Leader Chaos glossary

Leading through change and crisis comes with its own vocabulary, from transition models and guiding coalitions to incident command, business continuity and burnout. This glossary explains the terms in plain English, following primary sources such as the CDC's crisis communication manual, FEMA's Incident Command System materials, NIST, the World Health Organization and the published research behind each idea. It is a general reference, not legal, medical or mental health advice; if you or someone you know is in crisis in the US, call or text 988.

988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: The US three-digit number for free, confidential, 24/7 support for people in suicidal crisis or emotional distress, including mental health and substance use concerns. You can call, text or chat 988. It is not a substitute for ongoing professional care, but it is a good number for leaders to share with their teams, especially after a crisis.; Related:Employee assistance program (EAP)Psychological first aid (PFA)Moral injury
Adaptive challenge: In the adaptive leadership approach associated with Ronald Heifetz, a problem that has no known technical fix and can only be resolved when the people involved change their own habits, priorities or beliefs. Technical problems can be solved by experts; adaptive challenges require leaders to mobilize others to do the adaptive work themselves.; Related:Change leadership Resistance to change VUCA
ADKAR model: A model of individual change built on five elements a person moves through: Awareness of why the change is needed, Desire to take part, Knowledge of how to change, Ability to put new skills and behaviors into practice, and Reinforcement to sustain the change. Breaking change into these elements helps leaders see where progress stands and where people need support.; Related:Change management Resistance to change Change champion
After-action review (AAR): A structured debrief held after an event or exercise to learn what happened, why it happened and what to keep or change. The National Wildfire Coordinating Group, which notes the method was developed by the military, defines it as "a professional discussion of an event, focused on performance standards." Findings are often written up in an after-action report with an improvement plan.; Related:Blameless review Tabletop exercise Crisis management
Areas of worklife: A model of burnout, described in a 2016 review by researchers Christina Maslach and Michael Leiter, that traces burnout to mismatches between people and their jobs in six areas: workload, control, reward, community, fairness and values. The bigger the mismatch, the more likely burnout; the better the match, the more likely engagement.; Related:Burnout Work engagement Job demands-resources model (JD-R)
Blameless review: A review after an incident or failure that looks for the conditions and decisions that contributed to it, rather than for someone to blame. The aim is to make it safe for people to share what really happened so the team can fix underlying causes. Also called a blameless postmortem.; Related:After-action review (AAR)Psychological safety Crisis management
Bridges Transition Model: A model developed by William Bridges that describes three stages people experience during change: Ending What Currently Is, The Neutral Zone and The New Beginning. Its starting point is not the desired outcome but the losses people face in leaving the old situation behind.; Related:Transition Neutral zone Resistance to change
Burnout: In the World Health Organization's ICD-11, burn-out is "a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed," marked by exhaustion, mental distance or cynicism about one's job, and reduced professional efficacy. WHO classes it as an occupational phenomenon, not a medical condition. Anyone worried about their health should talk to a qualified professional; in a crisis in the US, call or text 988.; Related:Areas of worklife Job demands-resources model (JD-R)Work engagement
Business continuity plan (BCP): NIST defines it as the documentation of a predetermined set of instructions or procedures that describe how an organization's mission or business processes will be sustained during and after a significant disruption. The international standard for the management system behind such plans is ISO 22301, Security and resilience — Business continuity management systems — Requirements.; Related:Business impact analysis (BIA)Recovery time objective (RTO)Crisis management plan
Business impact analysis (BIA): The process of analyzing an organization's operational functions and the effect a disruption might have on them. A BIA identifies which activities matter most, what they depend on and how quickly each must be restored, and it feeds the business continuity plan.; Related:Business continuity plan (BCP)Recovery time objective (RTO)
Change champion: An employee, often outside management, who supports a change among peers by explaining it, collecting feedback and modeling the new way of working. Many organizations build a network of champions so information flows in both directions. Champions are one kind of change agent, a broader term for anyone who helps bring a change about.; Related:Change sponsor Guiding coalition Stakeholder analysis
Change fatigue: The weariness, cynicism and disengagement that can build when people face too many changes at once or in quick succession, especially when earlier changes were left unfinished. A closely related term, change saturation, describes the point at which a group's capacity to absorb more change is used up.; Related:Burnout Resistance to change
