How to Communicate in a Crisis with Empathy and Authority

When something goes wrong, people decide what to think about your organization in the first few hours. A crisis asks you to communicate two things at the same time: that you understand what people are feeling, and that you know what you’re doing about it. Most leaders manage one or the other.

What counts as a crisis?

A crisis is any event that puts your people, your customers, or your reputation at risk faster than your normal communication rhythm can keep up with. It isn’t always a disaster. It’s any moment where silence costs you more than an imperfect answer would. Seven situations come up most often.

A data breach. Customer or employee data gets exposed. People need to know what was taken, whether they’re affected, and what to do next. Legal will want you to say less than your audience needs. The job is to say what you know, name what you don’t, and commit to a next update.

Misconduct by a senior leader. When the story is about a person, employees read your response as a statement of what the organization tolerates. Speed matters less than clarity about the standard you’re holding to.

Legal action. A lawsuit becomes public and everyone from your board to your newest hire reads about it before you’ve briefed them. Even when you can’t discuss the case, you can tell people how it affects their work and who to point questions at.

Regulatory or government intervention. An investigation, a fine, or a new ruling lands on your industry. Your people want to know whether their jobs change tomorrow. That’s usually a different message from the one you give regulators.

A product recall or safety failure. Something you sold could hurt someone. The message has to move faster than the news cycle, reach customers directly rather than through press, and lead with the action you’re taking, not the explanation for how it happened.

Unflattering press coverage. A story runs that you’d have written differently. Not every piece needs a response, but your employees will see it, and they’ll decide what to think based on whether you acknowledge it.

A global event that reaches your organization. A pandemic, a conflict, a natural disaster, a market shock. You didn’t cause it and you can’t fix it, but your people are living through it and looking to you for what it means for them.

What these have in common is that people will fill the gap with something. If you don’t tell them what’s happening, they’ll assemble an answer from rumour, headlines, and each other, and that version is almost always worse than yours.

Why does communication matter more in a crisis?

Warmth and strength is the right tone combination in everyday business communication, in what you say and in how you say it. In a crisis it stops being a preference and starts deciding whether people believe you. Information is scarce and rumour isn’t. Good, empathetic communication leads to comfort and educated preparedness. Poor communication costs you trust and makes the panic worse.

What is empathetic communication?

Empathetic communication means prioritizing people and their well-being, and making decisions that are in your employees’ and customers’ best interest. It starts from goodwill and doing no harm.

Even when the news is hard, like a workforce reduction, you can deliver it with the right tone because you’ve thought about the people it lands on. You put yourself in their shoes before you write, and you treat people the way you’d want to be treated if the roles were reversed.

How do you show empathy when the news is bad?

Empathy sounds simple and isn’t. Under pressure it’s easy to sound tone-deaf without meaning to, and that’s usually what turns a bad situation into a worse one. Three things help.

Listen before you talk

People are frightened, and they’re reading you for signals before they’ve taken in a word you said. Active listening takes body language and verbal cues both: nodding, a warm and relaxed tone, and the visible patience to let someone finish.

Our active listening training teaches you to recognize those cues and adapt to what the person in front of you actually needs. It’s built on the Adaptive Listening® methodology, and there are good books on listening if you want to start before you get to a workshop.

Acknowledge what people are afraid of

Displaying empathy through solidarity can assuage concerns. Everyone has the right to feel a certain way, including fearful, and as an empathetic communicator, it’s okay to let them know. Statements such as:

• “You are right to feel the way you do,” and
• “It’s easy to be fearful at times like this”

Can build openness to discussion and help move people toward hope. This is empathetic communication in action.

Hint: These statements meet a Support listening goal, one of the four S.A.I.D. Listening Goals™. Take the S.A.I.D. Listening Style Finder™ quiz to find yours.

Choose the right medium

If your organization handles crisis communication over email, consider what that costs you. Tone is hard to detect in writing, and when people are left to interpret, written words scare them more than you meant them to.

If you can hold an in-person meeting or a remote meeting with cameras turned on, consider doing that. Or maybe send a video message via email. Allowing your team to see your face will likely improve the warmth behind the message and prevent the content from feeling scary.

If email is still where this has to happen, make sure the words themselves carry both the empathy and the authority, because nothing else will.

Empathy comes first for a reason. People listen to you once they believe you’re on their side, and that belief is what earns you the authority to lead them somewhere. Authority here doesn’t mean rank. It means your people feel confident in the message because they trust the person delivering it.

How do you show authority without sounding cold?

Build trust before you need it

If you want others to feel confident and act on your recommendations and direction, your team has to trust you. Why is trust so critical in a crisis? Because, according to several studies, the more we trust the people who are supposed to protect or inform us, the less afraid we will be. The less we trust them, the greater our fears. To build trust, empathetic communicators must manage expectations and communicate openly, honestly, and often.

Let your delivery carry the competence

Part of building trust is being perceived as competent. Research shows that avoiding upward inflections (a.k.a. upspeak or upticking) and speaking with a low-pitched voice expresses power and appears more competent. (But if you were giving a presentation, incorporating vocal variety is a good thing.)

Give people facts they can act on

Knowledge is power, and during a crisis, information and events can move quickly. Communication with empathy sometimes means educating your team on the best ways to take care of themselves and others. Provide your team with updated links to reputable sources with accurate and up-to-date information that includes advice.

Research shows that the more people are armed with facts and understand what they can do to take care of and protect themselves, the more they will gain self-confidence that they can care for themselves. If the data you’re delivering is particularly dense, try wrapping your recommendation in a data story. Our data storytelling training covers how to do that.

Stay steady, and back your words with action

Your team will look to you for what feelings and actions make sense right now. Anxiety is contagious, and panic undoes the positive steps you’ve made. But steadiness on its own isn’t enough. Studies show that in a crisis, comforting words don’t count for much unless leaders follow up with action, and a gap between what a leader says and what a leader does actually increases fear. Behave in ways that line up with what you told people, or the message stops working.

At Duarte, we’ve always been audience-first advocates. During any crisis or big organizational change, your audience is likely dealing with some nerves. Think about what your audience needs from you in order to feel calmer and more competent.

They are seeking something beyond comfort, flexibility, and understanding. They crave knowledge, competence, and trust in their leadership. As an empathetic communicator, if you can offer them both empathy and authority, it’s more likely your team and your organization will emerge from your crisis feeling stronger, more secure, and with morale intact.

How Duarte helps

If you’re preparing for a crisis, or you’re in one now, there are two ways we help. Communication training prepares your leaders to work out what each audience needs to hear, and when. Communication consulting does the planning with you. Talk to us and we’ll work out which one you need.

This article was originally published on March 10, 2020. It has been updated in September 2026 for relevancy.