ATMIA US Conference

How can ATM leaders lead through crisis?

Retired naval officer Mary C. Kelly shares insights into managing and growing through crises for ATM leaders.

Photo: Adobe Stock

February 11, 2026 by Bradley Cooper — Editor, ATM Marketplace & Food Truck Operator

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How can ATM leaders handle crises? The industry always has crises, whether it's major security flaws, concern over declining cash usage or even stress over crypto ATM regulations.

In the keynote session at ATMIA, being held in Arlington, Texas from Feb. 10 to 12, Mary C. Kelly, author and retired naval officer, shared seven steps to leading through a crisis.

Why leadership is more difficult

First off, you need to understand why leadership is more difficult now than ever. Kelly identified several challenges, noting "there are more variables in the workplace. There is more technology to master."

Additional challenges include:

The pace of change is accelerating.
Leaders have to think globally and act locally.
Products and services are more complex due to "unreasonable expectations" caused by Amazon's customer service.
Employees are disengaged and discouraged. Around 75% of employees drift through the day.

Uncertainty

The challenges extend to people, technology and managing uncertainty.

"What worries your clients? Are your people confident in your leadership? What are your employees thinking about?" Kelly said.

AI is one of the biggest challenges and potentially crisis for leadership, she said, adding that around 77% of employees are worried about AI taking their job, and many businesses are using it improperly.

Kelly gave the example of a medical professional using AI to generate a letter to send to someone after a colonoscopy. However, by doing so, they loaded all of that patient's personal information into the AI, which can lead to major data security issues.

With any challenge or crisis, Kelly said it's very important to lead employees and clients through seven stages.

Seven stages of a crisis

The first one stage of a crisis is rejection. Essentially, a crisis occurs and the person rejects that it is happening, going through denial.

Second is recognition, where we acknowledge the bad event has occurred and we think of ways to handle it. For example during COVID, many dealt with the uncertainty by recognizing they will save money on commuting.

Third, she said, is realization where the individual realizes they will need to step up their game to handle this crisis, especially in the leadership space.

Fourth is a move into resolution, where they resolve themselves to come together as a group to handle the crisis.

However, many people get stuck in this loop of the first four stages. Kelly said real leadership comes into play by moving employees and clients into stages five through seven.

Stage five is to relax. "Calm is contagious," Kelly said. "If you run around like everything is a crisis, people will stop taking you seriously. If you are the face of calm, that is good leadership."

Leaders can then lead into the sixth stage, reality, by accurately assessing the situation and what we can do.

"You say this is the new reality and this is what we know. You make a realistic assessment of the situation, resources, people and capabilities. What do we know for sure? And then let's look at the entire situation, all the resources, all the people and figure out what needs to happen next."

The seventh stage is realignment, where you, as a leader, ask a lot of questions.

"What can we do to support our people and customers? How do we work cooperatively with our competition? Where can we improve processes? What do we need to do differently moving forward? How does this change my leadership?" said Kelly.

The realignment needs to be practicable and directly address concerns of employees. For example, Kelly said in her early days in the Navy she was in charge of about 26,000 staffers. When she first began, she would simply ask people how they were doing. The answers she received were "great and fine."

However, it was obvious the answers weren't reflecting reality. So she changed it to asking people how they were doing on a scale of one to 10. When people responded with a three or four, she knew they were in a crisis, and she could directly follow up with them to see how she could help.

In conclusion, Kelly gave an overview of what great workplaces do to handle crises, and create healthy environments that grow from these struggles.

"Great workplaces provide meaningful work, build and keep trust, encourage employee development, understand and avoid burnout, get rid of organization obstacles, embrace new ideas and change, reward collaboration, they stay flexible, and they reward results," Kelly said.

Innovation

About Bradley Cooper

Bradley Cooper is the editor of ATM Marketplace and Food Truck Operator. He was previously the editor of Digital Signage Today. His background is in information technology, advertising, and writing.

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