After examining countless disasters and categorizing the ways people respond to life-threatening situations, [John] Leach [who teaches and writes papers cited in almost every important study of survival,] came up with what might be called the Theory of 10-80-10. First, around 10 percent of us will handle a crisis in a rela- tively calm and rational state of mind. Under duress, they pull themselves together quickly. They assess situations clearly. Their decision-making is sharp and focused. They’re able to develop priorities, make plans, and take appropriate action. Leach says the vast majority of us—around 80 per-
cent—fall into the second band. In a crisis, most of us will “quite simply be stunned and bewildered.”We’ll find that our “reasoning is significantly impaired and that think- ing is difficult.”We’ll behave in “a reflexive, almost auto- matic or mechanical manner.” Under tremendous pressure, most of us will feel lethargic and numb.We’ll sweat.We’ll feel sick. Our hearts may race. And we’ll expe- rience “perceptual narrowing” or so-called tunnel vision. We’ll stare straight ahead.We’ll barely hear people around us.We’ll lose sense and sight of what’s going on around us. In short, most of us will turn into statues in the first moments of a crisis. It’s okay—it’s not necessarily fatal— and it doesn’t last forever. The key is to recover quickly from brainlock or analysis paralysis, shake off the shock, and figure out what to do.
“You have to hug the monster. You have to imagine the worst, because the more you wrestle with the worst-case scenarios, the more you are able to overcome.”
ous, but in disaster after disaster and crisis after crisis, we find that the number of really educated, really smart, really organ- ized people who did not plan ahead for what was reasonably predictable is mindboggling. Practice and training reduces the amount of time that people sit in a stupor, not knowing what to do when the worst happens. The more you have imagined the worst, talked it through
with your colleagues, the greater the likelihood of success in the event that the lights go out in the convention center or, heaven forbid, fire breaks out, or an earthquake strikes. There’s a phrase in survival literature: high-consequence/low- probability events or high-probability/low-consequence events. We’re not well-wired to think about them. The best way—in
the final 10 percent —is the one you defi- nitely want to avoid in an emergency. Simply put, the members of the third band do the wrong thing. They behave inappropriately and often counterpro- ductively. They make the situation worse. In plain terms, they freak out and can’t pull themselves together. If you think about
your own response in stressful situations, you can try to predict whether you fall into the top 10, the statuesque 80, or the dangerous 10. In reality, however, it’s very hard to know what you’ll really do. Even highly trained professionals, like policemen or firefighters, sometimes freeze, while children with no training glide through unscathed. No matter which category you fall into, experts say, you can definitely practice and improve your crisis response. With some effort, you can master the habits of effective survivors and also learn what not to do in a crisis.
the moment—to respond is to have spent a small amount of time anticipating that you could find yourself in this situation. One of the reasons why behavioral inaction happens—when people see the wing on the plane on fire and they sit frozen in their seats rather than making a run for it—is that they never imagined that happening. They literally search in theirminds for a correct response to this situation and there is none. When I get on a plane, I briefly rehearse the things I learned
at an airplane-crash survival course inOklahoma City. I’m not paranoid. I don’t feel hysterical about this. I don’t feel like it’s taken over my life. I have a conversation with myself about the things that could go wrong and what I will do if I have to take quick action. It takes a fewseconds. The same thing applies to a convention planner. In all likeli-
hood, none of this is going to happen. These are low-probabil- ity but they are high-consequence events, and we need to overcome our natural instinct to not want to focus on them. Survival is a lens, a way of seeing theworld.
Michelle Russell is editor in chief of Convene. Since her interview with Ben Sherwood, she nowcounts the number of rows to the closest exit on every flight.