Essential Crisis Management for Diplomats
Essential Crisis Management For All Diplomats
5th February
Course Outline
Foreign Ministries and their Embassies need to be ready and prepared to deal with crises around the world that can erupt at a moment’s notice, prompted by major events such as natural disasters, terrorist attacks, pandemics, political collapse and war. Any crisis, whatever its scope and scale, will have potentially huge implications for a country’s citizens, humanitarian efforts, economic interests and political relationships in the region concerned. Ministers need to respond quickly, resources have to be redeployed, priorities changed, and new partnerships formed with other state actors in third countries. How can foreign ministries and diplomats ensure they are prepared to deal with anything?
Essential crisis management for all diplomats is expertly designed and delivered by one of the most seasoned crisis management experts and diplomatic educators in the UK. This online course is highly interactive and will use real case studies to illustrate the learning. It offers the perfect preparation for all diplomats who want to ensure they are crisis competent and ready to respond to anything within their resilient teams.
Learning outcomes
Understanding the nature of crisis management and the imperative on states to act at speed.
Grasping the need for clear command and control underlined by global resilience.
Acquiring an in-depth knowledge of the roles and capabilities needed during a crisis, and, in peacetime, strong preparation and training.
Building a commitment to intra & inter-governmental collaboration to optimise crisis response.
Looking in detail at the sensitive process of handling deaths, casualties and stranded people.
Underlining the importance of resilience to handle concurrent and simultaneous crises.
Recognising that any crisis response hinges on the welfare of staff working on traumatic issues.
Reinforcing the critical importance of consistent communication throughout a crisis.
Module Leader - Ian Proud
Ian Proud was a member of HM Diplomatic Service from 1999 - 2023. He served in Thailand, Afghanistan and Russia and has had a passion for diplomatic education since 2010. From 2014 - 2019 he was Director of the Diplomatic Academy for Eastern Europe and Central Asia while stationed in Moscow. Upon his return to the UK became the Vice Principal of the Diplomatic Academy, leading a global team of diplomatic learning experts from the USA to Singapore.
He has trained British and foreign diplomatic staff around the world and likes little better than facilitating a learning session. He speaks fluent Thai, C1-level Russian, a smattering of other languages and is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (FCIPD).
In addition to his broad and extensive diplomatic learning and development experience, Ian is a leading UK expert on crisis management. During his diplomatic career, Ian was involved in the UK crisis response to the Gujurat Earthquake, 9-11 and the Bali bombing. He was the first British diplomat to deploy to the scene of the Indian Ocean tsunami in Thailand in 2004, where he worked to support the disaster recovery effort for three months. He played an active role in the UK response to the Arab Spring in 2011 and to the Fukushima disaster. While posted to Russia, Ian was Chair of crisis operations at the Embassy, including during the diplomatic fall out to the 2018 Salisbury nerve agent attack and Russia's subsequent hosting of the 2018 Football World Cup. In 2020, he led a range of crisis teams in responding to the global COVID pandemic and the mass repatriation of UK citizens, the largest consular operation in British history. When it comes to crises, there is little Ian hasn't seen or worked on.
Since he retired from HM Diplomatic Service, Ian has provided independent consultancy on diplomatic skills between writing articles and books about foreign policy. His memoir, A Misfit in Moscow: how British diplomacy in Russia failed, 2014-2019 was recognised by the Times Literary Supplement as a Book of the Year 2024.
Modules Structure
1 – Crunch point: the nature of crises and the need for states to respond rapidly.
2 – Command and control: making the right decisions, having the right skills in the right places.
3 – Capabilities: the roles played by the Ministry and Embassies during crisis, the capabilities staff need and the importance of training & preparation.
4 – Collaboration: the benefits of strong internal and external collaboration with stakeholders.
5 – Casualties: handling the dead, injured and bereaved.
6 – Collision: dealing with simultaneous and concurrent crises.
7 – Care: ensuring the welfare of all staff working on crisis issues.
8 – Crisis communications: how you can never communicate too much in a crisis.
Course Fees
The course fees are £395