Change leadership: The work of setting direction for a change, explaining why it matters and keeping people committed while it unfolds. It is often contrasted with change management, which supplies the plans, tools and processes; most successful changes need both.; Related:Change management Change sponsor Guiding coalition
Change management: A structured approach to helping people and organizations move from how things work now to a new way of working, covering communication, training, stakeholder engagement and reinforcing new behavior. It focuses on the human side of a change, alongside its technical design and project plan.; Related:Change leadership ADKAR model Stakeholder analysis
Change sponsor: The senior leader who authorizes a change, funds it, and stays visibly accountable for its success. A sponsor's job is to explain why the change matters, remove obstacles and keep other leaders aligned, not just to approve the budget.; Related:Change leadership Guiding coalition Change champion
Commander's intent: A military term for a clear, concise statement of the purpose of an operation and the desired end state, so people can use their own judgment when the plan stops fitting events. Leaders outside the military borrow the idea in crises: say what must be achieved and why, and trust people to adapt the how.; Related:Crisis leadership Span of control
Crisis: A sudden event that seriously threatens an organization's people, operations or reputation and demands an urgent response. Crisis communication scholar W. Timothy Coombs defines it as "a significant threat to operations that can have negative consequences if not handled properly," and notes three related threats: public safety, financial loss and reputation loss.; Related:Crisis management Crisis leadership Crisis communication
Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication (CERC): The CDC's framework for communicating during public health emergencies. It rests on six principles: be first, be right, be credible, express empathy, promote action and show respect. Its manual also describes how communication needs shift across the preparation, initial, maintenance and resolution phases of a crisis.; Related:Crisis communication Risk communication Spokesperson
Crisis communication: In the CDC's crisis communication manual, the process of providing facts to the public about an unexpected emergency, beyond an organization's control, that involves the organization and requires an immediate response. The content, form and timing of what is said can either help contain harm or make the situation worse.; Related:Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication (CERC)Risk communication Instructing information
Crisis leadership: The leadership tasks that matter most when something goes badly wrong: making sense of an unclear situation, making decisions with incomplete information, communicating honestly and often, protecting people first and keeping the organization working. It covers preparation and recovery as well as the response itself.; Related:Crisis management Commander's intent Cynefin framework
Crisis management: The work of preventing, preparing for, responding to and learning from crises. Coombs divides it into three phases: pre-crisis (prevention and preparation), crisis response, and post-crisis, which looks for ways to prepare better for the next crisis and follows through on commitments made during the response.; Related:Crisis Crisis management plan After-action review (AAR)
Crisis management plan: A document that sets out who does what when a crisis hits, with contact lists, roles, approval steps, pre-drafted messages and reminders of what typically needs doing. Coombs describes it as "a reference tool, not a blueprint"; it should be updated regularly and tested through exercises.; Related:Crisis management team Holding statement Tabletop exercise
Crisis management team: A small, pre-selected group, often senior leaders plus specialists from areas such as operations, legal, HR, IT and communications, that takes charge of an organization's response to a crisis. Members are chosen and trained in advance so the team can assemble quickly.; Related:Crisis management plan Spokesperson Incident Command System (ICS)
Cynefin framework: A sense-making framework developed by Dave Snowden to help leaders match their approach to the kind of situation they face. At its simplest it distinguishes ordered, complex and chaotic systems; in the chaotic domain, the framework's wiki says, "turbulence prevails and immediate stabilizing action is required."; Related:VUCA Adaptive challenge
Dark site: A web page or microsite prepared ahead of time and kept unpublished until a crisis, when it can go live with updates, instructions and contact information. Coombs lists dark sites among the message templates crisis teams can prepare and have reviewed in advance.; Related:Holding statement Crisis management plan Crisis communication
Employee assistance program (EAP): A voluntary, work-based program that offers employees free and confidential assessments, short-term counseling, referrals and follow-up for personal or work-related problems. The U.S. Office of Personnel Management notes that many EAPs also help organizations cope with trauma and emergencies, which makes them a common resource after a workplace crisis.; Related:988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline Psychological first aid (PFA)Total Worker Health
