Heroism in Times of Crisis Understanding PDF

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Heroism in Times of Crisis
Understanding Leadership
during Extreme Events
Zeno E. Franco
Too often companies become complacent. They begin to feel almost invincible. Their
financial performance is strong, and they fall into the trap of believing they have little to
worry about. Then they’re blindsided by a crisis and don’t have a response plan in place …
(Alsop, 2006)
Every human crisis demands a hero, an individual or small group of individuals who are not only
aware of impending chaos, but in the vernacular are, “ready, willing, and able” to act decisively.
Their decisive actions are understood to be the very barrier that holds back destruction—
whether it is physical, financial, emotional, or philosophical. While the phrase “ready, willing, and
able” sounds trivial in common use, the reason heroes are valuable in crisis events is precisely
because most people are unable or unwilling to act. Thus, in moments of crisis, the risks involved
and the decision making authority to address those risks, typically become concentrated in an
individual or small group. This is often a tacit transaction wherein a heroic actor becomes the
agent of the larger group (Desmond, 2008a, 2008b), and thus this individual no longer able to
rely on the psychological and social crutches that allow others the “out” of inaction.
While heroes and heroism have long seemed the realm of myth and legend, recent scholarship
on the social psychology of heroism is beginning to systematically address the phenomenon,
focusing initially on taxonomies of heroic types (Allison & Goethals, 2011, 2013b; Franco, Blau,
& Zimbardo, 2011), perceptions of the general public toward various forms of heroic action and
archetypes (Franco et al., 2011; Kinsella, Ritchie, & Igou, 2015), examining differences between
individuals publically recognized for heroism versus normal controls (Walker, Frimer, & Dunlop,
2010), and self-reported engagement in heroic acts over the course of a life time (Zimbardo,
Breckenridge, & Moghaddam, 2013). However, this focus on individual heroes and how these
heroes are perceived by others has not fully addressed the situational dynamics that call forth
heroic action in organizational leaders.
This chapter explores three deeply interrelated areas of inquiry: crisis events, leadership within
these crises, and the tactical behaviors crisis leaders use to effect heroic outcomes. In taking a
largely situationist perspective, the ideal of heroic leadership can be illustrated in actions taken
(or not taken) to reduce the crisis or to transform it in an unanticipated way. Examining heroes
and heroism on their own is important, but there have also been calls within the field of
leadership psychology to develop a better understanding of “heroic leadership” (Allison &
Goethals, 2013a, 2015). For example, in the introductory article to an American Psychologist special
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issue on leadership, Warren Bennis noted that, “Heroic or charismatic leadership is still an
essential, unsolved part of the puzzle” (Bennis, 2007). Various forms of heroic leadership occur
on a daily basis in crises, large and small. Heroic leaders act in closed board rooms, in hospital
operating theaters, in military engagements, and in our neighborhoods and communities—but
we still know relatively little about how these leaders react to the contours of crisis, and at what
threshold good leadership becomes heroic. Leaders who are able to take the risks required to
respond in the face of disaster remain an area in need of considerable theoretical and empirical
exploration.
Dr. Philip Zimbardo and I have argued elsewhere that heroic leadership involves:
leaders who take on extraordinary personal, corporate, or national risks. It is easy to conflate
the ideas of heroism and heroic leadership with the simpler idea of charismatic leadership,
and much of the leadership and management literature can be accused of making this
mistake (Arnulf, Mathisen, & Hærem, 2012; Carney, 2007). As noted earlier, at its core, the
term hero implies the acceptance of significant personal risk, engaged in voluntarily. This is
not the risk that a charismatic leader might face, for example, that by using powerful
persuasive techniques the leader alienates some followers. Instead, the term “heroic leader”
should be reserved for larger-than-life figures, who take larger-than-life gambles to advance
socially just ideals, transform societies, lead soldiers into battle (Wansink, Payne, & Van
Ittersum, 2008), place companies at financial or security risk to prove a moral point (e.g.,
the Charlie Hebdo satirical newspaper, which refused to give into threats ultimately resulting
in deaths of 12 of its journalists is arguably one exemplar; Somaiya, 2015) or lead nations
out of existential crisis (Allison & Goethals, 2015).
(Franco & Zimbardo, in press)
While we stressed the idea of the larger-than-life leader, heroic leadership is also shown in
“small” ways as well, in quieter forms, in less public encounters. Just as the stories of the most
heroic soldiers are often never known, the most profound corporate and government battles
often happen in obscure venues, outside of the public eye. These battles are won and lost, and
good or bad outcomes from them impact all of us, although we rarely know the names of the
individuals who successfully fought for what was right, or those who “died trying,” even though
in this case the death may have been figurative, in the form of resignation from an important
post, being fired, or losing the blessing of supervisors. Just as important as considering the
transformative change heroic leaders can create, examining the impact when no hero appears in
a corporate or government crisis warrants deep consideration. We often neglect the fact that
there are real costs, often deep financial costs, to what has been termed “heroic failure” (Franco,
2014; Franco & Langdon, 2012). By heroic failure what is meant is not that someone tried to be
heroic and failed in the process, but rather than a leader’s “heroic imagination” failed, thus not
allowing her to see the unfolding crisis events as requiring a heroic response (Zimbardo, 2007).
Failure to act heroically can cripple corporations, governments and other organizations, leading
to devastating financial and human costs that can ultimately result in existential threats to the
very organizations the leader was sworn to guide. Ultimately, the financial costs associated with
the disasters that occur when heroic leadership is absent suggests that governments, corporations,
and other structured systems should not only value, but foster heroic leadership as one type of
human asset that is critical to effective contingency management (Kakabadse, Kouzmin,
Kakabadse, & Mouraviev, 2012).
This chapter deliberately focuses on the situations that call forth heroic efforts in leaders. In
so doing, the point is not to fall in to the false dichotomy often engendered by the
person/situation debate, but to more fully characterize the dynamics of the complex crisis events
leaders face. Through this exploration of the crisis situation and some of the specific tactical
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approaches leaders employ to impact these events, it is possible to deeply explore the interactions
between individual leadership traits and heroic leadership activities in the most trying circum-
stances faced by those entrusted significant responsibility.
The first goal of this chapter is to provide an introduction to the theoretical underpinnings
of crisis research in order to deliberately and systematically ground the discussion in the realities
of complex disasters. Second, throughout the chapter a set of detailed examples of recent major
crises are offered, as well as the stories of the heroes and heroic failures illustrated by these events.
These example crisis events include the grounding of the Costa Concordia; the interlocking
contingencies that nearly cost the lives of three astronauts aboard the Apollo 13 mission; aspects
of the recent global economic crisis; the story of how the Thalidomide disaster was largely
averted in the U.S. by a female physician in the fledgling FDA; the ice-bound survival of the
Captain Shackleton and the crew of the Endurance in Antarctica; a fictional story from Star Trek
describing a desperate interplanetary search for survivors; among others. Third, some of the
specific tactical behaviors heroic leaders exhibit are examined in detail, as these actions are likely
the window into how leaders’ cognitive, emotional, and behavioral traits are expressed in
interaction with the disaster event. In this third section, these actions are also tied to key
theoretical aspects of crisis response behaviors including concepts such as catastrophic leadership
failure, distributed situational awareness, option awareness, and improvisation. Finally, thoughts
about future theoretical and empirical research that may drive the exploration of heroic behavior
in new directions are offered as part of the discussion.
Understanding the Situational Dynamics of Crisis

