Top Skills for an Incident Commander

Organizations can significantly enhance their incident response capabilities by training a diverse range of team members, beyond just senior technical leads, to serve as Incident Commanders, emphasizing the importance of soft skills over technical expertise. At PagerDuty, hands-on training and a well-defined process have enabled even junior team members to effectively lead incident responses, with key skills including directive communication, time management, and active listening. The training program involves office hours, shadowing, and role-playing exercises that gradually build confidence and familiarity with the process, ultimately reducing on-call load and burnout. By fostering a supportive community and offering resources like open-source documentation and webinars, organizations can ensure a robust and responsive incident command structure that benefits both customers and team morale.