Assessing Crisis Leadership

ABSTRACT Organisational crises are increasingly frequent, disruptive and difficult for leaders to manage. Although crisis leadership research has grown, existing measures remain limited by narrow crisis contexts, uneven theoretical grounding and restricted validation evidence. We report the development and validation of a concise, process‐oriented crisis leadership scale (CLS) designed for use across crisis types and phases. Study 1 ( n = 391) generated theory‐based items from recent crisis leadership reviews and used exploratory factor analyses to identify a reliable 15‐item single‐factor scale. Study 2 ( n = 498) confirmed this structure and demonstrated convergent and discriminant validity relative to established leadership measures. Study 3 ( n = 200) located the CLS within an initial nomological network, showing associations with organisational justice, positive work attitudes, and negative work attitudes and behaviours. Study 4 ( n = 380) provided evidence of context fidelity: observers' CLS ratings differentiated above‐average, average and below‐average leader responses to real crises. The validated CLS offers researchers and practitioners a brief, psychometrically robust measure of perceived leader behaviour during crises that holds implications for leaders aiming to manage crises wisely. Future work should examine measurement equivalence across crisis types, phases, cultures and longitudinal crisis trajectories.