Becoming a Space Crew

In space there are no “good specialists.” There is either a crew capable of solving any problem, or a group of professionals who may fail even at a simple emergency.

What is the difference? In space it becomes obvious. Every word and every action must be completely sincere, anything left unsaid can cost the entire crew their lives, and you cannot simply retreat into separate corners after a conflict. Here the quality of the connections between people becomes a matter of survival.

When crews go through critical situations where nothing goes to plan, some teams cope and others do not. The difference lies neither in technical training nor in the experience of each person taken separately. The difference is in the invisible thing that binds people together: trust, sincerity, the ability to hear one another, the readiness to come to the rescue.

These connections do not appear by themselves. They are built—from the first days of training to the return to Earth. How people learn to work together in routine situations decides whether they will be able to act as a single organism when everything goes wrong. Immersing ourselves in the world of crewed spaceflight, we will examine step by step how a real crew is formed.

The lecture is built as storytelling: from a problem, through a story from my own practice or that of my colleagues, to analysis and a conclusion. A presentation with photos and video, dialogue with the audience, and at the end I answer the audience’s questions. Twice during the lecture the audience answers questions about their own teams—anonymously, from their phones via a QR code—and the results are discussed together with the audience: in the first part, about the team’s cultural code and the meaning of its work; at the end, about how the team actually lives. Participants put the meaning of their work into their own words, and at the end of the lecture they vote on a list the audience itself has drawn up. The answers on the screen remain anonymous; the poll questions are agreed with the client in advance.

The lecture “Becoming a Space Crew” will be of interest to:

1. managers who create and develop teams;
2. HR directors and heads of training centers;
3. entrepreneurs building teamwork;
4. leaders of project teams.

1. A team begins with a shared meaning in the work; the more complex the tasks, the more important it is that the participants’ meanings and values coincide.
2. Trust is the foundation of a team. Its components—professionalism, respect, honesty, openness, a readiness to help—are the team’s cultural code.
3. A team’s effectiveness is determined by the quality of communication between its members.
4. Psychological safety—when it is not frightening to admit a mistake, voice a doubt, or propose something new—makes a team both reliable and capable of creativity.
5. A conflict in which the line of respect is not crossed becomes a point of growth for the team.
6. The rules of interaction must not only be demonstrated but also declared explicitly.
7. A team largely reflects its leader: what the leader personally cultivates becomes the norm for everyone.
8. A positive mindset, a sense of humor, and time spent together are an integral part of an effective team.

INTRODUCTION

Why work in space and on Earth follows the same laws. A joint discussion of why a team is needed where the notion of a group used to be enough. Examples of maximum effectiveness and reliability.

THE FOUNDATION OF A TEAM:

1. the role of a shared meaning in the work and of how important it is to every member of the team (example—academician Vladimir Barmin);
2. an atmosphere of trust as the basis of teamwork: trust reduces anxiety, raises motivation, and determines the quality of communication, while its absence leads to burnout. An analysis of a crew’s actions in emergencies during a flight;
3. the team’s cultural code—the five components of trust: professionalism, respect, honesty, openness, a readiness to help;
4. audience poll: what the cultural code of the participants’ teams is today and what it should be; whether the team has a shared meaning in its work beyond the plan and KPIs, and whether it needs one; each participant states their own meaning in a single phrase;
5. a look at scenes from the film The Martian: how a critical situation tests a team’s strength—and where a leader’s right to decide for the team ends.

TEAMWORK SKILLS:

The fine-tuning of interaction that makes a team more effective once the foundation is in place.

1. If you want to command, learn to obey:

In critical situations the survival of a team depends on the quality of communication. Even experienced professionals get it wrong because of incomplete analysis, tunnel vision under stress, or defending the boundaries of their own responsibility. Whoever sees a problem speaks up, and the commander listens, whoever is speaking, and is ready to change the plan.

Example: desert survival training.

