What COVID-19 Taught Me About Crisis Management
COVID-19 safety essentials: face masks and a ready-to-use rapid antigen test.
In March of 2025, we hit a grim anniversary. It’s been five years since the start of the COVID pandemic in the United States. I am still stunned at the human cost of this tragedy, and I am finally reflecting on what it meant for my career.
Some background: In Fall 2018, I stepped into a role leading enterprise risk management at my organization. I had been building this function for a little over a year when our programs in Asia started sounding the alarm: some kind of virus was spreading. Travel restrictions were being imposed. Events were canceling. What should they do?
What started as a distraction soon turned into my full-time responsibility. After weeks of trying to stay open, on March 12, 2020, we had to close it all down. Walking into my CEO’s office to share this realization was devastating.
For the next 2 ½ years, it was all COVID, all the time. Convening our crisis management team daily. Coordinating the shift to fully remote work. Responding to the financial fallout. Imposing a vaccine mandate and then trying to track and enforce it. Issuing dozens of constantly changing directives on masks, testing, and social distancing. Getting panicked texts in the middle of the night when someone tested positive. Working for months to find a way to bring everyone back to the office safely, only to see barely anyone return.
All that was awful, but what made it worse was the emotion that surrounded all of it. Listening to complaints from leaders within my own organization that I was either grossly overreacting or not taking it seriously enough. Getting irate emails from VIP stakeholders who questioned my intelligence and my morality. Worrying every single day that I was doing it wrong.
It may take a lifetime to fully reflect on what all this meant for me, professionally and personally, but here are a few thoughts that may resonate with others who find themselves at the center of a crisis:
You can never over-prepare. Though none of us foresaw a global pandemic, everything we had done to invest in risk and crisis management paid off when we needed it.
Being in charge is hard. Leaders make, explain, and enforce decisions all day. But it doesn’t make it easy. You can never be 100% certain, but if you have sought advice from experts, relied on your experience and instincts, and stayed true to your values, you just have to make a choice and stand by it.
Take a deep breath and remember who the hell you are. Taking hits and having your integrity questioned is tough and can make you doubt yourself. While self-scrutiny staves off hubris, it can also be destabilizing. Don’t let it define you. Find a way to hear the praise as well as the criticism.
This last lesson is the one I will keep with me. I saved all the notes I received from staff during those dark years, expressing gratitude and appreciation that someone was just trying to hold it together and do the right thing. Sometimes as a leader, that is all you can do, and that is enough.
