As I am writing this, we are hours away from the scheduled launch of Artemis II.

I thought this would be a great time to reflect on some of the changes that have been happening at NASA over the last few months and what that can tell us about leading and managing people.

For those not following, here is a quick rundown of what is happening:

• Artemis II  is the first time we have launched people around the Moon in over 50 years.
• This mission will send people the furthest they have ever been from Earth.
• This mission includes the first woman, first minority, and the first non-American to ever travel around the Moon.

Most importantly, this mission is supposed to be the first major step towards building a permanent base on the Moon and starting to unlock a future that has humans spreading across the solar system.

If that happens, and that is a big if, it is going to be because of exactly one thing.

Leadership

Earlier this year, Jared Isaacman, founder of the payments company Shift 4 and private astronaut, became the Administrator of NASA. I can’t begin to tell you the breath of fresh air that he has brought into NASA and the space world as a whole. He has announced massive changes to numerous NASA programs, almost all of which have been years behind schedule and billions over budget.

At a recent NASA event announcing many of these changes, reporter Eric Berger asked Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya how the workforce was taking these changes, and his answer was striking.

“The workforce is hungry for leadership, and they’ve got it… A lot of folks have been like, wow, we can say what we think and do the things we know we are supposed to do.”

On this week’s episode of the Leadership Launchpad, I had Dr. Thomas Zurbuchen, former NASA Science Mission Directorate Associate Administrator, on as a guest. He stated in no uncertain terms that when large technical projects fail, it is almost always because of people problems, not technical problems.

The earlier quote from Amit shows one of the biggest people problems that can easily show up.

Large technical projects rely on the right information getting to the right people at the right time. If you have a workforce that doesn’t feel like they can say what they think, or do what they need to do, that is never going to happen.

This is why the first pillar of leadership I always teach is trust.

If the people on your team do not trust you, there is no way you can be successful as a leader.

Period. Full Stop.

How do you build trust? What does trust look like? The answer to those questions vary from person to person and team to team, but I have never seen the trust on a team get worse if you take time getting to know one another.

I’ve seen first hand how taking 10 minutes at the beginning of a team meeting to talk about non-work stuff can transform the functioning of a team.

Simple questions like, what did everyone do this weekend, or what is the best movie you saw this year, will get people talking about themselves instead of the work. And that is the foundation of true connection on a team.

Now, I doubt that is what Jared is doing at NASA. Building trust as the executive of a large organization is different then building trust as the manager of a team.

But it is still all about trust.

Without it, a team won’t go anywhere. With it, maybe a team can go all the way to the Moon.

If you think your team is struggling with trust, or you have leaders that aren’t sure of the value of personnel connections, I would love to talk with you. All you have to do is reply to this email and we can find a time to chat about your situation and see if we can help you out.

Otherwise, make sure the launch of Artemis II. It is currently scheduled for 3:24 pacific time on April 1st.

Matt