1. A leader starts with the “why”:

Directive decisions with no rationale erode trust, even when the commander has authority. When a team understands the link between a task and the overall goal, it works more independently and notices on its own when an assignment diverges from the goal.

Example: a Mission Control task to pump water—two hoses; to the question “why,” the answer was “Do it as written.”

1. A culture of safe mistakes:

Hidden mistakes are more dangerous than admitted ones, and a demonstrative punishment for an honestly admitted mistake teaches everyone else to keep quiet. What is needed is a culture in which people are not afraid to admit their mistakes and want to tell their colleagues about them so that no one repeats them. The leader sets that culture, and getting to the cause of a mistake matters more than punishing it.

Example: a story from flying practice.

1. The readiness to admit mistakes:

A safe environment is a necessary but not a sufficient condition. A team is strong when its members are able to admit their mistakes honestly instead of making excuses or rewriting history.

Examples: an exam in Houston and an episode from crew training.

1. Candid feedback:

A team needs a norm of complete openness—saying what you think, giving and accepting honest feedback. Telling a teammate about their mistake is a duty; hearing about your own is the norm; and feedback has to be formulated constructively. Anything left unsaid can cost dearly.

Example: a story from preparing for a spaceflight.

1. Arguing kindly:

Conflicts are inevitable, but a team must have a rule: do not make it personal and keep respect even in a heated argument. What destroys a team is not disagreement but humiliation.

Example: a story from a spaceflight.

1. Personal example and declaring values:

In flight training the first method is the “demonstration”: the instructor shows, the student repeats. The same principle works in a team: people copy the behavior of their leader—his actions, reactions, values. A team becomes a mirror of the person who leads it. But personal example alone is not enough: some people need a direct explanation of what is accepted here and what is not, and where the boundaries lie. The rules of interaction must not only be shown but also spelled out explicitly.

Example: the “demonstration” method in flight training.

PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY:

The overall frame around the skills. Four of them—a culture of safe mistakes, the readiness to admit mistakes, candid feedback, and the ability to argue kindly—together create an environment in a team where it is not frightening to voice a doubt or propose something new. Researchers call such an environment psychological safety; it makes a team not only reliable but also capable of creativity.

1. scientific confirmation of these conclusions—briefly on the research of Amy Edmondson (Harvard Business School) and Google’s Project Aristotle, which named psychological safety the main condition of a strong team;
2. Apollo 13 (1970) and Columbia (2003): the same organization brought a crew back to Earth in one case and lost one in the other. A question to the audience: why did they succeed there and fail here? During Apollo 13 it was safe to look for options and propose solutions; during Columbia an engineer who doubted the wing was intact found no support and kept silent at the management meeting;
3. a documentary video fragment about the Columbia disaster and a short analysis of that story following Edmondson.

A POSITIVE MINDSET, A SENSE OF HUMOR, AND TIME SPENT TOGETHER:

A team holds together not only through solving problems but also through shared joy: celebrating victories, resting together, and a sense of humor create the emotional foundation of a team. With a person who has a positive mindset it is easy and comfortable to do even difficult things together; a sense of humor is how that mindset shows.

Examples: the question about a cosmonaut’s main quality at the psychological selection for the cosmonaut corps; crews’ shared dinners and movie nights on the ISS.

CONCLUSION:

1. audience poll: what actually happens most often in the participants’ teams and what they lack; how openly mistakes are discussed and whether it is accepted to object to the manager; a vote on the meanings of work that the audience formulated in the first part—which ones drive the team now and which ones it would adopt;
2. finale—a wish to every participant to build their own dream team.

1. learn approaches proven in space for building a team and raising the quality of communication within it;
2. examine real situations where the principles of communication and trust became critical;
3. see the picture of the audience’s answers: how your teams describe their cultural code and the meaning of their work and how they actually live—and after the lecture receive a summary of the poll results as a document;
4. gain a new perspective on building and developing teams.

60–90 minutes, including the audience poll and Q&A.