134: Crisis Response Essentials, with Jeff Gorter

Leaders tend to bifurcate, going to one extreme or the other. Some become hyper-competent but emotionally disconnected. Others display overwhelming empathy without direction.

Crisis response expert Jeff Gorter reveals that effective leadership during traumatic events requires a delicate balance of compassion and competence. Drawing from his experience responding to organizational crises at R3 Continuum, Jeff explains why some leaders falter while others shine during critical moments.

The conversation explores our unprecedented era of "cascading collective crises" – a succession of traumatic events without adequate processing time between them. Unlike previous generations who might hear about distant disasters days or weeks later, today's technology delivers every tragedy in real time, often re-traumatizing us through repeated exposure. This constant barrage disrupts our essential human need to make sense of difficult experiences.

Particularly illuminating is Jeff's insight about how we interpret our trauma responses. When facing a crisis, our bodies naturally engage survival mechanisms – fight, flight, or freeze responses hardwired into our brains. The difference between prolonged suffering and recovery often lies in recognizing these reactions as normal human responses rather than personal failures. "It's not that I'm broken," he explains, "I'm simply having a bad case of being human."

Despite the challenges we face, hope persists. We don't get to pick when crisis happens, but we do get to choose how we respond. That choice defines our path to recovery.

Jeff Gorter, MSW, LCSW, is VP of Clinical Crisis Response Services at R3 Continuum. He brings over 30 years of clinical experience including consultation and extensive on-site critical incident response to businesses and communities. He has responded directly to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Hurricane Katrina, the earthquake/tsunami in Japan, the Las Vegas Shooting, the breaching of the US Capitol, the 2023 Hawaii Wildfires, the 2024 Asheville Floods, and the 2025 DC Aviation Disaster, among others.

You can learn more about R3 Continuum on its website R3c.com. And learn more about Jeff on LinkedIn or contact him via email: jeff.gorter@r3c.com

Go to https://betterhelp.com/resilience or click Notes on Resilience during sign up for 10% off your first month of therapy with my sponsor BetterHelp.

Chapters

• 0:00 Normal Reactions to Abnormal Situations
• 3:16 Introduction to Crisis Response Leadership
• 6:58 Compassion and Competence in Leadership
• 12:32 Recovery and Impact of Different Crises
• 19:33 Cascading Collective Crisis Explained
• 25:13 The ACT Model for Crisis Management
• 28:56 Finding Meaning After Crisis
• 31:53 Hope in the Aftermath

Transcript

Jeff Gorter: 1:15

If, and here's the truth, no, those reactions that you're having, that's the normal reaction to an abnormal situation. What you were feeling your heart racing, the rollercoaster of emotions, the muscle tightening, the confusion temporarily, where I'm trying to, how do I? You know, it's hard to focus again in the midst of it. It's all I can think about If we interpret those things as indicators of a personal failure. Or do I say no, wait, wait. That's the normal part, that's the part that makes sense. What just happened? That doesn't make any sense at all, and I'm simply it's not that I'm broken, I'm simply having a bad case of being human.

Manya Chylinski: 2:03

Hello and welcome to Notes on Resilience. I'm your host, manya Chylinski. My guest today is Jeff Gorter. He's the VP of Clinical Crisis Response Services at R3 Continuum and he has extensive experience consulting and responding to critical incidents in businesses and communities. We talked about cascading collective crises. We talked about what does a crisis response look like in an organization and what might leaders need to be thinking about in the aftermath. It was a wonderful conversation. I think you're going to learn a lot, jeff. I'm so excited that we finally got you sitting in one place for this conversation.

Jeff Gorter: 2:47

Oh, Manya, thank you so much for your persistence and your patience. I know it's been a while and it reminds me of the old saying that life is what happens when you're busy making other plans. We tried and tried, but life just kept interfering in it.

Manya Chylinski: 3:05

Well, Jeff, there's a lot of life going on right now, as you know, and before we dive into that and what I mean by that, I want to start out with what is one thing that you have done in any part of your life that you never thought you would do.

Jeff Gorter: 3:21

That's a great question and I would say this was kind of my post-COVID reintegration into life, sort of a statement in that regard that myself and three other guys we did the Camino del Santiago in Spain.

