Taylor Swift’s Crisis Management Lessons For Business Leaders

Taylor Swift knows first-hand about responding to different crisis situations. How she handled those incidents provides corporate executives with lessons and reminders about responding to a crisis.

Be Flexible

It helps to be flexible and nimble, no matter how minor a crisis seems to be.

Swift demonstrated that flexibility during a live concert tour in front of thousands of fans last Sunday when her piano malfunctioned onstage.

Swift “joked that she may have finally broken her flower-painted piano during the acoustic section of night two in Milan, Italy,” according to USA Today.

“So the acoustic section is the part of the show that I look forward to every single night because it’s always different,” Swift said starting with her guitar song selection. As she noodled some chords at the end of the Eras Tour catwalk, she said, “It’s also an opportunity for me to hang out with you wild people back here.”

“The piano meltdown didn’t dampen the spirits of Swift, who went on to deliver yet another powerful performance on her record-breaking Eras Tour,” Entrepreneur reported.

“The incident and her attitude about it is a great lesson in mishap management. Mistakes happen, some are out of our control, and some are of our own making,” the news outlet observed.

Responding To A Tragedy

After a fan at a Swift concert in Rio de Janeiro apparently died as a result of sweltering temperatures last November, the music superstar did something that represented an important crisis management lesson for corporate executives.

Swift postponed a scheduled performance because of the heat. The lesson: When you see something, do something.

“Fans lined up for hours before the show, and many accused organizers of failing to deliver enough water supplies for the more than 60,000 attending the concert at the Nilton Santos Stadium. They said they were not allowed to take their own water into the stadium,” the Associated Press reported.

“The report by Rio’s Forensic Medical Institute said Benevides’ heat exposure led to a cardiorespiratory arrest. It also said she did not have preexisting conditions or substance abuse that could have led to her death,” the write service wrote.

In a post to her Instagram account, Swift wrote, “I’m writing this from my dressing room in the stadium. The decision has been made to postpone tonight’s show due to the extreme temperatures in Rio. The safety and well-being of my fans, fellow performers, and crew has to and always will come first,” USA Today reported.

This was not the first time that Swift responded to a crisis-related situation.

Tell Your Side Of The Story

When Ticketmaster cancelled its planned public sale of tickets to Swift’s Eras tours, fans went crazy, according to the New York Times. “The company cited ‘extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand,” the news organization reported.

As I wrote in a an earlier article, “For her part, Swift took steps to tell her side of the story about the crisis that had upset so many of her fans.

“It’s really difficult for me to trust an outside entity with these relationships and loyalties, and excruciating for me to just watch mistakes happen with no recourse,” Swift said in a statement.

“There are a multitude of reasons why people had such a hard time trying to get tickets, and I’m trying to figure out how this situation can be improved moving forward. I’m not going to make excuses for anyone because we asked them multiple times if they could handle this kind of demand, and we were assured they could.”