Guiding coalition: In Kotter's change framework, a group of committed people drawn from across the organization who guide, coordinate and communicate a change effort.; Related:Kotter's 8 steps Change sponsor Change champion
Holding statement: A short, pre-approved message an organization can release in the first minutes or hours of a crisis to confirm what it knows, show concern and say when more information will follow, before all the facts are in. Teams usually draft templates in advance and fill in the specifics when an incident occurs.; Related:Crisis management plan Dark site Spokesperson
Incident Command System (ICS): A standardized approach to the command, control and coordination of on-scene incident management, used across US government and by many nonprofits and businesses. FEMA's training materials describe five major functional areas, Command, Operations, Planning, Logistics and Finance/Administration, with Intelligence/Investigations as an optional sixth. ICS is used within the National Incident Management System (NIMS).; Related:Unified Command Span of control
Instructing information: In crisis communication, the information people need first to protect themselves physically, such as what to avoid or whether to shelter in place; Coombs says it must be quick and accurate to be useful. It is followed by adjusting information, which helps people cope psychologically, and only then by any effort to repair reputation.; Related:Crisis communication Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT)Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication (CERC)
Job demands-resources model (JD-R): A model that sorts working conditions into job demands, such as workload and time pressure, and job resources, such as support, autonomy and feedback. Its 2001 study found demands mainly linked to exhaustion and a lack of resources mainly linked to disengagement.; Related:Burnout Areas of worklife Work engagement
Kotter's 8 steps: John Kotter's framework for leading organizational change, now presented as eight "accelerators": create a sense of urgency, build a guiding coalition, form a strategic vision, enlist a volunteer army, enable action by removing barriers, generate short-term wins, sustain acceleration and institute change. Kotter later evolved the original, linear 8 steps into this accelerator model.; Related:Guiding coalition Change leadership Change management
Lewin's three-step model: The idea that change happens in three stages, unfreezing current habits, changing, and refreezing the new way, which is usually credited to psychologist Kurt Lewin. It is often called the classic approach to change, though a 2016 article in Human Relations argued that Lewin never developed such a model and that it took form after his death. Critics also say it assumes a stable world that rarely exists today.; Related:Change management Transition Kotter's 8 steps
Moral injury: The VA's National Center for PTSD describes it as the distressing psychological, behavioral, social and sometimes spiritual aftermath of doing, failing to prevent or witnessing acts that go against deeply held moral beliefs. In workplaces it can follow decisions that force people to act against their values. Support should come from a qualified professional; in a crisis in the US, call or text 988.; Related:Secondary traumatic stress Burnout 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline
Neutral zone: The middle stage of the Bridges Transition Model: an in-between time when the old way is gone but the new one is not yet fully working. People may feel confusion and distress here, but it is also where new roles, processes and ideas take shape.; Related:Bridges Transition Model Transition Change fatigue
Psychological first aid (PFA): An evidence-informed approach, developed by the National Child Traumatic Stress Network and the National Center for PTSD, for helping people in the immediate aftermath of disaster and terrorism. It aims to reduce initial distress and support coping, and it does not assume everyone affected will develop lasting problems. It is not therapy; anyone who needs ongoing support should be connected to professional care.; Related:Employee assistance program (EAP)Secondary traumatic stress 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline
Psychological safety: Amy Edmondson's term for "a shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking," such as asking questions, admitting mistakes or raising concerns. Her 1999 study of work teams linked it to team learning behavior, which in turn was linked to performance.; Related:Blameless review Resistance to change Work engagement
Psychosocial risk: The risk of harm to workers' mental health and well-being from how work is designed, organized and managed and from its social setting, for example heavy workloads, unclear roles, lack of support or harassment. ISO 45003:2021 gives guidelines for managing these risks within an occupational health and safety management system.; Related:Burnout Total Worker Health Surgeon General's Framework for Workplace Mental Health and Well-Being
Recovery time objective (RTO): The longest a system or process can stay down before the outage seriously harms the organization's mission or business. NIST defines it for information systems as the length of time their components can be in the recovery phase before negatively affecting the organization's mission or business processes.; Related:Business impact analysis (BIA)Business continuity plan (BCP)Tabletop exercise
