It’s difficult to envision a more tough work environment than the International Space Station. During her 24 years as a NASA astronaut, including a six-month stint on the ISS, Cady Coleman discovered critical lessons about whatever from managing tension and evaluating threat to cross-cultural interaction and browsing predisposition. She shares how the abilities she chose up can be used in all kinds of careers. Coleman is the author of the book Sharing Space: An Astronaut’s Guide to Mission Wonder and Making Change.
ALISON BEARD: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I’m Alison Beard.
We all feel pressure at work. We’re all attempting to perform in tough conditions. We all requirement to get along with our colleagues and figure out the finest method to work together as a group. But picture doing all of that in a area station orbiting 254 miles above Earth.
During her 24 years as a NASA astronaut, Cady Coleman discovered a entire lot about how to carryout and teamup in high-stakes circumstances. She logged 2 area shuttlebus objectives to conduct clinical experiments and introduced the Chandra X-ray Observatory Telescope. And her last objective included working within a multicultural team of 6 aboard the International Space Station for more than 5 months.
She’s here today to talk to us about how you prepare for that kind of task and do it well when you’re up there. And inform us how we can equate those lessons into more routine work back here on earth. Her brand-new book is called Sharing Space, an Astronaut’s Guide to Mission, Wonder and Making Change. Cady, so fantastic to have you here.
CADY COLEMAN: I’m so pleased to be here.
ALISON BEARD: Okay, so let’s veryfirst talk about your choice to endedupbeing an astronaut. You studied chemistry at MIT and then polymer science and engineering at UMass. Why did you desire to get out of a regular laboratory and go to area? Were you drawn to those greater stakes that I was simply talking about?
CADY COLEMAN: I wear’t understand if it’s always greater stakes, however this interest in a instructions of simply what else is out there and might I be one of the individuals that assisted us find it? And likewise, I had a mama that taught me I might be actually anything that I desired to be. And I wear’t understand how you do that, I work at it. But it actually made me believe when I fulfilled Sally Ride at MIT and it had neverever happened to me, I was a junior so I was mostlikely 20.
When I saw her and heard her, I liked the reality that I might determine with her. And at the verysame time, I enjoyed being in the laboratory however I desired something a little bit more. And I understood it had to do with individuals and sharing and likewise being part of a larger objective. Even however chemistry is a plenty huge objective, I guarantee you,
ALISON BEARD: But to be an astronaut, it likewise takes being calm and gathered in high pressure circumstances. So have you constantly been able to do that or is it something that you had to findout?
CADY COLEMAN: I would state a little of both, in that I’ve constantly been someone who’s great at seeing the huge image, and that takes taking a action back and a deep breath to do frequently. And in the world of chemistry and working in a laboratory where you actually have to be constantly prepared to run, you understand in terms of chemicals and flammability and all those kinds of things, I did get some practice at understanding you constantly have to be believing, what’s next? When I do this what might takeplace, rather of what I anticipate to occur. So I did have a little of that, however I absolutely had more to discover when I got to NASA. And I would state that desiring to endedupbeing an astronaut had practically more to do with my optimism about the reality that discovery is something that we can all do.
ALISON BEARD: So you talk a lot about all the simulations that you do at NASA to prepare for objectives, however I believe as any professionalathlete understands that there’s no quantity of practice that can reproduce the tension of an real videogame. How did you guarantee that the training and preparation that you’re doing is reliable adequate to truly get you allset?
CADY COLEMAN: Partly by establishing a stateofmind where you’re constantly believing what isn’t simulated here? What do I still requirement to keep in mind may occur on the huge day? And that’s whatever from I may be worried, things may go incorrect, things may go inadifferentway, and making sure I’m allset to respond.
And some of those things we can recreate, like for example, in doing an emergencysituation simulation and we count those as if there’s a fire on the area station, if we recognize there’s a leakage, if something takesplace and allofasudden the environment that we’re breathing is suspect. And so we practice those drills and to the point where we really put hoods on our heads that are going to aid us breathe in a harmful environment. We’re going to discover out that they get all misted up and that we desire that we had our glasses on inside or possibly we requirement to put lenses inside those things.
So we handled to discover a lot of extremely useful lessons. But we likewise, I believe the reality that we’re viewed and we’re graded, I believe that that includes the pressure that we requirement to figure out at least some of the errors we may make on the genuine day. And we likewise have an environment of talking about them. You understand how something may go terribly in a conference or at work, and everyone kind of looks at their shoes and someone states, “Well, so alright, we will come back to that. But onto subject 2.”
And it’s difficult to talk about however we have a culture at NASA that is every single error you make, even if individuals wear’t understand, you requirement to share it. For example, the T-38 is our training plane, for a chemist in the Air Force it was an remarkable thing to do to fly faster than the speed of noise when required. And at the exactsame time, it truly is something where things can go incorrect and you have to figure out how you’re going to respond to them.