Manya Chylinski: 3:37

Oh, wow.

Jeff Gorter: 3:40

Yeah, yeah, and there's many different routes, but we did the, we did what's called the Camino Primitivo, which is the first, the one that sort of established it all back in 800 AD.

Manya Chylinski: 3:51

Okay.

Jeff Gorter: 3:52

And it's considered the toughest because it's more mountainous than some of the others. So yeah, walking 240 miles in 14 days was something I never would have thought I could do, but was pleasantly surprised that we accomplished it.

Manya Chylinski: 4:08

That is amazing and that's a very short number of days, it feels like for that distance. Well, a little fun fact During the pandemic I found an app where I virtually walked the Camino del Santiago and it would take me to. I would say I walked three miles today and then it would jump me three miles on the and show me Google Earth what I was looking at. So not the same kind of experience as yours, I'm sure.

Jeff Gorter: 4:37

But still very cool. Oh, I'm going to check that out.

Manya Chylinski: 4:40

Oh man, that's so cool and I want to do the real thing one day, so I'm very envious that you got a chance to do that. Well, thank you for sharing that. And we are talking about all the things in life that happens while we're making other plans. Right, the crises that occur, and that's something that you focus on. You help people plan for crises and you help people after a crisis has helped, so let's just dive right in. From your perspective, what does strong leadership look like in times of crisis?

Jeff Gorter: 5:15

The company that I'm with is R3 Continuum, and we respond to crisis on behalf of workplaces between 2,000 and 3,000 times a month. I share that, just to give the context, because we interface with leaders in the midst of crisis yeah, thousands of times a month, and so it's something that we have grown, unfortunately, very skilled at responding to, all by virtue of just the volume that we respond to. And so what I've seen in the course of that time and I've been with the organization coming up on 21 years I've seen examples of leaders who have dropped the ball and no, no, I'm not saying that in a denigrating fashion, but I mean most leaders aren't trained to respond to that and I've seen leaders who were shining examples of how to navigate and lead their people through it. And so I would say that it comes down to two specific elements compassion and competence, and what I have seen is that leaders tend to bifurcate, they tend to go to one extreme or the other, so you can get the ones that are overly competent.

Jeff Gorter: 6:24

They focus on the competence part and they are all leaderly in the midst of the event, but it leaves the impression that do they get it? Do they understand? They seem to be all task focused and checking off the boxes and you know, while those things may need to be done, they have not communicated to us in a way that suggests they get it Now. The other side of the coin is, you know, you can have very empathic leaders who are clearly connected to the event and personally very expressive on that, and that can be a very good thing. It's an essential thing. But it's also true that nobody wants to be led by a puddle and that if it suggests that you are overwhelmed by it as opposed to attuned to it. And so the most successful leaders I've seen are when they are able to establish that balance between to know what we're going to do, but also to know why we're going to do it, because this is important and this matters, and I get it. This is powerful for us, right.

Manya Chylinski: 7:36

Wow that. How does a leader stay grounded? Or what are the skills or the the structures that need to be in place for them to be able to hold both of those things in a crisis?

Jeff Gorter: 7:54

I think that here's the the. The secret is they don't have to do it themselves, and that's the thing that leaders tend to I get it. Being in a crisis creates a element of tunnel vision it's all I can see, it's all I can think about, and it boxes out everything else. But that also eliminates then reaching out to others, getting additional perspective, additional ideas, being able to see the big picture, and so resisting that temptation to isolate in the midst of a crisis, but instead reaching out Now. For some, that may be with reaching out to other peers in a leadership position. It could be because we operate in a corporate setting.

Jeff Gorter: 8:39

Almost every business has access to an employee assistance program. That is an often untapped resource in the midst of a crisis for the leaders as well as the employees who are going through it. That we at R3 Continuum do is that we offer that consultation to assist leaders at a time like that, as well as providing on the ground psychological first aid support for their employees to be able to cope with it and to be able to say what is the next few hours, days and weeks look like as I recover.