Resilience: The American Psychological Association defines it as "the process and outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences." The APA notes that how well people adapt depends partly on the availability and quality of their social resources and on coping strategies, which is one reason support at work matters, not just individual toughness.; Related:Psychological safety Burnout Psychosocial risk
Resistance to change: The ways people slow, question or push back on a change, from open objection to quiet non-adoption. It is usually treated as useful information, about missing reasons, real losses, poor timing or flaws in the plan, rather than as a character problem to overcome.; Related:ADKAR model Bridges Transition Model Psychological safety
Risk communication: Communication that gives people information about the type and size of a risk so they can make decisions about it, usually with little time pressure. The CDC's CERC manual uses the terms hazard (the actual damage an event can cause) and outrage (the emotion it stirs) and says good risk communication aims to keep outrage in proportion to hazard.; Related:Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication (CERC)Crisis communication Instructing information
Secondary traumatic stress: The National Child Traumatic Stress Network defines it as "the emotional duress that results when an individual hears about the firsthand trauma experiences of another." It can affect people who support others through crises, such as managers, HR staff and responders; anyone affected should seek professional support.; Related:Psychological first aid (PFA)Moral injury Burnout
Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT): A research-based theory of crisis communication developed by W. Timothy Coombs. It guides the choice of response strategies, from providing information and showing concern to accepting responsibility and apologizing, by matching the response to the nature of the crisis situation and the reputational threat it creates.; Related:Crisis communication Instructing information Crisis
Span of control: The number of people a supervisor directly oversees. FEMA's ICS guidance treats one supervisor to five subordinates as the optimal ratio for incident management, while noting it is a guideline and real incidents often need different ratios.; Related:Incident Command System (ICS)Unified Command Crisis leadership
Spokesperson: The person authorized to speak for an organization during a crisis. The CDC's CERC manual advises choosing respected leaders with knowledge of the situation, training them before an event, and keeping everything they say consistent with the organization's other messages.; Related:Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication (CERC)Holding statement Crisis management team
Stakeholder analysis: The practice of listing the people and groups a change affects or depends on, then judging how much each is affected, how much influence they have and where they stand. The result guides who to involve, how often to communicate and where resistance is likely.; Related:Change champion Resistance to change
Surgeon General's Framework for Workplace Mental Health and Well-Being: A framework from the U.S. Surgeon General that sets out Five Essentials for healthy workplaces: Protection from Harm, Connection and Community, Work-Life Harmony, Mattering at Work and Opportunity for Growth. It centers the worker's voice and equity.; Related:Psychosocial risk Total Worker Health
Tabletop exercise: A discussion-based exercise in which people with roles in a plan talk through how they would respond to a realistic scenario presented by a facilitator. NIST describes it as a way to validate a plan by discussing roles and responses during an emergency.; Related:Crisis management plan After-action review (AAR)Business continuity plan (BCP)
Total Worker Health: A NIOSH approach defined as policies, programs and practices that integrate protection from work-related safety and health hazards with promotion of injury and illness-prevention efforts to advance worker well-being. The approach prioritizes a hazard-free work environment for all workers.; Related:Psychosocial risk Surgeon General's Framework for Workplace Mental Health and Well-Being Employee assistance program (EAP)
Transition: In William Bridges' usage, the inner psychological process people go through as they come to terms with a change, as distinct from the change itself, which is the external event, such as a new strategy, a merger or a new leader. Bridges notes that change can happen very quickly, while transition starts with the endings people face in leaving the old situation behind.; Related:Bridges Transition Model Neutral zone Change management
Unified Command: An ICS arrangement used when more than one agency or jurisdiction is responsible for an incident. Leaders from each organization jointly set one set of objectives and one incident action plan, while each keeps authority and accountability for its own people and resources.; Related:Incident Command System (ICS)Span of control Crisis management team
VUCA: An acronym for volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, used to describe a fast-changing environment that makes long-range planning hard. The U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center traces it to Army War College documents from as far back as 1987.; Related:Cynefin framework Adaptive challenge Crisis leadership
Work engagement: A positive, energized connection to one's work. Researchers define it in two main ways: as the opposite of burnout (high energy, strong involvement and a sense of efficacy), or as a separate state marked by vigor, dedication and absorption.; Related:Burnout Areas of worklife