What Crisis Work Taught Me About Leadership
Leadership is often tested most clearly in moments of crisis. For more than two decades, I worked for and with organizations responding to sexual and domestic violence. Much of that work happened in high-stakes settings: answering crisis line calls, accompanying survivors at hospitals and courthouses, providing advocacy, facilitating support groups, and supporting survivor speakers’ bureaus.
Since founding JT Consulting, I no longer do direct crisis response work. But the lessons I learned in those spaces show up every day in my practice, especially when I coach and support organizational leaders. Crisis work taught me that effective leadership is not about having all the answers. It is about creating the conditions where people can stay connected, informed, grounded, and able to do meaningful work.
The skills I gained in crisis response are not limited to crisis settings. They are leadership practices that can help organizations build more sustainable, humane, and effective workplaces. Here are three lessons I carry with me:
1. Change Requires Connection
As a crisis counselor, I saw firsthand the difference it made when a survivor felt seen and heard. That experience changed the way I understand leadership. People are more likely to engage, contribute, and move through change when they feel connected to the people around them and to the purpose of the work.
Many organizations have powerful missions, yet struggle to meet their goals because their staff members do not experience the same care, dignity, and attention the organization hopes to offer externally. When onboarding and supervision are rushed, skipped, or treated as administrative tasks, relationships can become transactional. Over time, that weakens trust and makes transformation harder.
Meaningful connection is not a nice-to-have. It is a leadership necessity. If your organization wants to create real and lasting change, connection has to be built into the way people are welcomed, supported, supervised, and led.
2. Transparency and Choice Build Trust
I ground my work in this definition of trauma: trauma is a profound and meaningful loss of control. Many people carry experiences of trauma into the workplace, whether or not those experiences are visible. In crisis work, I learned how important it was to offer choice whenever possible to someone who had just experienced control being taken from them.
When choice was not possible, transparency mattered. Explaining what was happening, what to expect, and why a step was necessary helped people feel more grounded and less powerless. The same principle applies in organizations.
Employees need opportunities to exercise autonomy and agency. When leaders cannot offer choice, they can still offer context. Directives without explanation may get short-term compliance, but they often damage motivation and connection. Transparency helps people understand the why behind decisions, even when the decision itself is difficult.
3. Regulation Makes Leadership Possible
When I accompanied a survivor to the hospital, I could not be fully useful if I arrived dysregulated. I could not listen well, advocate clearly, or respond to their needs if I was in a heightened state myself. Crisis work taught me that if you are responding to crisis, you cannot be operating from crisis.
The work was impactful, and at times heavy. I had to develop skills to stay grounded and present. Just as importantly, I learned the value of systems that supported counselors too—spaces where people could process, release, and recover from what they had been exposed to.
Change work is hard, and it can take a toll. Organizations need systems that support both individual and collective regulation. Leaders cannot ask people to remain steady in demanding work without creating structures that help them do so.
At JT Consulting, I help leaders and organizations apply these lessons in practical, sustainable ways. If your workplace is navigating change, strengthening culture, or trying to better support the people doing mission-driven work, you do not have to figure it out alone. Let’s build the structures, skills, and relationships that make meaningful change possible. Reach out to JT Consulting to explore how we can work together.