Manya Chylinski: 9:44

Right, and that's so important and that's something I think a lot about is that help people for the longer term. It seems to me sometimes in the immediate aftermath, some of the actions are easy to identify get the office back opened, make sure everybody's physically safe, some of these kinds of things, and my whole thing is let's make sure everybody's physically safe, some of these kind of things, and my whole thing is let's make sure we're actually paying attention to the mental health and those who've been traumatized. But now you mentioned the number of crises that you respond to a month, and when I first heard those numbers, I was shocked and I realized those are crises of all different sizes and different types. I don't think you can average that out. I'm curious, though how long does it take people to recover? Does the type of crisis matter? Can people really get back to things pretty quickly and I know I'm asking an impossible question Sure.

Jeff Gorter: 10:46

So it is true that crisis is endlessly creative. Every version and every variation of that, and in fact everybody is an expert on the last crisis, it's the unexpected thing that nobody saw coming that defines a crisis by its very nature the unexpected death of an employee, and so that might be for causes of an illness or a heart attack or something like that, an automobile accident, and so you might call that a course of life event. Those are the normal things that any of us, as humans, are going to encounter at some point in the course of our lifespans, and so you know that has a kind of, you know that is more of a grief and loss impact for people, but all the way from bank robberies and active shooters and natural disasters and terrorist attacks, you know. So it spans the gamut. Your question is astute to say well, you know what? How long does it typically take? And it is here's the thing it's not the incident that determines it, it's the impact that determines the length of time.

Manya Chylinski: 11:58

And.

Jeff Gorter: 11:58

I think that's an important distinction, because many people make the mistake of well, was this traumatic enough? Does this count? Should we get additional help? Should we, you know, does it fall into that? And it's not the incident itself, it's the impact on that individual or that group. And the impact can be defined, you know, shaped by previous lived experience, you know, adverse childhood events that may, you know, create a heightened sensitivity to that specific event that happened today. Heightened sensitivity to that specific event that happened today Was it something that struck the core of my identity? I think of, like the El Paso shooting in Walmart that was targeting the Latino community, or the shooting at the Pulse nightclub that targeted the LGBTQ community.

Manya Chylinski: 12:46

So, if it's something that it's like well, that could have been me.

Jeff Gorter: 12:51

Why wasn't it me? That enhances that sense of the challenge to recover from that.

Manya Chylinski: 12:58

Right and, as you say, I like that. Crisis is endlessly creative and each is unique, and some are things that happen relatively quickly and then you're dealing with the aftermath. Some are things that take a while to unfold minutes, hours, days and the pandemic probably much longer than that. How do you help organizations move from that? We have to react to this thing that's happening, that mode into the future, like the long-term recovery, and I feel like quite often, when the intensity of the moment has passed, there's a big push to let's just get back to the way things were. Sure sure?

Jeff Gorter: 13:42

Well, and here's an interesting thing, is that it is true that from a business continuity, is that it is true that from a business continuity, you know, maintaining the service and the operations of a company are what a leader is charged with. That is part of their responsibility, it goes with the role they are looked to to be able to restore that, and so it might be seen as well. Isn't is that kind of callous to ask people to come back to work? But it turns out, I tell you, if I, when I ask an employee, you know, what do you most want? After this, nine out of 10 of them are going to say I just want to get back to work. And what they mean is I want to get back to something that feels normal, predictable, that makes sense, where I feel like I have a sense of agency, where I you know I didn't know what to do when the crisis happened I want to get back to where I can, my job, I know what to do there, and it turns out there's surprising power in the mundane.

Jeff Gorter: 14:42

If you just want it to be. Can it just be like normal again? Well, I think we all felt that during the pandemic, right After months of it, where it's just like can there just be one day that feels like normal? When's that ever going to come back? And so being able to return to work, it turns out, is an expression of functional resilience. It's one way in which they're able to again assert a sense of agency and say I am. Assert a sense of agency and say I am. In clinical terms we would say return to pre-event functioning or pre-event, you know, pre-event status, which is another way of saying well, that's a fancy way of saying get back to work. And not because work is the higher you know that that takes precedence over my recovery but because work is a part of my recovery. I want to reclaim that and I want to be able to re-engage with taking care of my family and meeting my needs and all of the things that define normal in any other setting Right.

Manya Chylinski: 15:41

Well, we talked about the pandemic in there a little bit and you used a phrase in another conversation that I'd love to just dig into the cascading collective crisis. So I don't know if the pandemic fits that description, but I'm so curious that sounds like a lot harder work to recover from.