In prior work, Dr. Philip Zimbardo and I have advanced a largely situationist view of heroism.
Again, to be clear, this is not meant to discount individual factors in engaging in heroic acts, but
to emphasize the importance of the specific situational elements that call for heroic action. The
situations that call for heroism are almost always aberrations from normal daily life, and in many
cases they are considered to be crises or disasters. An entire domain of research has grown up
around crisis events, which remains largely unincorporated in modern psychology. Yet, the role
of the heroic leader is largely that of a broker or edge worker (Cross & Prusak, 2002) between
one (or multiple) external contingencies and the social group they are charged with leading
(broadly, their followers, employees, etc.). Especially with regard to crisis events, the goal of the
leadership process can be seen as either acting on the situation in ways intended to force a return
to normalcy or to shape the response of followers to effectively adapt to an uncomfortable, but
inevitable, new reality. Leaders in these crisis situations are forced work with political
mechanisms, social structures, and physical assets that are poorly aligned with the contours of the
crisis (Wagner-Pacifici, 2000), resulting in improvisations that are unfamiliar and novel
(Mendonça, Beroggi, & Wallace, 2001; Mendonça & Wallace, 2007). In this sense, systematically
examining heroic leadership holds the potential to identify personal leadership and decision-
making strategies that may offer important efficiencies in other complex organizational contexts.
Definitions and Theories of Crisis

The definitions of crisis events are varied and complex, but nonetheless illuminating when
considering the situational aspects of human behavior that occur during these moments of chaos
and uncertainty. When faced with a crisis, it is the hero’s ability to act differently than many of
her companions—i.e. not responding with panic, indecision, inaction, or flight—that in part
defines her actions as heroic. One of the simplest definitions of a “crisis” emerged from the
disaster management literature and can be summarized as follows:
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A crisis is an event or occasion in which things that are widely valued by human social
systems are deeply threatened in an unanticipated manner, and the demand for resources to
address the catastrophic event outstrips available capacity.
(paraphrasing Quarantelli, 1985)
This definition underscores the idea that crisis events are different than “normal emergencies”
because they:
• involve fundamentally unanticipated shock to a system;

• exceed the capabilities of pre-positioned emergency assets and resources; and
• cause profound disruption in social life.
These basic ideas are inculcated into many contemporary policy statements offered by organi-
zations charged with managing disasters and major crisis events. For example the UN Office for
Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) defines a disaster as:
A serious disruption of the functioning of a community or a society involving widespread

human, material, economic or environmental losses and impacts, which exceeds the ability
of the affected community or society to cope using its own resources … Disasters are often
described as a result of the combination of: the exposure to a hazard; the conditions of
vulnerability that are present; and insufficient capacity or measures to reduce or cope with
the potential negative consequences. Disaster impacts may include loss of life, injury, disease
and other negative effects on human physical, mental and social well-being, together with
damage to property, destruction of assets, loss of services, social and economic disruption
and environmental degradation.
(UNISDR, 2007)
Crisis events are also understood to occur in different phases and sub-phases, often with
prodromal warning signs that are difficult to detect (Hensgen, Desouza, & Kraft, 2003;
Samarajiva, 2005), interlocking contingencies that result in cascading events and sudden
escalations in problem complexity (Peters, Buzna, & Helbing, 2008); peak phases where resource
demand profoundly exceeds capacity (Petak, 1985); and, in worst case scenarios, an event horizon
or “point of criticality” beyond which catastrophic loss becomes not just a possibility, but a harsh
reality (Sornette, 2002).
Theories and conceptual structures describing the situational and organizational aspects of
disasters and crisis events include normal accident theory (NAT; Perrow, 2011), high reliability
organizations (HROs; Rochlin, La Porte, & Roberts, 1987; Weick, Sutcliffe, & Obstfeld, 2008);
and latent human failures (Reason, 1990), among others. Generally, these theories acknowledge
a range of disaster types involving simple, predictable “component failures” to broader “systems
failures” in which the complex interaction between social and technical systems may prevent
accurate prediction of disaster, or even preclude an understanding of the events that brought on
the crisis.
NAT in particular emphasizes the importance of system “coupling” suggesting that tightly
coupled systems are those in which automated processes may occur before humans are capable of
acting to avert crisis, where loosely coupled systems allow greater time for human control over
events because of compartmentalization. Both coupling approaches have their own strengths and
weaknesses, and different failure points emerge in organizations in part because of the systems
coupling strategies employed. The ideas contained in NAT and HRO deal extensively with how
human systems are organized to exert control over crisis events, typically in centralized,
decentralized, or mixed hierarchies, and which type of leadership approach work best for each
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disaster context. Other sociological theories have emphasized the importance of combined latent
and active human error in complex systems. For example, while a nuclear power plant operator
may make an error that initiates a catastrophic chain of downstream events, there are often a set
of less well understood set of prior (latent) engineering errors that did not anticipate this
particular eventuality (Reason, 1990).
In practical terms, the contours of disasters often result in leaders experiencing a tangle of
contingencies or “catch-22” situations (Berariu, Fikar, Gronalt, & Hirsch, 2015) that gradually
remove degrees of freedom to act. While outside resources may be requested, the immediate
resource environment becomes increasingly diminished. The candle is literally burning at both
ends as options and assets are removed, leaving the crisis leader and her team on ever shrinking
safe-ground. In organizations, these problems often amplified by misinformation or pressure to
act in irrational ways (Clements & Washbush, 1999). Yet despite this complexity, the crisis leader
must swiftly devise creative, sometimes daring action strategies, and convince her team to follow
her despite the very human desire to retreat.
Examples of Crisis Events, Heroic Failure and Heroic Leadership
The Costa Concordia Disaster

