Former NASA Astronaut Cady Coleman Shares Insights on High-Stakes Collaboration in Space

ALISON BEARD: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I’m Alison Beard.

We all feel pressure at work. We’re all trying to execute in challenging conditions. We all need to get along with our co-workers and figure out the best way to work together as a team. But imagine doing all of that in a space station orbiting 254 miles above Earth.

Astronaut Preparations and Mission Collaborations

During her 24 years as a NASA astronaut, Cady Coleman learned a whole lot about how to perform and collaborate in high-stakes situations. She logged two space shuttle missions to conduct scientific experiments and launched the Chandra X-ray Observatory Telescope. And her last mission involved working within a multicultural crew of six aboard the International Space Station for more than five months.

Lessons for Earth-Based Work Environments

She’s here today to talk to us about how you prepare for that kind of job and do it well once you’re up there. And tell us how we can translate those lessons into more regular work back here on earth. Her new book is called Sharing Space, an Astronaut’s Guide to Mission, Wonder and Making Change. Cady, so great to have you here.

CADY COLEMAN: I’m so happy to be here.

Developing an Operational Mindset for Success

ALISON BEARD: Okay, so let’s first talk about your decision to become an astronaut. You studied chemistry at MIT and then polymer science and engineering at UMass. Why did you want to get out of a normal lab and go to space? Were you drawn to those higher stakes that I was just talking about?

CADY COLEMAN: I don’t know if it’s necessarily higher stakes, but this curiosity in a direction of just what else is out there and could I be one of the people that helped us discover it? And also, I had a mom that taught me I could be literally anything that I wanted to be. And I don’t know how you do that, I work at it. But it really made me think when I met Sally Ride at MIT and it had never occurred to me, I was a junior so I was probably 20.

Training, Preparation, and Effective Execution

ALISON BEARD: But to be an astronaut, it also takes being calm and collected in high-pressure situations. So have you always been able to do that or is it something that you had to learn?

CADY COLEMAN: I would say a little of both, in that I’ve always been somebody who’s good at seeing the big picture, and that takes taking a step back and a deep breath to do often.

Building Strong Collaborative Teams in Space

ALISON BEARD: Also, because there must be competition among the astronauts to prove that they should be the one on the next ship. So you don’t want to be the one making mistakes, how do you handle that?

CADY COLEMAN: Everybody’s got their own way, my way is probably to be a little bit oblivious to the competition and really just being myself.

Shared Mission Mindset for Motivation and Readiness

ALISON BEARD: With so much of the work of NASA being done on the ground, how do you stay motivated and ready while waiting for a mission?

CADY COLEMAN: It’s really the word that you used, Alison, and it’s the word mission, where there’s individual shuttle missions, there’s going to the space station, those missions, and there’s future missions. But they’re all part of one really big and very clear mission, which is about space exploration.

Adapting to Diverse Crews and Collaborative Challenges

ALISON BEARD: So then ultimately the mission teams are put together by NASA. What’s the first step that you take to start figuring out how you’re going to collaborate?

CADY COLEMAN: The first step is getting to know each other.

Navigating Challenges and Innovations in Space Travel

ALISON BEARD: I’d love to hear your view on the future of space travel, particularly with the involvement of private companies like SpaceX, Blue Origin, and others.

CADY COLEMAN: I love having all these companies involved. I know people worry at sort of an initial front that if something’s commercial, if money’s at stake, then human life will be valued less.

Preserving Hope and Unity in the Face of Space Disasters

ALISON BEARD: You were at NASA when the Columbia space shuttle blew up on reentry, which killed seven of your colleagues. How did that change how you thought about the stakes of your work or about how the organization operated to avoid disasters like that?

CADY COLEMAN: I would say that even before that, all of us understand and our families do too, that flying in space is never going to be safe. It’s going to be as safe as we can make it.