During incident response, every second counts. As a leader, you're expected to have all the answers, and that pressure can make it very tempting to play the hero and take control of the response process. While "I'll just do it myself" may seem faster on occasion, this instinct can hinder your team's effectiveness and actually slow down resolution.
We'll explore how you can evolve from a command-and-control manager into a genuinely empowering leader. You'll learn how to maintain composure under pressure while creating space for your team to shine. We'll cover essential frameworks, usable by new managers and individual contributors building incident response processes from scratch as well as experienced leaders looking to level up their approach.
Key takeaways will include:
- How to recognize when you may be over-managing during an incident… and how to empower your team to help you recognize these moments.
- Building team confidence and ownership in crisis situations.
- Clear guidelines for when to step in versus step back.
- Establishing and maintaining clear communication channels.
Whether you're establishing your first incident response playbook, fine-tuning an existing process, or managing up to help your leaders help you do your best work, you'll leave equipped to help your team handle incidents more effectively – and help you sleep better at night knowing they've got this.
Kat leads the Developer Advocacy and Community team at PagerDuty. She enjoys talking and thinking about incident response, customer support, and automating the creation of a delightful end-user and employee experience. She previously ran Global Customer Support at PagerDuty, and as a result, it’s hard to get her to stop talking about the potential career paths for tech support professionals. In her spare time, Kat is a mediocre plant parent and a slightly less mediocre pet parent to her two rabbits, Lupin and Ginny.
