INTRODUCTION
When a workplace crisis occurs, organizational attention naturally turns toward immediate response: protecting people, stabilizing the environment, communicating with employees, coordinating resources, and addressing consequences. Yet another period of organizational decision-making deserves greater attention—the period before the crisis becomes obvious.
A workplace concern may begin with a change in behavior, a conflict, an alarming communication, or a pattern of disruptive incidents. Leaders often face incomplete information and competing explanations. The challenge is not simply recognizing that something is concerning; the challenge is determining what the organization should do with that information.
THE PRE-CRISIS WINDOW
For purposes of this article, the pre-crisis window is defined as the period in which a concern has become observable, but its meaning, severity, and appropriate organizational response remain uncertain. It begins when behavioral information warrants attention and continues while leaders gather context, evaluate competing explanations, determine whether intervention is necessary, and monitor changes in the situation.
Björck, Bläse, and Bastida conducted a systematic review of organizational crisis-readiness literature, screening 7,287 articles and identifying 40 eligible studies published between 1987 and 2022. Their synthesis identified crisis prevention, risk management, preparedness, and early signal detection among the elements associated with organizational crisis readiness (Björck et al., 2024).
Early signals rarely announce themselves as crises. They may appear to be isolated incidents, interpersonal conflicts, performance problems, or reactions to stress, dissatisfaction, organizational change, or personal circumstances. Any of those explanations may be correct; the difficulty is that leaders often cannot determine which explanation fits when the concern first emerges.
This creates a period of uncertainty.
A leader who reacts to every concerning behavior as though a serious threat is imminent risks unnecessary escalation, inappropriate intervention, and potentially harmful assumptions.
A leader who dismisses every concern until a threat becomes unmistakable may lose opportunities for earlier intervention.
Neither extreme represents effective risk management.
The more useful question is: What information does leadership need, and what decision needs to be made now?
BEHAVIORAL RISK RECOGNITION IS NOT PREDICTION
Behavioral-risk recognition is sometimes misunderstood as an attempt to predict future violence.
That is not an appropriate characterization of contemporary threat-assessment practice.
The threat-assessment model described by Fein, Vossekuil, and Holden emphasizes gathering information, examining circumstances, assessing the subject and potential target, and developing a case-management strategy. Their model recognizes that communicated threats may have different meanings depending on the circumstances and that assessment must move beyond the words themselves (Fein et al., 1995).
The distinction matters.
Prediction asks: Will this person become violent?
Recognition asks: What has changed, what information is available, and what circumstances require attention?
Assessment asks: What might the available information mean when considered in context?
Decision-making asks: What action, if any, is appropriate given what is currently known?
These are fundamentally different questions.
Research concerning warning behaviors provides another useful distinction. Meloy and colleagues describe warning behaviors as acute and dynamic changes in behavior that may contribute to professional judgment that risk is increasing or accelerating. Their typology was intended as an aid to threat assessment, not as a deterministic list of behaviors that predicts violence (Meloy et al., 2012).
Behavioral assessment operates under uncertainty because the same observable conduct may support several explanations. A communicated threat may express anger without intent or capability, while a seemingly minor event may become significant when considered alongside other information. Conversely, an isolated incident may remain just that. Recognition should therefore identify information that warrants further inquiry rather than attach a label to an individual.
FROM INCIDENT TO PATTERN
Behavioral information often enters an organization through separate channels: a supervisor receives one complaint, Human Resources receives another, security documents an incident, an employee-assistance professional holds relevant information within applicable confidentiality boundaries, or law enforcement becomes involved after a separate event. No single report may justify significant concern, yet the combined information may reveal a materially different pattern.
Recent research involving the Veterans Health Administration provides a contemporary example. The VA developed a Workplace Behavioral Risk Assessment system that collects behavioral-threat information from multiple systems and consolidates the information for analysis. The system was developed in 2012 and has been used across VA healthcare systems; a 2026 publication examined data associated with 140 VA healthcare systems and described multidisciplinary review and the use of aggregated behavioral information to inform training and risk management (Vance et al., 2026).
The significance of this work is not that every organization should reproduce the VA system.
Rather, it demonstrates an important organizational principle: Information that remains isolated may be difficult to interpret. Information considered in context may reveal a pattern.
Pattern recognition does not mean assuming that a pattern guarantees violence. It means recognizing that context matters.
THE LEADERSHIP DECISION POINT
There is a point at which leadership must decide whether a concern warrants further assessment.
This article refers to the point at which leaders determine whether a concern warrants further assessment as the Leadership Decision Point. The term describes a decision-making juncture rather than a discrete or empirically validated threshold.
At this point, leaders should be able to ask three fundamental questions:
What do we know? What has actually been observed, reported, documented, or reliably established?
