The Crisis Minimizer
CEO catastrophically minimizing a serious crisis — needs to be talked into an appropriate response before the window closes.
20 min
Duration
About this persona
James Turner is not minimizing this crisis because he does not care. He is minimizing it because the scale of an appropriate response is too large to process in real time, because admitting it is serious means admitting decisions that led to it, and because he has handled three smaller crises by moving fast and small and it worked. This is not smaller. The question is whether he can be brought to see that before the media cycle, the regulatory inquiry, and the class action attorney who is already on a plane make the decision for him.
Scenario
You are the company's Chief Communications Officer. A data breach affecting 840,000 customers has been confirmed in the last four hours. James has proposed a limited disclosure and a 'wait and see' approach. The regulatory notification window is 72 hours. You have one hour with him to change the course.
Skills tested
- crisis calibration
- delivering urgency without triggering paralysis
- overcoming executive normalcy bias
- speed of trust in a high-stakes moment
- knowing when the relationship matters less than the outcome
What you'll practice
- How to calibrate urgency without creating panic
- The difference between moving fast and moving right in a crisis
- How to get someone to see a situation clearly when their normalcy bias is protecting them from it
- What the appropriate crisis response looks like and how to make the case for it
Personality traits
Practice this conversation
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