One of the key reasons disasters at sea, in the wilds on land, and in limitless space are easily to
transliterate to the screen in TV and movies is because they distil the idea that crises lead to
diminished option availability as interlocking contingencies mount (Pfaff et al., 2013). Quite
simply, there is no safe pace to run, there are few last resort options, and it is often impossible to
effect rescue or move additional assets into place in time to avert loss of life. Thus, the crisis
leader is on her own, forced to take rapid action to try to save passengers, crew, and, if possible
her own life in the process.
The recent Costa Concordia disaster, involving a luxury cruise liner that ran aground off the
cost of Italy provides one example of how quickly things can go terribly wrong in maritime
operations, even close to shore. The ship was carrying 3,000 passengers and 1,000 crew members
when Captain Schettino steered toward the coast just for show—close enough to allow a crew
member to waive to friends on shore. While this error in judgment was bad enough, the Captain
then waited for 40 minutes between realizing there was a hull breach and issuing the order to
abandon ship. During that 40 minute delay, there are indications that the Captain was discussing
the situation with the company that owned the ship, possibly trying to jointly make decisions
about whether to declare an emergency or not. While the Captain claimed to have improved
the situation by maneuvering his ship closer to shore, this delay to take the dramatic but
necessary step of sounding the alarm to abandon ship meant that one of the most precious
commodities in a disaster—time—was lost. With more warning time and clear crisis messaging
from the Captain, passengers and crew could have organized a more orderly evacuation before
the ship began to violently list. But instead, by failing to imagine the consequences of not acting
decisively and by worrying about a mistake that he could no longer control, Captain Schettino
ran down the clock, leaving very few options for those in the bowels of the ship. Instead of facing
his own initial failure and taking the next set of actions the situation demanded, Captain
Schettino abandoned his vessel before all passengers and crew had evacuated—despite intense
verbal pressure over the radio from an Italian coast guard officer insisting that as the Captain he
needed to remain aboard to fulfill his duty:
CAPTAIN SCHETTINO: In this moment, the boat is tipping …

