In the case of things like a murder, where there’s no evacuation but plenty of psychological trauma, you should call in crisis counselors. That’s what Marion Scott Real Estate did at Co-op City after one employee was shot to death and three others wounded.

“The counseling was mandatory for employees initially,” says Co-op City general counsel Herbert D. Freedman, “and then we made it available to them voluntarily. We have about a thousand employees. We also reached out to the victims’ families. We designated a person who become their liaison, and that person stayed in touch with them, saw to their needs, and made sure they knew how to access benefits.”

In the end, says leadership speaker and author Lee J. Colan, post-crisis management is not very different from what a good board needs to provide all the time: clarity. What do we know, what don’t we know, where do we stand? What’s critical, he says, is that the board members “stay calm and give some promise. If it’s a horrible situation, it’s important to give some sense of hope that we can conquer this.”

– Frank Lovece