The manager and incident commander should be on their own call, with at most a liaison that checks in with the people actually doing the work every 30 minutes. They should be secure enough in their own people that they can effectively communicate "we are aware of the problem and are working to fix it" to affected parties.

The people doing the work should be left the fuck alone.

A manager should not be involved in troubleshooting, in coordinating multiple nontechnical third parties on the same task, because 100% of the time spent doing anything other than fixing the underlying problem is wasted time. The people doing the work should be comfortable coordinating amongst eachother as needed - having a two or three way conversation or video call, or conference call. The affected parties don't need 30 second blow by blow accounts of the things the troubleshooters are doing. They don't need to constantly stop and interrogate the troubleshooters and recap each step of troubleshooting.

Bring the troubleshooters in after the repair to explain the steps taken, the problems found, what could have gone better, what went well, and any recommendations for prevention, mitigation, or resources needed.

The notion that you're supposed to do highly complex real-time technical repairs while juggling personalities and ass-kissing is counterproductive at best, completely moronic at worst.

"I understand your concerns. I just wanted to let you know I have faith in my team and I know for a fact they're doing the best they can to get you back up and running as fast as humanly possible. We'll hear back from them soon, but I don't want to do anything at all to get in their way, or to take time away from this repair." This is what a good manager might say, being adept in handling customer concerns and having confidence and trust in their team.

Coddling and handholding superfluous non-technical stakeholders by hosting incident calls like this is goddamn stupid.

The notion that you need to get everyone together in a giant group - that you need to pressure the people doing the work by introducing personalities and social issues into the process - is an a move by a manager deliberately intended to show that the manager is doing something. They coordinate these so they can claim credit for the work of the troubleshooters, and place blame on the troubleshooters if anything goes wrong by mischaracterizing the inevitable miscommunications during these boneheaded calls.

If it costs you $10,000 a minute for every minute you're down, then let's do the things that make sense. Giant ass conference calls with a whole bunch of people who aren't involved in fixing the technical problem is stupid. Blitheringly, moronically, stupid. The kind of stupid that picks up a brick and wonders what it would feel like to smash one's own stupid face with the stupid brick.

If you, as a manager, can't cope with this, you shouldn't be managing people. Quit, immediately. Your team will be far better off without your presence if you think this type of incident response is good for anything except politics and shitty games.

If you're a customer and you're treated to one of these giant group calls, know that it's a sign of incompetence, insecurity, toxic office politics, bad corporate culture, top heavy management, and probably high turnover rates.

Fire companies that treat their employees like this, or rewards management for playing stupid games. Find companies with competence and assurance in their products or services, and don't feel the need to trot out their troubleshooters in the middle of a crisis to do talk therapy, customer service, tiktok dances, or anything else other than effectively troubleshooting whatever the technical problem is.

If you're a troubleshooter and you find yourself on these calls frequently, my heart goes out to you. Better jobs exist, you deserve one, and I hope you make it there without too much suffering.