[COAST GUARD] DE FALCO: … There are people coming down the pilot ladder…You go up
that ladder…tell me if there are children, women or people in need of assistance … you
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saved yourself from the sea, but I am going to … really do something bad to you … Go
on board, [expletive]!
(Associated Press, 2012)
In a discussion of the lack of heroic leadership on the Costa Concordia, my colleague Matt
Langdon and I noted:
It is a heroic tradition as old as the Sea itself—in a crisis, the captain is the last person to
leave the ship. The privilege of being the master of a vessel also comes with the “burden of
command”—the responsibility for every soul aboard.
(Franco & Langdon, 2012)
Ultimately this “heroic failure” of leadership cost 32 lives among passengers and crew, billions of
dollars in salvage and insurance losses (Veysey, 2013), and deep ecological injury to the coast.
Apollo 13—Finding a Way Home through Distributed Crisis Problem Solving and
Option Awareness
The disaster aboard the Apollo 13 mission, triggered by an explosion in a service module oxygen
tank, is a quintessential example of a disaster in a High Reliability Organization (Casler, 2014),
meaning groups that are charged with routinely performing complex, often dangerous tasks,
with an absolute minimum of error. The deeply interlocking contingencies between sub-
systems on the Apollo missions or what is often referred to in disaster science as a “tightly
coupled system” (Weick et al., 2008), and failure of these systems relatively few options for the
astronauts and their support team on Earth after an explosion on the craft. The group was forced
to rapidly improvise in order to avert complete loss of the mission and the lives of its crew. The
drama of the events was so compelling that it created rapt attention in the U.S. and worldwide
at the time, and was latter made into a major film. It is worth briefly summarizing what disaster
science describes as “problem cascades” (Peters et al., 2008) that occurred aboard the vessel to
understand how disasters box in leaders, and how critical crisis leadership is to working out
alternative paths of action.
Take a moment to consider for yourself what the astronauts and ground controllers had to
work with in the three major components of the Apollo 13 craft. To make it feel as real as
possible, I have deliberately offered more detail than would usually be afforded in a chapter of
this type, encouraging you to “walk a mile in the shoes” of these astronauts and the engineers
who worked to save them.
The components of the craft included the Service Module, the Command Module and the Lunar
Module, and each of these segments of the space craft had limited assets (oxygen, electrical power
generation, food, water, etc.) and each had particular liabilities (energy consumption, damage,
mass, etc.). Under optimal conditions, the three components of the craft were designed to work
seamlessly together, but during the Apollo 13 crisis, this carefully orchestrated dance began to
break down. A partial list of the many considerations and their implications is offered below.
Again, rather than skimming them, take a moment to really let yourself feel the weight of each
“catch-22” these issues presented. They were responding not just one problem, but rather a set
of interlocking problems, each tightening the situational knots, limiting action:
• The pre-planned Direct Abort trajectory approach required that the Lunar Module be
jettisoned, but the crew’s survival depended on the resources in the Lunar Module during
the trip back toward earth.
• An alternative would have involved burning remaining fuel in in the Service Module, then
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jettison the Service Module, and make a final burn with the Lunar Module engines, but the
team wanted to keep the Service Module attached as long as possible as it provided
additional heat shielding to the Command Module.
• The craft was almost at the point where the direct abort trajectory would switch to the
circumlunar abort trajectory, which was more complex, but also allowed more time for the
control team on earth to evaluate options.
• Because of the explosion, project engineers were also concerned that using the engines
aboard the Service Module could cause further problems because of decreased structural
integrity of that segment of the vessel.
• Low power levels aboard the vessel made voice communication to Earth difficult.
• Carbon dioxide scrubber cartridges were critical to keeping the atmosphere in the vessel
breathable, but because all three crew members were in the Command Module for the
duration of the attempt to get back to Earth, CO2 scrubbers from the Lunar Module were
needed.
• Unfortunately, the CO2 scrubber cartridges used in the Lunar Module had been engineered
differently than those in the Command Module, leaving the crew unable to repurpose the
Lunar Module CO2 scrubbers and thus vulnerable to death from this poisonous gas that
they were producing every time they exhaled.
• The low power state required to conserve energy also dropped the temperature in the vessel,
resulting in condensation of water vapor, increasing the chances of an electrical short, fire
and death of the crew.
• The Lunar Module had to be separated from the Command Module at the last moment.
Yet, applying too little pressure to the Lunar Module would not move it far enough away,
and too much pressure could damage the Command Module hatch, exposing the crew to
the vacuum of space.
(Lovell & Kluger, 2006)
Interestingly, in the case of the Apollo 13 mission, it wasn’t just that there was one leader acting
heroically, but that an entire team, with many leaders and a distributed leadership approach was
able to work through the situation, balancing risk and options to ward off disaster. From a crisis
research perspective, this scenario is a classic example of distributed situation awareness (Stanton et
al., 2006) and option awareness (Pfaff, Drury, Klein, & More, 2010). Situation awareness revolves
around three main cognitive processes, perception, comprehension, and projection into the
future. Interestingly, over 90 percent of leadership decision errors in experimental crisis or
command simulations occur during the first two processes, perception and comprehension
(Endsley, 2000). Option awareness, or an understanding of the actions that can be taken given
the constraints of the situation is also key. Option awareness largely relies on the same three
processes found in situational awareness, but applied to the decision and action space leaders must
occupy once the situation has been assessed (Pfaff et al., 2013). In addition to the leader needing
to correctly put all of these situation and option awareness elements into a cognitive map of the
crisis, she also must be able to communicate the key pieces of information to others within the
team or facilitate critical communication between stakeholders (Franco, Zumel, Holman, Blau,
& Beutler, 2009; Salmon et al., 2008).
Economic Crisis
The “Great Recession” of 2007 served as a powerful reminder of how fragile our economic
systems can be when fundamentals are not carefully attended to. Millions of lives were impacted
by unscrupulous investment, inflated housing valuations, and failure to call market hype into
question (Jenkins, Brandolini, Micklewright, & Nolan, 2012). Psychologists often suggest that
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panic not something that is likely to occur, but crisis events, especially those that are poorly
understood, provide exactly the context for panic to set in (Beutler, Reyes, Franco, & Housley,
2006; Pastel, 2002; Slovic, 2002).
In this case, chaos in securities markets predictably led to panicked selling, huge economic
losses, and personal financial ruin for many people. More than 100 mortgage lenders failed in
the U.S., and the major investment house Bear Stearns was sold on an emergency basis, just to
illustrate a few of the specific contours of this crisis event. While unscrupulous activities were
rampant and largely unchecked, numerous stories of heroic risk taking also emerged from this
crisis, ranging heroic whistleblowers who risked internal retribution for trying to stop illegal or
unethical activity within some of the lending companies (Goldstein, 2014), to the actions of the
three central bankers in the U.S. and Europe charged with stopping the run away damage to
global economies and restoring order in the aftermath of the crisis.
The economic collapse of the great recession provides a striking example of how central
bankers in the U.S. had to contend not only with the crisis itself, but the need to move a
convoluted bureaucracy from its usual lumbering pace, to a rapid-fire structure capable of
improvising in order to respond to huge market fluctuations occurring in real time. While the
personal risks faced by the Central Bankers were limited, and some blame them for not taking
steps to prevent the crisis from happening in the first place, the tasks given to them within the
heart of the crisis were nonetheless laden with risk. A set of false moves could have easily
deepened the crisis and resulted in much greater instability. Business periodicals noted this heroic
status given to the Central Bankers, with Bloomberg summarizing this as: “Dominant Social
Theme: Central bankers are unlikely heroes, but they’re all we’ve got” (Daily Bell, 2014).
The events of the financial crisis also underscore the importance for crisis leaders to rapidly
move out of “business as usual” to put into place solutions that would seem impossible under
normal circumstances. The gritty reality of this move toward rapid action and role expansion is
best conveyed in journalistic coverage of the events and the actions of the central banks. For
example:
Over two continents, five years, thousands of conference calls, and trillions of dollars, euros,
and pounds deployed to rescue the world financial system, central bankers would take the
primary role in grappling with the global panic that began in earnest on August 9th, 2007.
They would act with a speed and on a scale that presidents and parliaments could never
seem to muster … this committee of three knew better than anyone else just how high the
price of failure could be.
(Irwin, 2013, pp. 8, 13)
Again, one of the hallmarks of crisis situations in tightly coupled systems is that their complexity
defies easy understanding. As our society becomes increasingly sophisticated, it is possible for us
to build systems that no single individual, or even a team of experts fully understand. For
example, in the early hours and days of the Great Recession the central bankers charged with
bringing order to the financial systems of the world had to seek out expertise from individuals
who had created some of the investment instruments that were causing the problems, as well as
seeking input from teams with sophisticated computer models of these securities markets (Irwin,
2013).
Yet despite this expert input, Ben Bernanke and the other bankers did not and quite possibly
could not fully understand what was occurring because of the number of inter-relationships
within the securities markets. Yet they acted anyway. Ultimately, in the U.S., numerous actions
were taken by the Fed, including Credit Easing (creation of money to stimulate the economy),
tightening of mortgage lending rules, a number of broad programs such as TARP, Dollar Swap
Lines, facilitating overnight bridge loans to major mortgage companies while sales of these
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companies to larger organizations were facilitated, and so on (Klyuev, De Imus, & Srinivasan,
2009). In some cases, driven by fear of catastrophe, the Fed put into place contingency
arrangements with large financial companies that were never used as the crisis event came under
control, a point that will be taken up in more detail in the next section.
As we enter the early recovery period after this crisis, historians and others are beginning to
try to understand the actions of the central bankers and the success or failure of their efforts as
crisis leaders. In an article titled “Central Bankers Weren’t Meant to Be Heroes,” Bloomberg’s
editorial board noted:
The most effective central banks stretched the limits of their mandate. The fact remains that
QE [quantitative easing] requires more bravery of the ECB’s president, Mario Draghi, than
it did of Ben Bernanke at the Fed or Mervyn King at the Bank of England.
(Bloomberg, 2014)
Thus, in addition to speed and creative action, the actions taken by the central bankers were
daring enough to be controversial, speaking directly to the crisis leader’s need to engage in role
expansion. This role expansion almost inevitably results in push-back from other players, often
the very people or institutions that were unwilling to take on the risks they asked the crisis leader
to shoulder. For example, in reviewing the actions of Ben Bernanke at the U.S. Federal Reserve,
Senator DeMemit argued for greater political oversight of the Fed, stating, “Americans don’t
trust the Federal Reserve…[it has expanded its] mission well beyond anything that was ever
discussed” (Reddy, 2009). Yet without these bold actions, it is unclear what the outcome of the
crisis would have been.
In considerations of heroism, Rand & Epstein (2014) have performed experiments that
suggest heroic action is largely driven by intuitive, automatic thought. This evidence suggests
that heroes, at least in facing physical risk situations, may depend largely on automatic, intuitive
cognition and recognition-primed decision making (Klein, 1993; Sorensen, Øvergård, &
Martinsen, 2014). However, a careful examination of the strategies used by heroic leaders forces
us to think about how much resourcefulness and creativity is required under duress to affect
successful, heroic outcomes. An under-explored aspect of heroism is the ability to think
creatively under pressure. As described in the introduction, crisis situations involve complex
events, often with interlinking contingencies that rapidly reduce options and degrade assets
available to address the emergency event.
In an article on corporate leadership during crisis events, Fred Garcia Helios described the
nexus point between situational awareness and improvisation, noting one of the classic reasons
why improvisation must occur—the fact that standard operating procedures are no longer
meaningful:
leaders demonstrate situational awareness in a crisis, grasping the significance of the underlying
event and its likely impact … [leaders] mobilize a quick response and protect the company’s
enterprise value … the New Orleans flood and Exxon’s early response to the Valdez spill
demonstrated lack of … situational awareness … discipline and command focus …
(Helio, 2006)
In crisis events, heroic leaders must be able to creatively cobble together other resources in new
ways to create a set of “work arounds” that allow their team to respond immediately, before
reinforcements arrive. This is a critical skill set in affecting a heroic response as an organization.
The leader’s ability to improvise (i.e., to engage in rapid succession of considered actions) suggests
deep situational awareness, an understanding of the constraints and options available, and an
ability to develop and modify an action plan as necessary in a rapidly changing environment, is
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key to heroic leadership in times of crisis (Mendonça et al., 2001; Mendonça & Franco, 2013;
Mendonça & Wallace, 2007).
Action Strategies of Heroic Leaders Facing Crisis

