership practices to make sense of the terrible and confusing circumstances, to determine who was doing the shooting and from where, to protect those at the concert and stabilize the incident, and to ensure those who were injured were able to get medical attention.

Captain John Pelletier, the Incident Commander for the Las Vegas Strip for the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, was 7 months into his leadership position at the time of the crisis. The night of the Route 91 Country Music Festival, he was at home when he received the call regarding the crisis in the Las Vegas community. At this time, he was briefed that there were many shots fired at the concert, there were conflicting reports on where the shooter or shooters were located, and that concert attendees were fleeing from the outdoor venue to different parts of Las Vegas. As Captain Pelletier considered how to lead during this highly uncertain, chaotic, and complex crisis, he relied on his prior education and training, his well-established relationships, and his adaptive leadership approach to manage the crisis (Hirim & Martin, 2021).

Effective crisis leadership takes skills and mindsets that are developed through ongoing training, learning, and reflection. Rachel Skidmore, the Emergency Manager for the LVMPD played a critical role and continues to support crisis leadership development for the LVMPD. She describes ongoing efforts by the LVMPD to prepare leaders like Captain Pelletier to respond effectively to a wide variety of crises including active shooter incidents (Hirim & Martin, 2021). This preparation involves LVMPD leaders learning the National Incident Management System (NIMS) and the Incident Command Structure (ICS) approaches to managing a crisis. The next level of preparation often includes tabletop exercises and debriefings to build experience and skill and facilitate communication between people and organizations involved in these events. The final stage involves engaging leaders in large-scale more realistic crisis training and simulations that include many community partners and collaborators. These large-scale trainings take many months to develop and implement and are much more realistic and complex than tabletop exercises (Hirim & Martin, 2021). The LVMPD does receive some federal money to support these trainings; however, most of the training is completely funded, developed, and supported by the LVMPD. Rachel Skidmore explains that these trainings provide leaders with experience in managing crises, help to support relationship building among community partners, and to provide leaders the opportunity to learn from their mistakes through debriefing and feedback sessions. Captain Pelletier and other LVMPD leaders participated in several of these training including a large-scale active shooter training in Las Vegas before the Route 91 crisis (Hirim & Martin, 2021, 2012). Beyond these educational and experiential ways to build crisis leadership, Captain Pelletier also regularly met with security chiefs from across the Las Vegas strip to discuss potential threats, to share information, and build relationships with one another (Hirim & Martin, 2021, 2012). All of these experiences served Captain Pelletier well as he led the immediate response to the worst mass shooting in United States history.

When Captain Pelletier got off the telephone, he relied on all his leadership training, knowledge, and skills to manage the Route 91 shooting crisis. The information he was receiving in real time was very confusing. Concert goers initially thought the shots they heard were fireworks. Once they realized that it was gunfire, determining where the bullets were coming from and if there were multiple shooters was both difficult and essential. Captain Pelletier was receiving conflicting reports regarding where the shots were coming from. Was the shooter in the festival grounds or somewhere else? Concert attendees and other residents were reporting gunfire originating from different places at the concert and across Las Vegas.

To deal with the uncertainty, chaos, and complexity of the crisis, Captain Pelletier employed the Incident Command Structure (ICS) to guide his leadership approach to reduce crisis uncertainty. In this case, he prioritized life safety and incident stabilization as his top 2 priorities. Life safety and incident stabilization were interrelated objectives. Both involved addressing those who were injured and finding the shooter (Hirim & Martin, 2021).

To accomplish these objectives, Captain Pelletier relied on well-established relationships and open communication channels with his LVMPD team (Hirim & Martin, 2021). During the crisis he had ongoing conversations with a captain who monitored Las Vegas hospitals, another captain handled the deployment operations center and downtown area command, another monitored operations on the Las Vegas strip, and Captain Pelletier provided ongoing communication regarding the scene of the crisis (Hirim & Martin, 2021). On an ongoing basis, each of these leaders provided status updates to Captain Pelletier regarding the crisis. Similarly, the Captain Pelletier was able to provide and receive updates and maintain communication with these leaders as well. This approach helped with making the best possible decisions during the crisis event. Years after the crisis, when asked about the key aspects of crisis leadership in the Leading Las Vegas podcast, Captain Pelletier emphasized the importance of relationships in developing effective crisis leadership (Hirim & Martin, 2021). He also explained that these relationships were key in eventually finding the shooter in Mandalay Bay and saving as many lives as possible by securing and stabilizing the incident (Hirim & Martin, 2021). It is also critical to note that during the shooting many concert attendees helped one another including those injured by the gunfire.

That tragic night it took a collective effort of ephemeral and enduring relationships between concert attendees and first responders sent to save lives and resolve the crisis. Some people just met one another that night. Other groups, like a wide variety of first responders, had the opportunity to meet through training and crisis planning activities held by the LVMPD. However, it takes a collective effort to protect and resolve a crisis as complex as the October 1 mass shooting. The individuals in these relationships needed to be creative and adaptable in creating makeshift tourniquets to stop bleeding, supporting those who were injured, and cooperating with first responders.

Adaptability is an essential characteristic of effective crisis leadership. Captain Pelletier expresses this sentiment years after the crisis in the Leading Las Vegas podcast (Hirim & Martin, 2021). He explains, that "in crisis leadership a level of adaptability has to take place, a person can rely on the training, but crises are not exercises" (Hirim & Martin, 2021). In this case, Captain Pelletier discusses that adaptability is about taking your precrisis learning and training and applying this learning to new and unique crises. Crises are, by definition, low-probability high-consequence events. As a result, they are unique and often defy the imaginations of even the most creative crisis trainers or simulations. The goal for crisis leaders is to adapt their leadership to the circumstances of the crisis they are experiencing. The broader their range of leadership experiences and knowledge, the better to adapt to new and unique crises.

I'm having a difficult time stating both including the information from the attatched chapter 7 topics and the story about the Route 91 Country Music Festival in Las Vegas, Nevada, a lone gunman fired over 1000 rounds of ammunition into a crowd of concert attendees that I also attached.