Crisis as a Leadership Classroom: What 23 Years at Kayan Taught Me

Executive Director, Kayan Society for Persons with Disabilities · Chair, CBR Africa Network

In this piece, I share what I have learned from successive crises Kayan has weathered over a quarter century: the political shifts of 2011 and beyond, repeated currency devaluations, the COVID pandemic, contractions in international funding, and the daily operational shocks across branches stretching from Cairo to deep Upper Egypt. These lessons are not commandments they are honest reflections from a leader who lived them.

When a crisis arrives, you will not acquire new traits. Your real traits will simply appear, magnified. A hesitant leader before the crisis will be hesitant inside it. An aloof leader will disappear. A transparent one will continue being transparent. A controlling one will become more controlling.

This lesson is harsh but liberating. It means that working on yourself as a leader is not a "luxury" to be deferred to free time it is preparation for the next crisis, whose timing you do not know.

In 2011, when Egypt's political landscape shifted, I realized my first decisions were not new they were natural extensions of how I worked on ordinary days. That both frightened and reassured me.

In a crisis, we think our decision is the centre of everything. It isn't. A correct decision made badly loses you your team. An imperfect decision made with transparency and respect stays with your team for years.

I learned to always explain four things: what data informed the decision, what alternatives we considered, why we chose this one, and where we might be wrong. When these four questions are answered openly in front of the team, the decision shifts from dictation to partnership.

During COVID, when we had to suspend services and restructure branches, I walked through these four questions in every meeting. We did not always agree but no one left me because they did not understand.

When a crisis hits, the first instinct is withdrawal: "let me think," "I'll come back after consultation," "the situation isn't clear yet." These answers look reasonable on the surface and are deeply wrong underneath."

Your team does not need you to be certain. It needs you to be present. A leader who hides behind situational ambiguity creates an anxiety in their team deeper than the crisis itself. Because employees fear the unknown far more than the known.

I learned to say plainly: "I don't know. But I will tell you what I do know weekly, and what I don't know too." This commitment to presence even without answers is stronger than a thousand inspirational speeches.

In a crisis, interests collide. The institution's financial interest may be staff reduction. The team's interest may be preserving every job. A mature leader does not choose easily between the two, nor pretend the tension is not there.

My position over the years: protecting the team is not an emotional decision; it is a strategic investment. A team that watched its leader fight for them in a crisis fights for the institution for a full decade afterwards.

In every crisis Kayan has weathered, my first instruction was: bring me five cost reducing decisions before we discuss workforce reduction. More often than not, we found what was needed. Not always but more often than not.

What works in crisis leadership in a Western context may not work in the Egyptian one. In Egypt, the team brings to work its anxiety for the family, the children, the broader economic future. A leader who ignores this and treats people as "human resources" loses them emotionally before losing them functionally.

I learned to factor into my leadership calculus: the decision's impact on the team's standard of living, the rhythms of local markets, price pressures, the state of the communities we serve. These are not "softness" they are intelligent reading of the context we operate in.

The biggest mistake after every crisis is trying to "go back to before." Mature institutions do not return they evolve. Every crisis exposes a gap, and whoever fails to close it will be surprised by it again in the next crisis.

After every crisis Kayan went through, we held a quiet review session: what did we learn? What decision did we delay because a certain system was missing? What data was unavailable when we needed it? Then we built — instead of complaining. This shift from "surviving a crisis" to "learning from it" is what transformed Kayan from an organization that survives to one that matures.

I know this phrase may sound provocative to anyone in the middle of a crisis right now. But I say it after 23 years of lived experience: every crisis Kayan endured made it stronger not because crises are kind, but because our leadership was alert.

To every leader reading this in the middle of a crisis: don't only look for survival. Look for the lesson. Survival alone keeps you alive. The lesson keeps your institution evolving.