What do we not know? What information is missing? What assumptions are being made? Are there competing explanations?
What decisions need to be made now? What action is necessary at this point, given the information currently available?
These questions are deliberately simple because they are intended to discipline leadership judgment, not replace professional assessment. They do not constitute a validated clinical instrument or threat-assessment protocol. Instead, they prevent organizations from moving directly from concern to conclusion by requiring leaders to separate established facts, unresolved uncertainties, and immediate decisions.
That distinction is particularly important because leadership decisions can themselves influence the trajectory of a workplace concern.
An organization may need to gather additional information. It may need to address an interpersonal conflict. It may need to involve Human Resources. It may need to consult an employee-assistance program or other support resource. It may need a formal behavioral threat assessment. It may need additional security measures. In an emergency, it may need immediate protective action.
The appropriate response depends on the circumstances. The goal is not maximal intervention. The goal is proportionate, informed intervention.
AN APPLIED LEADERSHIP FRAMEWORK
A practical framework for moving from behavioral concern toward informed organizational action can be expressed as:
Recognition → Assessment → Decision → Action → Reassessment
RECOGNITION
Identify the behavior, incident, communication, or pattern that has generated concern. Recognition requires attention to observable information rather than assumptions about personality, diagnosis, motive, or future behavior.
ASSESSMENT
Examine the available information in context. What happened? What circumstances surround the behavior? What information supports the concern? What information may contradict or qualify it? What information is missing?
DECISION
Determine what leadership needs to decide at the present time. Not every concern requires the same response. The decision may be to gather additional information, engage appropriate organizational resources, address a workplace condition, conduct a formal assessment, implement safeguards, or take emergency action.
ACTION
Implement the response appropriate to the circumstances. Action should be proportionate to the available information and organizational responsibilities.
REASSESSMENT
Risk is not static. Circumstances change. New information may emerge. Behavior may escalate, stabilize, or resolve. Consequently, an assessment made at one point in time should not necessarily be treated as permanent. This final step transforms assessment from a one-time event into an ongoing management process.
The framework is most useful when it guides process rather than labels people. Organizations should apply it through established reporting, assessment, legal, privacy, and emergency-response procedures, with appropriately qualified professionals involved when circumstances warrant. Immediate threats or emergencies require protective action and should not be delayed by deliberative use of the framework.
AN ILLUSTRATIVE COMPOSITE CASE
The following fictional composite was created for educational purposes and does not describe a specific client, employer, employee, or incident. It combines recurring workplace-risk circumstances to illustrate the decision-making process presented in this article.
A mid-sized organization receives a report concerning an employee who has recently become increasingly confrontational with supervisors. Initially, the matter appears to be an employee-relations problem. Over several weeks, three separate incidents are reported.
In the first, the employee becomes visibly angry during a performance discussion and states that management will "regret what they've done."
In the second, a coworker reports that the employee has begun repeatedly discussing perceived injustices involving management and has become increasingly preoccupied with a workplace dispute.
In the third, the employee sends a lengthy communication to several members of leadership challenging prior employment decisions and stating that the organization has "pushed this too far."
No individual incident establishes that violence is imminent: leadership has no confirmed information about a weapon, no explicit statement of intent to attack anyone, and no evidence that an assault is about to occur. The concern arises instead from the accumulation and apparent escalation of the incidents. Leadership must therefore decide whether the matter remains solely an employee-relations issue or whether the pattern now warrants structured assessment.
The Leadership Decision Point provides a useful way to frame the problem.
What do we know? Leadership knows that there has been a pattern of escalating conflict, increasingly hostile communications, repeated references to perceived injustice, and a change in the employee's interaction with supervisors and coworkers.
What do we not know? Leadership does not yet know whether the behavior represents transient anger, an unresolved employment dispute, a broader deterioration in functioning, or a developing pathway toward violence. Nor does leadership know whether other relevant incidents have occurred that have not reached management.
What decisions need to be made now? Leadership must determine whether additional information should be gathered, whether a multidisciplinary assessment is warranted, whether workplace conditions require intervention, whether safety measures are appropriate, and whether support resources should be offered.
The organization decides to document the known incidents, review relevant information within applicable legal and privacy boundaries, consult appropriate Human Resources and security personnel, and obtain a formal threat assessment.
The assessment does not conclude that violence is inevitable. Instead, it identifies several factors requiring continued management: escalating grievance behavior, increasing fixation on perceived injustice, deterioration in workplace relationships, and increasingly concerning communications.
The organization develops a proportionate management plan. That plan includes clearly communicating behavioral expectations, establishing a designated management contact, coordinating appropriate organizational resources, reviewing workplace access and safety considerations, and establishing criteria for reassessment should behavior change.
