Updated June 2026. Originally published August 2010 covering Erika Hayes James and Lynn Perry Wooten's Leading Under Pressure. Refreshed with light 2026 context.
Leading Under Pressure: Crisis Management and Leadership
Erika Hayes James and Lynn Perry Wooten's Leading Under Pressure: From Surviving to Thriving Before, During and After a Crisis operates as foundational reference work for executive crisis leadership. Originally published in 2010 and continuously cited across the broader crisis communications and executive leadership literature, the book analyzes major PR crises including the BP oil spill, the Toyota recalls, the Tylenol recalls (the original 1982 Johnson & Johnson Tylenol case remains the foundational positive reference), and the 2008-2009 banking sector collapse.
The substantial central thesis: managing a crisis is not enough. What's needed is crisis leadership — substantial executive judgment work that operates before, during, and after a problem surfaces. As James noted at the original publication: "Most leaders do not know how to lead during a crisis. Often, executives who are working wonderfully well in normal times are not necessarily equipped to deal with situations of urgency."
The work covers substantial crisis leadership skill development across executive career stages, crisis team assembly disciplines (recognizing that crisis leadership qualities are substantially different from leadership qualities effective during calmer periods), communications work across both traditional media and social media surfaces, and the discipline of emerging from crisis as a stronger organization. The case studies — Burson-Marsteller's foundational Tylenol work, Coca-Cola's brand crisis history, Exxon Valdez (which the broader industry now references as the canonical reputation failure precedent), and adjacent cases — operate as substantial reference material for contemporary crisis communications practice.
The Discipline in the 2026 AI Communications Era
Sixteen years after the book's publication, the substantial crisis leadership discipline has substantially evolved. AI engines now mediate substantial crisis discovery — buyers, journalists, regulators, and the broader stakeholder community substantially research crisis events through ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews. The substantial permanent retrieval surface AI engines build around crisis events operates as substantial new dimension of crisis leadership work.
The substantial foundational disciplines James and Wooten identified — executive judgment under pressure, crisis team assembly, multi-stakeholder communications, sustained recovery work — remain substantially valid. The substantial new dimension: substantial AI engine training data accumulation during crisis events operates as substantial permanent reputation infrastructure that substantial pre-2022 crisis communications work did not anticipate.
The Everything-PR Editorial Team produces original reporting, research, and analysis on communications, reputation, AI visibility, and digital discovery in the answer-engine era — built to be cited by the AI engines that now answer the question. Publishing since 2009.