We often observe individual crisis events as “one-offs” or rare situations, with equally rare leaders
who took exceptional actions that were driven by that particular event. But in examining many
disasters, researchers have developed a deeper understanding of the characteristics of crisis that
emerge over and over again. Similarly, I argue here that beyond the personal, idiosyncratic
leadership strategies employed by a single crisis leader, there is a group of specific techniques or
action strategies used by most leaders we come to view as heroic. Crisis leaders deploy these
tactical responses when the usual options fail, and these approaches enable them to become
maverick actors when the situation requires daring, unflinching action. A great deal more effort
will be needed to fully characterize the range and nuances of these tactics, but those that I have
thought about the most are offered here as a way to begin the process of systematically
examining heroic leadership in action:
The Stand-off
While good leaders typically try to resolve conflict and allow for “smoothness” in social
relationships, heroic leaders also know when to dig their heels in to address an underlying, often
under-recognized, or deliberately hidden crisis. Some issues need to come to a head in order to
be resolved clearly and decisively, and sometimes stand-offs can also be used to create important
compromise that ultimately move groups and even nations forward in ways that might not be
achievable without putting a spotlight on the unspoken crisis, temporarily creating a sharp
dividing line on the issues.
Although not much more than a footnote in history and medical textbooks now, the
Thalidomide crisis of the late 1950s and early 1960s offers a compelling example of a quiet
leader electing to raise the stakes to a stand-off rather than simply acquiescing and allowing a
medical tragedy to strike the U.S. Thalidomide, a drug that was marketed throughout much of
the world as a way to suppress morning sickness in pregnant women was ultimately found to be
a teratogenic agent, responsible for thousands of deformed babies, with missing limbs and organs,
as well as deaths.
A female pharmacologist and physician, Dr. Frances Kelsey, newly hired to the Federal Drug
Administration (FDA) was skeptical about the science supporting the drug manufactures safety
claims and did not approve the drug in the U.S. Dr. Kelsey’s recent death in 2015 brought her
story once again to the fore, showing in clear detail the pressure she faced to “go-along-to-get-
along,” and her response, tirelessly fighting with the company through bureaucratic procedures
(referring to my earlier note that crisis leaders often have to be able to effect action using the
complex political and organizational mechanisms that seem to slow others to a standstill) to track
down doses of the drug that had been delivered to physicians in the U.S. in a quiet, but desperate
effort to prevent personal catastrophes for pregnant women throughout the nation (Mintz,
1962a, 1962b).
Consider the context: a woman physician in a male dominated field in the early 1960s,
working her first project for a newly created federal agency struggling to gain its footing with
little congressional support; and rather than approving the drug application, Dr. Kelsey scuttles
the application it again and again, despite increasing pressure from the manufacturer, not just
levied against her, but her bosses. In a conversation with the investigative journalist, Morton
Mintz, who broke the story in 1962, Mr. Mintz noted that, “the company even threatened her
with a libel lawsuit” and when asked how she appeared to be responding at a personal level when
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Mr. Mintz interviewed Dr. Kelsey, he described her as “resolute and steadfast” in her position
(Mintz, personal communication, August 19, 2015). A synopsis of the events described in her
recent New York Times obituary provides some historical perspective on the struggle to keep
the drug off the market:
[Merrell pharmaceuticals] made glowing claims for Kevadon’s [Thalidimide] safety and
effectiveness…But Dr. Kelsey…found the evidence for claims about Kevadon to be
insufficient. Letters, calls and visits from Merrell executives ensued. She was called a fussy,
stubborn, unreasonable bureaucrat. But she refused to be hurried, insisting that there was
insufficient proof.
(McFadden, 2015)
Ultimately, as reports of horrific limb disfigurement began to be associated with the drug,
Merrell withdrew its FDA application and Dr. Kesley’s steadfast position was vindicated. By
refusing to change her position and allowing a stand-off to occur, Dr. Kesley prevented what
could have been a widespread tragedy in the U.S. She was recognized as a hero by her
government and the general public at the time, ultimately being awarded the President’s Award
for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service in 1962 (NIH, undated).
The Gamble
Often when the stand-off is with an inanimate opponent, for example an accident or disaster
situation, the heroic leader is faced with what is often described with phrases such as “no-win
situation” or a binary option set in which one can only pick the “best of two evils.” A powerful
historical example of this comes in the form of Sir Ernest Shackleton, the commander of the
vessel Endurance, during an Antarctic exploration mission. The vessel became stuck in polar ice
as he and his crew tried to reach Vahsel Bay, Antarctica. Shackleton and his crew survived for
months on the ice-bound ship hoping to wait out the cold until Spring arrived, but ultimately
the pressure of the ice-floes ultimately crushed the vessel, forcing the crew to abandon the
Endurance. Shackleton created a base camp on an ice floe until it broke up, at which point he and
his men used life boats to reach the unpopulated Elephant Island. Recognizing that reaching a
whaling station 830 miles away was their only hope of rescue, Shackleton decided to attempt an
open boat crossing in the largest of the life boats, with five other men, leaving the rest of the
crew on Elephant Island.
This profound gamble—staking his own life and the lives of five other men as the only option
to save the others is highlighted in historical accounts which note that Shackleton refused to
pack more than 4 weeks provisions for this last ditch effort, recognizing that if he had not made
it to the whaling stations within that time, he and the men with him would have perished in the
attempt (Alexander, 1998). Shackleton sailed for 15 days in high seas before reaching the island
where the whaling stations were, only to have to hike an additional 32 miles over icy terrain to
reach civilization. Shackleton returned to Elephant Island, personally overseeing the rescue of the
crew who had remained behind. A later explorer who retraced some of Shackleton’s steps stated,
“I do not know how they did it, except that they had to—three men of the heroic age of
Antarctic exploration with 50 feet of rope between them—and a carpenter’s adze” (Fisher &
Fisher, 1957, p. 386).
While these situation may have more options than initially recognized, senior decision makers
may not have time to fully analyze the problem space, and often will try to narrow the options
to two or three alternative courses of action (Bonn & Rundle-Thiele, 2007). In this case, the
heroic leader’s job is often to serve as a tie-breaker for a team, selecting one path forward even
though the outcome is unclear. In effect, this absolves the team members of the responsibility of
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Zeno E. Franco
a negative result and allows the group to take action rather than being stymied. This is an
important role particularly when there is a point of no return (criticality) and the stance of
indecision and inaction can only lead to further losses of options, escalation of the crisis event,
or death. Thus, option narrowing and a final “go/no go” decision is a skill that is crucial to embody.
Teaching leaders when to be prepared to make a gut decision on a small number of apparently
equally bad alternatives is fundamental to understanding the heroic stance.
The logic of the gamble in a “do or die” situation is that it is better to have done something,
even if the result is ultimately negative, than to have done nothing and met the same fate. It is
important to note that in many academic and non-academic reflections on heroism, the idea that
heroism is paradoxical in nature emerges (Franco et al., 2011). This particular idea of action in
the face of a no-win situation has been referred to as the “Stockdale paradox” after another man
of the sea, decorated U.S. Navy officer James Stockdale who withstood multiple tortures while
imprisoned by the Vietnamese government. Stockdale is quoted as offering a dual philosophical
view on resilience in crisis, “You must retain faith that you will prevail in the end, regardless of
the difficulties. And at the same time, you must confront the most brutal facts of your current
reality, whatever they might be” (Maxwell, 2007).
Systematic Use of Luck