Jeff Gorter: 16:00

Well, it is, and you're right. So cascading collective crisis is an emerging framework that kind of really has come. It pre-existed before COVID, before the pandemic, but it has clearly been an element of that and it is when crises, a series of crises, are proximate. It's called coterminous crises when they are proximate in either time, face in the same geographic location or have a similar type of meaning.

Manya Chylinski: 16:33

Okay.

Jeff Gorter: 16:34

So they are similar in time, space or meaning. And why that's significant now is that cascading collective crisis is when one crisis happens and then another one happens right after that and another one happens and they kind of stack up one after another and you never have a moment to actually stop and think what just happened? What does this mean? What does this say about myself or my company or my community or my country? When we go from one, when we stumble from one crisis to the next, we never stop and have what's called meaning attribution. What does this mean? And that's part of creating a narrative. Well, here's what it means. It's the story. Here's what was happening before this event happened, then this event happened, here's what I did when the event happened and here's where I'm at now. That is essential for recovery. Being able to put it in a narrative is another way of saying okay, I have fitted into the story of my life.

Jeff Gorter: 17:36

Cascading collective crisis means I just keep rolling, I never really recover, I never really stop and think about it, and that has a wearying effect. Yes, that has a a wearying effect. Yes, an element of fatigue that you just you know, you're kind of slow, drip kind of thing that accumulates and you're. You're like, wow, what's? You know what's going on.

Jeff Gorter: 18:00

Why do I feel so such a sense of melancholy? Why do I feel this sort of ennui? Why is it that things just don't seem to be bright or happy anymore? Part of it is because I'm still dealing with the thing that happened five years ago with the pandemic, and we rolled right into civil unrest following the murder of George Floyd. We rolled right into multiple wildfires that destroyed entire towns in the West, towns in the West. We've had significant hurricanes, one after another, that have created flooding, asheville being North Carolina last year, being an example of a town that was devastated by those kinds of things. It was just one after another, and here's something that there have been other times in history when multiple things have happened at bad times.

Jeff Gorter: 18:50

You know that in and of itself is not necessarily unique, but what is different right now and what I contend is exacerbating it is that, unlike other times when those things would happen, sometimes it would take days, weeks, maybe even months for people to hear about it and you would say, oh, wow, that was a. I really feel bad for those folks. That thing that happened, wow, that was we had our event, but now they have their event and there was a distance that created, let's say, a buffering effect effect. The difference now today is that those events can be experienced in real time as close as the device in your pocket or on your desktop and re-experienced Watch. We saw that after 9-11, that how many times in the first couple of months you couldn't turn on the TV without seeing a plane crashing into a building.

Jeff Gorter: 19:49

They replayed it and replayed it and replayed it, not realizing the impact that was having on us, and so that is something that is unique is that we are now experiencing it in a way that brings it right here and enhances that level of personal victimization, for lack of a better word yeah, and we can experience crises that we essentially never would have even heard about in the past, because they're happening far away or for whatever the reason, and now they feel close because, as you say, they may be connected in terms of place or time or the people that they're impacting.

Manya Chylinski: 20:37

The people that they're impacting, you know, as you're working with organizations and leaders and you're is how you approach it different if we're talking about these cascading crises, or is it essentially the same and you just have to keep just chipping away at piece after piece?

Jeff Gorter: 20:52

I think it's raising the awareness of it. So, again, we have the capacity, the adaptive capacity, to respond to those things, but only if we acknowledge them. If it falls into that background of stacked up, throw it with the rest of the other crises and they all just kind of sit there. You didn't have a chance to adapt to that, to assign a meaning, to think about it, and that is an essential element to being able to move forward. So we often recommend we use what's called the ACT model A-C-T, and that the A stands for acknowledge and name the event. So it's important to say I understand the sensitivity to this.