Several weeks later, the employee's communications become less hostile and the workplace conflict begins to stabilize. The case is not declared "solved." It is reassessed.
This fictional example illustrates how the framework can organize information and decisions under uncertainty. It does not demonstrate that the framework predicts outcomes or causes stabilization. Its value is analytic: it shows how early recognition may create an opportunity for structured decision-making before an organization must respond to an emergency.
PROPORTIONATE INTERVENTION
One potential danger in discussions of workplace violence prevention is the tendency to view intervention as synonymous with removal, discipline, or termination.
Threat-management research does not support such a simplistic approach.
Peek-Asa and colleagues examined workplace violence investigations conducted by a large multinational corporation during 2009 and 2010. Cases in which a Threat Management Team was activated were more likely to result in corrective action and Employee Assistance Program referral, but activation was not associated with an increased likelihood of termination (Peek-Asa et al., 2013).
These findings suggest that multidisciplinary threat-management involvement may support a wider range of organizational responses than termination alone. Because the study examined investigations within one multinational corporation during a limited period, however, it does not establish that similar outcomes will occur across organizations or settings.
Threat assessment is not primarily a mechanism for deciding who should be removed; it is a process for understanding a situation well enough to choose an appropriate response. Depending on the circumstances, that response may combine support, workplace problem-solving, behavioral expectations, administrative action, security measures, clinical resources, or law-enforcement involvement. The organization does not need certainty about the future to make a proportionate decision in the present.
CONNECTING PREVENTION TO TRAUMATIC STRESS
The relevance of this framework to traumatic stress lies in the consequences of workplace violence, which can extend beyond an immediate physical event.
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health describes workplace violence as ranging from verbal abuse and threats to physical assault and notes that workplace violence can have long-term physical and psychological effects (NIOSH, 2024).
OSHA likewise recognizes that threats, abuse, hostility, harassment, and other forms of verbal violence can produce psychological trauma and stress even when no physical injury occurs.
The research literature provides additional support.
Rudkjoebing and colleagues' systematic review and meta-analysis found associations between work-related violence or threats and depression, anxiety symptoms, burnout, psychological distress, and sleep disturbance, while noting important methodological limitations (Rudkjoebing et al., 2020).
Wang and colleagues' meta-analysis found that nurses exposed to workplace violence had higher odds of reporting PTSD and burnout than those without such exposure (Wang et al., 2022).
Hilton and colleagues' systematic review of psychiatric nurses identified severe or injurious assault and cumulative exposure as promising PTSD risk factors and concluded that violence prevention and mental-health care for exposed nurses were among the most promising targets for PTSD prevention (Hilton et al., 2022).
Taken together, these findings support concern about the psychological consequences associated with workplace violence, although they do not establish that every exposure produces traumatic stress or that earlier behavioral-risk recognition prevents PTSD. They nevertheless provide a rationale for examining reduction of avoidable exposure as one component of a broader organizational strategy to protect employee well-being.
PREVENTION WITHOUT OVERPROMISING
It is important not to overstate the evidence supporting workplace-violence prevention.
A systematic review and meta-analysis by Abeyta and Welsh identified only 10 studies meeting its inclusion criteria. The authors found that employee- and organizational-level interventions showed positive but statistically nonsignificant pooled effects and emphasized substantial variation among intervention approaches and the need for additional research (Abeyta & Welsh, 2022).
This limitation is important. The evidence does not support the proposition that any single prevention framework will prevent all workplace violence. Instead, the evidence supports a broader approach involving organizational preparedness, risk identification, appropriate intervention, worker support, and continuing evaluation.
OSHA's workplace-violence guidance similarly treats prevention as a comprehensive organizational responsibility rather than a single training event or security measure.
A prevention-focused approach should therefore be understood as an opportunity to improve organizational readiness—not as a guarantee of prevention.
THE PREVENTION–CRISIS–RECOVERY CONTINUUM
A comprehensive approach to workplace crisis management can be conceptualized as a continuum with three phases.
Before the crisis: Behavioral concern → Recognition → Information gathering → Assessment → Leadership Decision Point → Proportionate intervention → Reassessment.
During the crisis: Protection → Emergency response → Stabilization → Communication.
After the crisis: Psychological support → Recovery → Organizational learning → Reassessment.
The continuum assigns distinct responsibilities to each phase of a workplace crisis. Before a crisis, organizations recognize concerns, gather information, assess context, make proportionate decisions, and reassess. During a crisis, priorities shift to protection, emergency response, stabilization, and communication. Afterward, psychological support, recovery, organizational learning, and continued reassessment become central. The phases are connected: information and lessons from one phase should improve readiness for the next.