Ralph Waldo Emerson is quoted as having said, “Good luck is another name for tenacity of
purpose” (Emerson, 1888). As with many aspects of heroism, this can be interpreted simply as
an inspirational passage to encourage people to do good work. But a deeper reading points to
the strategies of heroic leaders in prolonging the crisis situation long enough that more chance
events can occur. Luck is at its core a set of binary outcomes offered by events outside of our
control that impact our fate (Wagner-Pacifici, 2000). When the chances of success are zero to
start with, extending the time-scale can allow for the limited assets available to be repositioned
to take advantage of chance events that can be parleyed into better odds.
Exploring psychology through popular culture and television shows is gaining increasing
recognition as a key way to teach these concepts to students. Similarly, for mature audiences
focused on learning the art of crisis leadership, examining high quality TV and film can be very
useful because it provides rich contextual information and the opportunity for leaders to reflect
and explore contingencies in hypothetical scenarios (Langley, 2016). Borrowing from film, a classic
example of a crisis leader relying heavily on luck is an episode of Star Trek called “The Galileo
Seven” (Season 1, Episode 13), in which Spock and six other crew members are marooned on a
hostile planet. Their shuttle craft is disabled, and the transporters on the Enterprise are malfunc-
tioning. To complete the set of contingencies and constraints facing Captain Kirk, the starship is
also required to abandon the search for the lost crew members at a specific time in order to
comply with orders from Commissioner Ferris (a higher ranking officer, temporarily aboard the
ship) to respond to a medical emergency on another planet. Captain Kirk, clearly frustrated with
the Commissioner’s desire to leave orbit and abandon the search says:
KIRK: Look, these people are my friends and my shipmates. I intend to continue the ship’s search
for them until the last possible moment. [Emphasis added; the line implicitly notes Captain
Kirk’s reliance on luck]
Then later, in assuring his own transporter chief in the strategic value of “luck”:
CHIEF: Captain, it’s