Jeff Gorter: 21:36

So, please, I hope that this doesn't come off wrong, but we tend to use euphemisms and dance around it the dearly departed, the unfortunate event, you know, and that kind of not calling it for what it is, that which we can't name, continues to have power over us. And so one of the things that we do and what a leader needs to do, is to be able to say we're gathered here today following the death of Bob Smith yesterday in the factory accident that we are all aware of. You need to say Bob's name, you need to call it a death, you need to say it was an accident, and not in a sort of a callous or cold manner, but just we have to acknowledge it and call it because everybody knows it. And a leader that dances around it and says, well, I don't want to say the wrong thing, so I'll say nothing, has eliminated their let's say moral authority. That's where the competence comes in.

Manya Chylinski: 22:33

But the.

Jeff Gorter: 22:34

C, now the second part. So that's acknowledge and name the event. C is communicate, care and competence. So be able to say and we understand what Bob's death means to all of you Bob was a beloved colleague and a key mentor to so many of you and we understand the power and we've provided. This is what businesses reach out to R3 for. We've asked for on-site counselors to come and provide support for us for a period of time and our EAP is offering resources. So saying that you've, we understand it, we get the emotional impact and we have a plan to address it. Yeah, you know, we've brought the right resources at the right time.

Jeff Gorter: 23:22

Is the C part, and then T of the act is transition to a future focus. So once we've acknowledged it, once we've communicated that we've got it and that we have a plan, then transition to a future focus is saying so here's what we're going to do, here's what the next days and weeks look like, here's how we're going to alter our work schedules to accommodate this. Or here's where how resources are going to be allocated over the next period of time. And we will be checking back in with you to to ensure that team that reported to Bob is receiving all the resources they need and the support that they so deserve.

Jeff Gorter: 24:01

So casting a vision that says and we will get through this. That's the implied message we will be able to get through this. I believe in your resilience, I believe in your capacity. I want to be clear that I would never want to minimize or dismiss the power of these events for people, but, by the same token, I would not want to minimize or dismiss the incredible capacity of the human spirit to rise to these occasions and even rise above them. So many times. It's where meaning and purpose leads us forward.

Manya Chylinski: 24:39

Right, wow, you have said the word meaning a few times and how important that is to recovery. I'd love to dig a little deeper in, I guess, what you mean by finding meaning from an event like this.

Jeff Gorter: 24:56

So there's actually there's a field of study for it and it's, you know, meaning attribution and it. When a crisis event happens, it's human nature to want to say what does this say? And we go in either one of two directions. We say what does this say about me? Internal disposition what does this?

Jeff Gorter: 25:15

say Was I a coward? Was I strong enough that I responded in a way that I feel positive about, or am I confused and overwhelmed by it? So I'll say what does it say about me or external situation? What does it say about my company, my community, my country? What does it say about out there? And so that is part of how we assign a meaning it either says something about me or it says something about you.

Manya Chylinski: 25:43

Okay, yeah.

Jeff Gorter: 25:44

In and out, and that meaning, the meaning we come to, often determines the long-term trajectory of recovery from it. Because here's again the thing we are our own harshest critics. And if the meaning we assigned to this is that this means I wasn't, I wasn't strong enough, I wasn't smart enough, I you know, maybe I'm, maybe I'm losing it, oh my goodness, maybe I'm going crazy.

Manya Chylinski: 26:12

And if we?

Jeff Gorter: 26:13

assign a meaning of. You know that this indicates a personal failure on my part. That's going to take you in one direction.

Jeff Gorter: 26:22

If and here's the truth, no, those reactions that you're having, that's the normal reaction to an abnormal situation. What you were feeling your heart racing, the roller coaster of emotions, the muscle tightening, the confusion temporarily, where I'm trying to, how do I? You know, it's hard to focus again in the midst of it. It's all I can think about If we interpret those things as indicators of a personal failure. Or do I say no, wait, wait. That's the normal part, that's the part that makes sense. What just happened, that doesn't make any sense at all. And I'm simply it's not that I'm broken, I'm simply having a bad case of being human. I'm responding to the event.

Jeff Gorter: 27:11

That's hardwired into us. That is part of our survival. You know, the survival, survival mechanism. All of those feelings, all of those reactions stem from the primitive part that is built into our amygdala, the survival mechanism. When we face a threat and all of the kinds of things we've been talking about feels like a threat to me. Yeah, then I'm going to do one of three things to me. Then I'm going to do one of three things. I'm either going to think can I take this threat, you know, fight, or can I outrun the threat, flight, or if I stay still, maybe it won't see me.

