What can NASA & the Hubble telescope teach us about leading?

The Covid 19 pandemic, which blighted the world for the several years, brought about many changes in people’s mindsets, such as how and where people work, and what is important to them. This poses challenges for leaders, whether they head up large organisations, operating units or leaders of small teams.

McKinsey’s research in this area suggested that in advanced economies that 20-25% of workers could work from home between three and five days a week without a loss of productivity[i]. This presented, and still does present, challenges and opportunities for leaders.

What do we know about effective leadership that might help? Pendleton and Farnham in their 2021 book on leadership defined leadership as having three domains, those of Strategic (setting direction), Operational (delivering results) and Interpersonal (building and maintaining relationships and team-working). All three need to be addressed and work in harmony if lasting results are to be obtained.

Most smaller teams can describe the direction they are heading in and what results they are trying to achieve; what seems to be the trickier area is managing the personalities needed to deliver these results, especially with remote working. Charlie Pellerin, the ex- Director of Astro Physics Director of NASA, studied the reasons for why many organisations, including NASA, failed to deliver on projects (‘How NASA Builds Teams’). The key reason for failure was that of social context (culture); how people work with each other, how open, honest and trusting they were of each other. Focusing on the people in a team, encouraging and enabling them to deliver agreed results is probably the key role for a leader if results are to be gained and the strategic direction achieved.

In fact, ‘enabling’ is really a radical extension to the traditional spectrum of management behaviours which we may all have experienced at some point in our education or careers. The spectrum of behaviours is the one that has ‘Directive’ at one end and ‘Delegation/Enabling’ at the other, as shown in in Tannenbaum and Schmidt’s Leadership Continuum (see below).  Enabling assumes that the ‘right’ to make decisions and to suggest innovations should actually lie with the person doing the job. Enabling is concerned with helping people solve problems and make improvements. An enabling leader or manager may do this by ensuring staff have the training, information and support they need, by asking useful questions, coaching and by removing obstacles that are preventing staff from getting the desired results. This is even more important when people are working remotely and on their own.

 Enabling owners or managers would not, therefore, get in the way of their team members and ‘steal’ their decisions.  In a world that is uncertain and fast moving, it may well be the person closest to the ground (or nearest to the customer/ client) that is, the one with the best perspective and who should be involved in making the decisions.  This changes the role of the manager, when they are in enabling mode, to one who makes sure that staff have all the training, resources, authorities and support they need to get on with their work to the best of their abilities. 

How good are you at ‘enabling’ those you work with? A few questions to help you to review your skills as an enabler.

• How often do you ask those doing at task for their advice on it?

• Do you check with them whether they feel they have the skills, knowledge and resources for their tasks?

• How much do you allow them to make decisions relevant to their tasks? Not stealing their decisions?

• Do you make sure blame is reserved only for mistakes that are knowingly irresponsible? Everything else should be embraced as an opportunity to learn.

• Do you give them challenges and support them?

• Are you clear about goals, values and deadlines, then trust people to deliver results?

• Are you interested in them as people, not just workers?

Alasdair Miller & Tim Kemp – Synergy Global