Role of leadership in the management of disasters and emergencies

Name

Institution

Introduction

Crisis management is the implementation of programs that will help in reducing risks and preventing vulnerability, to improve an organization’s coordination of risks (Karaca et al., 2012). However, the implementation requires leadership to coordinate the activities that help in the prevention of the crisis. Therefore, the two aspects are intertwined in that a leader’s role in responding to a disaster that occurred and made it their responsibility to prevent further such crises from occurring. This requirement makes organizations have leadership departments to cater to crises and disasters, which helps to improve the operations of the organization as they are prepared to handle any risks that occur. Therefore, leadership in the management of disasters and emergencies is essential as it guides an organization on the activities to undertake to reduce the effect of the risk.

Research Objective

To determine the role of leadership in emergency management in an organization.

To identify essential skills and competencies that are important in realizing the goals to manage expected and unexpected disasters.

Literature Review

Handling Routine emergencies in severe events

Crisis management consists of activities that must be conducted in a sequence to achieve the expected results. These activities include prevention measures, mitigation, making the decision, and implementation of the decision made (Demiroz & Kapucu, 2012). Pre-disaster control requires funds that must be provided by an organization. The control measures are put as a routine activity to ensure any risks are prevented and controlled for better operations. Leaders are also considered to have an ideal influence, which makes it easy to control situations in times of crisis. These activities include the allocation of roles, through which the overall object of mitigating and preventing risks is achieved.

However, for leadership to be effective in controlling and preventing disasters, specific skills and competencies are required. These skills entail persuasion rather than directive leadership, communication proficiencies, and continuous engagement of members in the operations of the organization (Trainor & Velotti, 2013). This act makes the involved personnel get used to the operations, making it easy to implement actions at a faster rate. The leadership styles that a leader engages with the subordinates allows them to engage in the solution process to find the best ideas in managing the disasters.

Competencies, Essential Skills, and MetacompetenciesLeaders need to establish clarity of purpose and have the ability to communicate to both the internal and external personnel to effectively handle emergencies (Geras et al., 2010). Thinking and decision making are also essential skills in leadership. In the process of crisis management, decision making is a step that needs to be followed. To develop the best decisions, thinking is essential hence useful in developing the best choices to manage disasters. Also, Schoemaker identifies the ability to anticipate, challenge, interpret, decide, align and learn to be among the essential skills that enable a leader to think and navigate effectively (Schoemaker et al., 2013). These abilities allow a leader to be flexible and persistent, especially when the crises have already occurred.

Conclusion

From the literature reviewed, leadership is an essential factor in the management of crises. Besides, the leaders require specific skills and competencies such as critical thinking and decision-making skills as well as the ability to interpret and challenge situations to find solutions. The role of leaders is to make decisions, coordinate the functional areas, provide directions to subordinated, and manage the team to achieve the goal of preventing and managing the risk. Leadership comes first in the achievement criteria n crisis management (Fener & Cevik, 2015). The people involved need to work together to establish a longterm solution to crises that occur in an organization, and this is enabled by the leadership skills of a person.

References

Demiroz, F., & Kapucu, N. (2012). The role of leadership in managing emergencies and disasters. European Journal of Economic & Political Studies, 5(1), 91-101.

Fener, T., & Cevik, T. (2015). Leadership in Crisis Management: Separation of Leadership and Executive Concepts. Procedia Economics And Finance, 26, 695-701.

Gerras, S. J., Clark, M., Allen, C., Keegan, T., Meinhart, R., Wong, L., … & Reed, G. (2010). Strategic leadership primer. Army War College, Carlisle Barracks PA.

Karaca, H., Kapucu, N., & Van Wart, M. (2012). Examining the Role of Transformational Leadership in Emergency Management: The Case of FEMA. Risk, Hazards & Crisis In Public Policy, 3(3), 19-37.

Schoemaker, P. J., Krupp, S., & Howland, S. (2013). Strategic leadership: The essential skills. Harvard Business Review, 91(1), 131-134.

Trainor, J. E., & Velotti, L. (2013). Leadership in crises, disasters, and catastrophes. Journal of Leadership Studies, 7(3), 38-40.