Jeff Gorter: 27:47

And that's freeze, fight, flight or freeze is the survival mechanism that is. As you can see, that's very primitive. It's built into us. You don't really get to choose that. That's part of our brain. Saying this feels like a threat and I'm clicking into survival mode to enhance your safety in the middle of this situation.

Jeff Gorter: 28:08

Knowing that those reactions are normal and make sense gives you the moment, the opportunity to say okay, this doesn't mean anything bad about me, this doesn't mean I failed. It means that I'm reacting out of that survival mechanism. Now I can make the decision of what the next step is.

Manya Chylinski: 28:27

Okay, it's so interesting you say that because my own experience is very much feeling like I'm the only one who feels this way wasn't seeing it in the news. I must be the only one feels this way, so it must be my fault that I can't deal with this. And a few months after the bombing I was on the phone with a victim advocate who I said something to that effect and they said no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Stop right there. Something happened to you and you are reacting to that. And that was the first time I'd ever even thought about that concept. And that changed my trajectory to realize OK, it isn't something wrong with me, I'm responding to something unusual and in all my messy humanness.

Jeff Gorter: 29:20

That is so incredibly freeing to be able to see it Now. Again, I don't say that that realization makes now the path nothing but rainbows on the way up and candy along the way. It's still a difficult thing, but now I'm dealing with the reality as opposed to adding to it the sense of, and I must be doing it wrong or there's something wrong with me because of how I'm handling it.

Manya Chylinski: 29:47

Right, and, by the way, I am still looking for the rainbow and candy path. I would love to find that, jeff, we are close to the end of time and I would love for you to answer this last question, which is what is giving you hope, right?

Jeff Gorter: 30:05

now. I think that we've circled around and, unexpectedly, the part of our theme today has been meaning, and I think that the emerging generations' meaning is core to their values, to what they want, to what they are looking for being able to do something that is purposeful, that is meaningful, to know that my energy and my efforts are directed towards something worthwhile, and that is something that is, I think, typifies the emerging generations and is always a source of hope. You know being able to. I will share this that when I responded to 9-11 in New York, that there was a union square, there was a gathering place where people would put up placards and many of them were have you seen my loved one?

Jeff Gorter: 31:01

or looking for information on this person, and the entire park was surrounded by it. But there was one banner that somebody had put out there that said hope is alive. And that was such a powerful message to me at that point that somebody had taken the time and had the resilience to say even so, hope is alive. And I think we have seen example after example of that. Yes, the crisis happens, the bad thing is going to occur. Crisis happens, the bad thing is going to occur. We don't get to pick that. That's life happening, but we do get to pick how we respond to that. And being able to say hope is alive, and that inspires me to not blame myself but to say how do I live into that hope, how do I lean into that hope?

Manya Chylinski: 31:52

Oh, that's so lovely. Thank you, Jeff. Now, before we go, can you please just share with our listeners a little bit about your company and what you do and how they can learn more about you?

Jeff Gorter: 32:04

Sure, sure. So R3 Continuum and that's the company that I work for we are a provider of behavioral health services following a crisis. It can be also leadership support, leadership coaching and consultation, as we talked about earlier that recognizing the leader's role in a crisis is critical, but we also provide the boots on the ground counselors on site. When it says on TV counselors were there to support the impact, and oftentimes that can be us, and we have a network of counselors across the country specifically trained in psychological first aid and being able to speak a word of care and compassion into the midst of these situations, with the goal of helping the employees that organization return to some sense of normalcy, to be able to determine what the next day looks like.

Manya Chylinski: 32:56

Nice, oh, thank you.

Jeff Gorter: 32:58

So R3 Continuum, we are r3c. com, r3ccom.

Manya Chylinski: 33:03

That is easy enough. I'll put a link in the show notes so people can connect with you and Jeff. Thank you so much. I've really enjoyed our conversation. I appreciate your time today.

Jeff Gorter: 33:14

Absolutely, Maya. It was my honor and thank you so much for inviting me to join.

Manya Chylinski: 33:19

Right, and thank you to our listeners for checking out this episode of Notes on Resilience, and we will catch you next time.