How to communicate urgency without stressing out your team

Saleh Saeed is CEO of the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC), an umbrella group of UK charities which launches national appeals in response to international humanitarian crises. 

“Appeals often come out of the blue with fast-onset crises like earthquakes,” he says, “or they can be crises that we may have been monitoring for some time. Either way, the team need to act quickly and effectively.”

Key aspects of communicating urgency for the DEC are clarity, individual action plans and modelling behaviour. Saleh adds: “It is vital when we’re asking our teams to act urgently that managers and the executive team model calm behaviour, remind people of the action plans and ensure that we aren’t holding people up in a way that will add to their stress.”

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Will Fearnley, a clinical matron in the NHS, agrees. “Communicating urgency boils down to trust,” he says. “And it’s about leaders being a positive role model and getting stuck in with the task at hand. If it’s urgent, it’s all hands to the pump.”