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Meet BANI: lover of crisis.
Most of us have probably heard of VUCA by now, that whole “volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous” thing that’s been the buzzword for years. But there’s a new “big bad” on the block, and it’s even more concerning: the BANI environment.
This BANI world we’re in, is one that’s brittle, anxious, non-linear, and incomprehensible (BANI). Stuff breaks faster, situations are tense and fragile, your people feel it, and the usual logic of “do this” “get that” doesn’t really apply anymore.
Which means, crises are no longer rare events; they’re part of everyday life. Think of the COVID-19 pandemic (as much as we’d all like to forget it), or more recently, the Coldplay love birds… But not all crises hit the front pages. It could be a board member suddenly resigning, a critical system going down, or even a whole team winning the lotto (it’s happened).
In a BANI world, these jolts, big or small, just keep coming. All of this creates an anxious system; a space where uncertainty breeds stress, small shocks get blown out of proportion, and people are making decisions under constant tension.
A bit scary - yes, but we can take control in these anxious systems. Crucially it’s not the processes or the tech that make the difference, it’s the people. How leaders and teams adapt, steady themselves, and show up under pressure is what decides whether the organisation bends… or completely breaks.
And this is where it gets a bit tricky. Leaders set the tone, and how they respond under stress usually comes down to personality. Some fuel the anxiety people are feeling; others help to steady it. We all have different ways of handling stress, but what’s crucial here is self-awareness. Knowing your strengths, weaknesses and preferences, will enable you to not just survive through pressure, but thrive. We use tools like Facet5 to help us understand these individual preferences, expanding self-awareness and giving people the power of understanding their individuality.
At one end you might see a highly reactive “headless chicken” response when the pressure is on, one that only turns the dial to max, and situations may begin to feel like they’re spiralling. On the flip side, leaders who appear flat or detached, the ones who shrug off a crisis with ‘nothing to see here’ while the house is burning behind them can leave people feeling abandoned, which is just as damaging. Importantly It’s rarely intentional, it’s just their personality preferences at play.
Yet these differences matter. In anxious systems, people take their emotional cues from those leading them and when those cues are off, this anxiety can spread faster than the crisis itself. Rumours snowball, uncertainty eats away at confidence and performance, and before you know it, the stock price is wobbling.
So, how do leaders steady this? Well, they can’t just focus on the technical fix, they have to manage the emotional side too.
Self-awareness becomes our friend here. And personality insights are a powerful way to build it. Take the Emotionality factor in Facet5: it shows how leaders may likely react under pressure. Leaders higher on Emotionality can be tuned into the organisation’s anxiety, picking up on every risk and ripple of tension. That awareness can be a real strength but if it spills out unchecked, it can tip into panic and spread through the team.
Leaders lower on Emotionality may often project a cool, calm exterior, which can be reassuring in the middle of a storm. But without exercising empathy, that calm can come across as indifference to what their people are actually feeling.
Both styles have strengths, both have risks in a crisis. The point isn’t that one is better than the other, for great leaders it’s about recognising their natural style and adjusting. This is exactly what Daniel Goleman points out in his model of Emotional Intelligence (EI) . Mainly aspects of self-awareness and self-regulation. Facet5 gives leaders a way to see where their personality sits; and EI provides a framework to spot their own tendencies and consciously flex their response in the moment. When combined, leaders can make decisions with steadiness and empathy.
That’s what stops anxiety from becoming more destructive than the crisis itself - and it’s how crisis management turns into lasting resilience, not just short-term firefighting.
To find out more, download our latest eBook Leadership that Stands the Test of Crisis.