But if I have a completely typical flight and I go to unbuckle my parachute harness from the seat, and I discover that one of the buckles wasn’t locked, I was flying in an aircraft where you actually may have to eject at any minute and my parachute was just partly hooked to the seat. And that is a error that I made. I do 2 things, I believe back to what triggered me to make that error.
I likewise report it. And possibilities are, I likewise stand up at our Monday earlymorning conference and state, “I flew in our plane and I forgot to connect one of my clips.” And it’s humiliating. And at the exactsame time, I assurance you I’m not the just one that has ever done that or recognizes that they may be susceptible to it. So it’s that environment of confessing your errors so that we can all findout. And it’s hard.
ALISON BEARD: Also, duetothefactthat there should be competitors amongst the astronauts to show that they must be the one on the next ship. So you puton’t desire to be the one making errors, how do you dealwith that?
CADY COLEMAN: Everybody’s got their own method, my method is mostlikely to be a little bit unconcerned to the competitors and actually simply being myself. And we have anumberof various sort of classifications of astronauts, and so we are by meaning kind of various. I came as a researcher from the military, really I believe one of the veryfirst researchers from the military. And so that’s various than a pilot from the military or someone who was a navigator or some other kind of flight team.
So we’re all in various classifications. I believe that makes it simple not to be comparing ourselves and understanding that we each bring various abilities. And in a method, it was really, I believe, fortunate for me since when I am anxious about being observed, it’s moredifficult for me to do my finest insomecases. And I’ll likewise simply include that when we’re picked, they have every objective of having you fly in area. And the huge competitors is truly over since you are there. They have invested cash on you before you even walk in the door.
They mean to usage your abilities. So there is that spirit of neighborhood. Everyone from the partners to the other astronauts are useful, share lessons, share methods of coping with simply the enormity of the quantity that we have to findout in the time that we invest training.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah. And with so much of the work of NASA being done on the ground, I believe in your book you stated it was something like you had invested more than 8,000 days at NASA and 180 days in area. So while you’re waiting to be tapped for a objective, how do you stay inspired and allset?
CADY COLEMAN: It’s truly the word that you utilized, Alison, and it’s the word objective, where there’s private shuttlebus objectives, there’s going to the area station, those objectives, and there’s future objectives. But they’re all part of one actually huge and extremely clear objective, which is about area expedition. And so we all have various tasks in inbetween flights, and it’s really clear, I believe to all of us that what you do in that task whether… I’ve had tasks where it was my task to evaluation treatments that were brand-new and make sure that they truly did what they’re expected to do. And some of that it’s attention to information and it’s not precisely interesting. And yet it’s necessary since the team that’s actually going to area doesn’t have time, they can’t be repeating all those treatments. They requirement to see something that’s a standard, that’s excellent. And so there’s all sorts of tasks that we have in inbetween that all actually count. And I believe it’s that objective that is so much bigger than us that makes the distinction and keeps us working tough and being allset, since we understand that it all plays in together.
ALISON BEARD: A term you usage in the book is functional frameofmind. So describe what that suggests and how those of us who aren’t astronauts may use it to our work.
CADY COLEMAN: Operational stateofmind is the method to bring out a objective. And it’s not the vision of the objective, it’s the what are we doing today and how are we going to bring it out? And it’s whatever that you see in the films when there’s SWAT groups or SEALs or all these spy objectives. And I believe they gloss over the attention to information that it takes to truly make sure that they have a strategy that they’ve truly idea out. An example that I’ll usage is that I was utilized to as a chemist and I was someone who was brand-new at flying when I veryfirst foundout to fly aircrafts, and I would go out there to the airfield, this is little airplanes, this is before NASA.
And if I understood that I had 4 more things before I might go out and fly, I simply got those things done. If the day was longer, I simply made the day longer. But I discovered that if my last thing in the day was to go out and fly an aircraft by myself, there’s times that I took that list, strolled around the airplane, made sure whatever was allset, got inside, and this is the aircraft that I leased. And understood my head’s been so lotsof various locations today, I’m not physically present sufficient to truly be able to fly this plane with the security of myself and individuals on the ground. And you take that book of the plane, you bring it back within and state, I’m taking myself off the manifest.
So it’s a various method of thinking. And the other example I’ll provide and it’s particular to me maybe, is that I’m someone that sees a lot of possibilities. And if it were me, we would modification the strategy upuntil the extremely last minute. Like, oh, what if we might do that part in that part too? Or if we began simply 3 minutes earlier, we might do this. And when you modification the strategy at the last minute, you make it susceptible. And there’s a particular quantity of that that is great to do when you sud