a big planet. It’ll be sheer luck if our landing parties find anything.
KIRK:I’m depending on luck, Lieutenant. It’s almost the only tool we have that’ll work.
[Emphasis added]
196
Here Captain Kirk explicitly acknowledges his reliance on improving odds from zero to
something above zero as the only available course of action, and within that he has done
everything possible to maximize chance encounters with the away team by sending multiple
search parties. Where others under his command have already begun to relax their stance
because they assume failure is inevitable, Kirk never lets down his vigil. Instead, he constantly
searches for small opportunities that might tip the scales in favor of his lost crew. In these
moments Kirk seems most alive, drawing together all of his leadership experience into an orches-
trated balance between strategy and tactics, creating deep operational poise throughout the
Enterprise. In this adventure, Captain Kirk’s actions show the crisis leader’s ability to “snatch
victory from the jaws of defeat” is not simply blind luck, but rather the use of systematic
strategies that position a team to use the limited and unpredictable opportunities the crisis
situation affords to strike at just the right moment to turn certain failure into a surprising success.
The Gambit
Where the gamble involves selecting from a few bad options, the gambit takes the crisis leader a
step further, playing one set of contingencies off of another. Most leaders would fear giving up
any available resources, preferring to stabilize as best as possible to a known, safe position, but
heroic leaders recognize that the contours of the crisis may eat away at their position over time.
In response they may deliberately sacrifice some key assets in the hopes of gaining others. A
gambit can be defined as a move that trades off one resource to gain something else, so the crisis
leader effectively accepts a further loss of precious resources to buy time, to bridge to another
set of resources, or diffuse the resources of an opponent to create situational disadvantage for the
opposing force. An example of this can be found by returning to the story of Apollo 13, where
the mission control team on Earth elected to give up the easy and immediate abort options in
favor of the more complex circumlunar approach in order to buy time and improve option
awareness.
Order of Magnitude
During crises, there is often a sense that the event is inevitably carrying the individuals involved
toward a certain eventuality that no one wants to see come to pass—the event horizon. In these
moments, one leadership strategy is to try to “get ahead of ” the event by dramatically changing
the scale of the response. Often typical response is limited by a failure of imagination of what
the implications of the disaster are. For example, in the Japanese sarin gas attacks, the responders
failed to consider that a deliberate exposure to a toxic agent had been perpetrated, and this
limited the scale and appropriateness of response (Pangi, 2002). Alternatively, leaders can
experience a failure of imagination about how available, but often latent, resources could be
dynamically repositioned to outpace events by increasing the scale of response by an order of
magnitude above that of the threat. This requires stepping away from simple heuristic responses
(Gigerenzer & Gaissmaier, 2011) to being creative even under pressure, and improvising system-
atically (Mendonça et al., 2001; Mendonça & Wallace, 2007), in a way that goes so far beyond
the scale of the crisis, and to respond with such overwhelming force that the crisis is immediately
extinguished. While these approaches can ultimately be costly, dangerous, or have other
unintended consequences, they can ensure relief from the immediate crisis. In many instances,
this allows time for the unintended consequences to be resolved through later actions that can
be taken in a more measured fashion.
One historical example of this approach was Abraham Lincoln’s expansion of Presidential war
powers during the Civil War to set all slaves free. Rather than using normal channels, the war
itself presented an opportunity to get ahead of the issue, by declaring the property of Southern
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slave holders, including the slaves themselves, to be appropriated by the Union army as a
necessity of war. President Lincoln’s interpretation of his war powers (which were and to this day
remain deeply controversial in times of conflict) allowed him to consider creative action an order
of magnitude above that achievable in political decision making, where question of what to do
with the slaves had long been stymied. The action was decisive in many ways, yet it left the legal
status of the slaves open, ultimately requiring Lincoln to push toward the 13th Amendment. It
was also expeditious in the moment both because the Union army needed the support of freed
slaves in its ranks, but more importantly because it achieved the desired outcome immediately
and with finality (Berdahl, 1921). Again, as with almost all heroic leadership decisions, this action
was deeply controversial at the time, and the issue of Presidential war powers remains an open
Constitutional issue, with many viewing such authority as resting with Congress, not the
President.
Another more contemporary example of dramatic role expansion and going up an order of
magnitude to get ahead of crisis comes from the actions the Fed took in the Global Economic
Crisis, as discussed earlier. Some of the specific actions taken by the Fed included making
provisions to stabilize the life insurance operations of the major financial company AIG and a
multi-billion dollar loan to Bank of America. Interestingly, neither of these instruments was
ultimately used, because a set of smaller actions started to bring the situation under control. But
these measures were put in place anyway, as another line of defense. Through them, it is possible
to see that the Fed recognized that it was impossible to fully understand the scale of the
emergency, and that the Fed attempted to account for this with interventions set at an extreme
level.
Discussion—Areas for Future Research