IMPLICATIONS FOR ORGANIZATIONAL LEADERS
A prevention-focused approach requires leaders to reconsider what they do with early information.
Organizations can operationalize a prevention-focused approach by establishing clear processes for reporting and documenting concerning behavior; defining responsibilities among leadership, Human Resources, security, employee-assistance resources, legal counsel, and other relevant professionals; specifying when additional assessment is warranted; distinguishing observable behavior from interpretation; and reassessing concerns when circumstances change. These processes must operate within applicable legal, ethical, privacy, employment, and confidentiality requirements.
The objective should not be to create an organization in which every unusual behavior becomes a security case. The objective should be to create an organization in which meaningful concerns are neither automatically escalated nor prematurely dismissed. That requires judgment. It requires context. And it requires leadership.
A PRACTICAL QUESTION FOR LEADERS
Rather than asking, "Is this person dangerous?" leaders should ask, "What do we know, what remains uncertain, and what decision must be made now?" The first question invites an unsupported label; the second directs attention to evidence, information gaps, immediate responsibilities, and the need for reassessment. It creates a path from awareness to proportionate action without assuming that the outcome is predetermined.
LIMITATIONS
A prevention-focused approach must acknowledge its limitations.
Behavioral assessment cannot reliably predict every act of workplace violence. Not every concerning behavior represents an increased risk of violence. Some individuals who engage in concerning behavior will never become violent. Some violent incidents may occur with little observable warning.
Organizational decision-making is also influenced by the quality and availability of information, the competence of those conducting assessments, organizational culture, available resources, legal requirements, and the specific circumstances of each case.
The evidence concerning workplace-violence prevention interventions remains heterogeneous. Abeyta and Welsh found only 10 studies meeting their inclusion criteria in their systematic review and meta-analysis, with pooled effects that did not reach statistical significance (Abeyta & Welsh, 2022).
Accordingly, the framework presented here should be understood as a conceptually derived leadership heuristic rather than a validated predictive or decision instrument. Its elements are informed by crisis-readiness, threat-assessment, workplace-violence, and traumatic-stress literature, but the framework itself has not been empirically tested. It should not substitute for established threat-assessment, clinical, legal, emergency-response, or organizational procedures.
It is a leadership framework for thinking about the period before a crisis.
The framework yields several propositions that can be examined empirically. Organizations using structured cross-functional information review may identify relevant patterns earlier than organizations relying on isolated reporting channels. Use of the three-question heuristic may also improve documentation of known facts, uncertainties, and immediate decisions. Future research should assess whether these processes improve decision quality, timeliness, proportionality, employee trust, and safety outcomes, as well as whether they produce unintended effects such as over-reporting, stigmatization, or unnecessary escalation.
CONCLUSION
Workplace crises are often defined by the moment when uncertainty gives way to an unmistakable event. But organizational responsibility does not necessarily begin at that moment. There may be an earlier period in which behavior changes, concerns emerge, information accumulates, and decisions become necessary. That period deserves greater attention.
The objective of early behavioral-risk recognition is not to predict the future. It is to improve the quality of decisions in the present.
For organizations concerned with workplace violence, crisis management, and traumatic stress, this means expanding the concept of prevention beyond policies, physical safeguards, and post-incident response.
Prevention can also involve recognizing meaningful concerns early, gathering relevant information, challenging assumptions, assessing circumstances, making proportionate decisions, and remaining willing to reassess as information changes.
The proposed Clarity Before Crisis framework extends trauma-informed crisis management to the pre-crisis window, during which organizations may recognize meaningful concerns, reduce uncertainty, make proportionate decisions, and reassess as circumstances change. Its central premise is that organizations can improve present decision-making without claiming certainty about future behavior.
In this formulation, recognition informs decision-making, decisions guide proportionate action, and proportionate action may strengthen organizational prevention and preparedness.
REFERENCES
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AUTHOR NOTE
Joseph Paul Manley, M.A., is a Diplomate of the National Center for Crisis Management and holds certifications in Acute Traumatic Stress Management and Emergency Crisis Response. He is a Board-Certified Workplace Violence & Threat Specialist and founder of Risk Mitigation Technologies LLC, Marblehead, MA, where he advises organizational leaders on behavioral risk recognition, threat assessment, workplace violence prevention, stress management, and crisis decision-making. A retired municipal police lieutenant with more than 35 years of public-safety and crisis‑leadership experience, Manley also serves as adjunct faculty teaching criminal justice, behavioral sciences, and security studies.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Joseph Paul Manley, Risk Mitigation Technologies LLC. No conflicts of interest to declare.
Email: paul@riskmitigationtechnologiesllc.com.
