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Crisis team members: don’t answer your phone during crisis meetings!
It sounds obvious, but I’ve seen this happen all the time during crisis drills...
The problem is actually this:
If you answer the call, it will disrupt the crisis meeting. Either the team will have to stop the meeting and everyone will wait for you to finish your call, or the team will continue the meeting and you, as a member of the crisis team, will miss an important part of the decision-making process. Neither option is desirable.
What’s more: if you were to answer the call after all, you’d receive new information. And if you were to bring that information up immediately in the crisis meeting, it would disrupt the crisis team’s decision-making process. And you don’t want that either.
This is one of the reasons why you should keep crisis meetings short. Aim for no more than 15 to 20 minutes.
If you still want to make sure your phone can be answered during a crisis meeting, hand it over to a support staff member, for example, while you’re in the crisis meeting.