Bennis’ (2007) admonition that we need a great deal more understanding of heroic leaders must
be extended to deeply understand the specific individual traits that come to the fore in the heart
of crisis events. These are the moments that discriminate good leaders from the truly exemplary
expression of leadership in the line of fire—whether that fire is taken on the field of battle, or
in a boardroom.
While the main focus of this chapter has been on understanding the dynamics of crisis
situations and the heroic action strategies leaders deploy during these events, future work will
need to consider the individual characteristics of crisis leaders from the perspective of disaster
science. Crisis leaders must be able to maintain situational awareness; tolerate ambiguity; foster
shared situational awareness with other leaders and team members; they must foster trust—often
blind trust—in their decision making abilities in their subordinates; they must be willing to
rapidly and boldly step into leadership voids that occur above them in the hierarchy; they must
maintain option awareness and be able to reconfigure assets to create options that ostensibly
would not exist in the absence of creative decision making under extreme duress; and simulta-
neously, a crisis leader must be willing to reduce options to affect action when others are
paralyzed by fear.
While these are all “positive” traits, heroic leaders also may be forced to call on darker skills
as well (Resick, Whitman, Weingarden, & Hiller, 2009), for example, systematically limiting
information available to subordinates to ensure that they do not panic, use of personal force to
ensure discipline in the ranks, and the willingness to sacrifice individuals to ensure the greater
good. Crisis leaders may also have impulsive tendencies, the ability to act intuitively in ways that
are not easily understood by others, be annoyingly dedicated to principles in ways that alienate
other team members, have the ability to sacrifice their own career—or at the extreme—their
own life in a “moment of truth” (Friedman, forthcoming). These factors suggest that what are
often considered to be pathological or anti-social traits may be of fundamental importance to
198
effective crisis leadership. In terms of hiring, retention, and promotion policies, corporations and
government employers may suffer long-term consequences by encouraging only “nice” leaders,
because other skill sets may be required when the chips are down.
Ultimately, whether perceived positively or negatively by their bosses, colleagues, and
subordinates in the moment of crisis, heroic leaders unwaveringly attend to individual and group
moral hazards in an effort to take actions that may be costly in the moment that prevent even
greater costs at a later time. In so doing, Kakabase and colleagues suggest that crisis leaders avoid
setting morally destructive precedents, attend to things like conflict of interest and regulation to
ensure good decision making, do not mask failures in corporate governance, take steps to avoid
hubris and group think, and do not seek to sanitize language or reduce transparency even in the
midst of crisis (Kakabadse et al., 2012). While all of this sounds easy, it is much more difficult
when one is personally facing a disaster. For example, while it is simple for us to excoriate
Captain Schettino, there are also indications that during the 40 minutes he delayed ordering the
evacuation, he was under pressure from corporate leadership of the cruise line to minimize the
event if possible.
The question in many fields, ranging from clinical psychology to artistic endeavors, has
remained “are great talents born or taught,” and the answer as with all things is not simple
(Ericsson, Krampe, & Tesch-Römer, 1993). Heroic leadership doubtlessly is some cases an
expression of innate aptitude and acumen, but experience and even reflection on prior failure to
act heroically are also powerful teachers. Examining the contours and dynamics of crisis events
can deeply inform our understanding of how these leaders act, what personality characteristics
enable action, and what action strategies they apply in these high risk environments. But most
leaders are not trained to think about low-base rate, high consequence events as part of their
normal business routine (Smith, 2004). By incorporating opportunities for leaders and their
teams to encounter the situational constraints that crisis create, in business conditions that are
based on the real, embedded activities of daily organizational life, it is possible to foster what
Smith (2004) describes as a “crisis-prepared culture” (p. 347).
In order for leaders to be able to explore their core assumptions, ability of their teams to make
sense out of the chaos of the disaster event, examine how protocols will and will not hold up
under the stress of crisis, and develop a better understanding of how normal communication
channels within the organization may not work, crisis leaders must be encouraged to explore the
possibility of catastrophic organizational failure, something that most organizational leadership
teams are afraid to do. However, this willingness to foster creativity, courage, and to accept risk
on a daily basis is key to creating healthy, dynamic, innovative organizations for routine tasks
(Kashdan, Barrios, Forsyth, & Steger, 2006; Kashdan, Rose, & Fincham, 2004), and can make
them profoundly more resilient in the face of disaster.
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6321 T&F Handbook of Heroism and Heroic Leadership.qxp_Style.

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Heroism in Times of Crisis

Understanding the Situational Dynamics of Crisis

Definitions and Theories of Crisis

• involve fundamentally unanticipated shock to a system;

A serious disruption of the functioning of a community or a society involving widespread

Heroism in Times of Crisis

Examples of Crisis Events, Heroic Failure and Heroic Leadership

The Costa Concordia Disaster

CAPTAIN SCHETTINO: In this moment, the boat is tipping …

Heroism in Times of Crisis

Heroism in Times of Crisis

Action Strategies of Heroic Leaders Facing Crisis

Heroism in Times of Crisis

Systematic Use of Luck

CHIEF: Captain, it’s

Heroism in Times of Crisis

Discussion—Areas for Future Research

Heroism in Times of Crisis

Heroism in Times of Crisis

of CEO personality: examining core self-evaluations, narcissism, transformational leadership, and

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