Prior research underscore the importance of strategic capabilities as well as managing affective reactions for better coordination of organizational responses during crisis. Surprisingly, studies on the role affective reactions play in constructing strategic capabilities for organizational crisis are largely absent. We collected observational data from a firms’ global training program of crisis management. By logistical regressions and temporal analysis, we model how groups are practicing organizational crisis management through affective reactions but differently: they map the direction of organizational responses by sorting information upon either types of expressed affective reaction or the intensity. Our model informs how strategic capabilities for crisis management are rooted in the present use of affective reactions, pointing to a more strategic skill than what has been previously suggested.