When leaders shouldn't lead incidents

Picture this: Your company's payment system is down, angry customers are flooding support, and you're on an incident call with twelve people all trying to lead at once. Sound familiar?

"Who's in charge here?" might be something you expect to hear from an irate customer in a backed-up fast food line, but it's a nightmare scenario to hear it during a critical incident. When leadership becomes unclear, solutions turn into elevator pitches, tasks get abandoned, and resolution times skyrocket.

In this post, we'll explore:

• Why incident leadership gets muddy
• How to build the trust needed to prevent leadership chaos
• Practical strategies for managing when multiple leaders clash anyway

The Hero Problem: Why Everyone Wants to Lead

Let's put on our retrospective caps and make this blameless. No single person is to blame when leadership gets muddled on an incident call. It's not the "poor performing" Incident Manager or the overzealous director.

The reality? When chips are down during a P1 emergency, everyone panics and wants to be the hero. This is actually a good thing, because it means your team cares and wants the same outcome: fast resolution.

Incidents mean we've lost control of something. For many people, taking the reins of the incident call helps them feel back in control.

"Incidents inherently mean we have lost control of something, so for many, taking the reins of the incident call itself helps them feel comfortable and like they are back in control."

The Cultural Fix: It's All About Trust

I could write pages recommending defined processes, role agreements, and documentation between senior leadership and incident management teams. But here's the truth: nobody reads docs during emergencies.

The solution isn't tangible processes, it's a cultural fix that can be summed up in one word: Trust.

When someone respects the work you do and effort you put in, they'll trust that you've got it handled. They won't feel the need to jump in and "help" (even when that helping feels more like hindering).

Start Small: Nail Your Incident Summaries

How are your incident summaries for low-priority issues? When leadership isn't joining those calls, are you writing in a way that builds confidence?

Ask yourself:

• Do I sound like I know what I'm talking about?
• Does my summary show I handled the situation well?
• Did I achieve the best result in the quickest way?

Pro tip: Take extra time to double-check with a SME that your summary makes sense to a technical leader. The goal isn't perfection, it's understanding.

What Great Summaries Accomplish: When leadership reads your summary, they should nod along and understand everything on the first pass. The timeline should be tight and action-packed. The reader should feel like they're reading the words of an expert.

Remember: respect is earned, not given.

When Things Don't Go Your Way (And That's Okay)

You've been crushing your communication lately. You're assigned a P1, alarms are screaming, but you feel calm and confident. You join the call, rally the troops, and... a senior director joins and starts barking orders at their team.

Womp womp.

This Isn't About You

Understand that this isn't a reflection of your abilities. Sometimes leaders simply don't understand professional boundaries during incidents. A title change and pay increase doesn't magically grant someone the ability to stay calm when things go wrong.

These leaders often revert to traditional leadership styles, treating the incident like an in-team emergency. Try to remember: they're doing this out of passion and care for the product, not malice.

A Tactical Guide for Leaders on Incidents

(Print this on cards and "accidentally" drop them near leaders who need to read it)

Before joining any incident call:

1. Know your role. It may be inappropriate for you to speak out of turn during an incident
2. Leave team conflicts at the door. Don't let ongoing team issues bleed into broader calls
3. Ask yourself: Am I needed, or can I watch from the sidelines?
4. Before speaking, think: Does this inspire the team, spark new ideas, or speed up remediation? If not, don't say it.

The Hard Truth About MTTR vs. Human Nature

We obsess over MTTR (Mean Time To Resolution) and minimizing downtime. But here's the uncomfortable reality: people are human.

Sometimes there are important emotional conversations that need to happen, even if they slow down a low-severity incident resolution.

A Real-World Example

I once worked with a leader who intentionally stopped an incident resolution because the investigation wasn't complete. He prioritized understanding why the issue happened over just fixing it quickly.

At the time, I thought he was wrong. Why add an hour to our resolution time?

Three years later, I understand: He was thinking about platform health holistically. That extra hour (within which no customers were noticeably impacted) prevented a dozen future incidents with band-aid "solutions" until someone finally addressed the root cause.

The Leadership Paradox: We ask people who spend their careers learning to be "strong leaders" to suddenly turn off those instincts during high-stress incidents. Obviously, this is difficult.

A Simple Fix: Match Seniority to Severity

After watching a junior team member get effectively kicked out of running their incident by leadership (through actions, not words), I tried a new approach.

The strategy: Match Incident Manager seniority to incident priority.

This gives newcomers time to:

• Get comfortable with processes on lower-severity incidents
• Build familiarity with infrastructure
• Make connections with leadership in casual, low-stress environments
• Start building that foundation of trust

The result? After just a few weeks, the same leaders who previously caused problems became more receptive to the junior Incident Managers ownership over even high-priority incidents.

Key Insight: Individual respect is tied to team respect. Help your team become stronger, and you help yourself.

The Two-Way Street: Compassion and Understanding

Even experienced leaders can find incident management processes novel. They deserve some slack as they learn when not to be in charge.

This transition happens gradually:

1. "This is too important for me to miss"
2. Learning the world doesn't explode when they skip an incident
3. Eventually thinking: "Do I really need to join every time?"

The Training Ground Approach

Remember this fact: There will be more incidents. Each one offers training opportunities for cultural shifts during panic moments.

Your role:

• Be the voice of reason
• Be the knowledgeable rock people can lean on
• Provide the encouragement people need to hear

Slowly but surely, you'll gain respect from everyone who participates in incidents at your company.

The Ultimate Goal

One day, that hyperactive leader will look at a high-priority incident, see who's assigned, and think:

"You know what? I'm not going to join. They've got this. I'll just read the updates."

That's when you know you've succeeded.

Building incident leadership trust takes time, patience, and consistent execution. Focus on earning respect through excellent communication, understanding human nature during crisis, and helping your entire team grow stronger together.

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