Michael Foale, astronaut extraordinaire teaches on leadership and teamwork

Summary: Michael Foale explains the highly successful teamwork and leadership training model used by NASA and ISS. It has clear application in the corporate world.

Very, very occasionally I get to meet someone whose life experiences are so extraordinary, so different and, accordingly so interesting that I am immediately drawn into asking question after question about topics, the answers to which can help change the world I live in. So it was when I had the privilege of scoring a meeting with Michael Foale, six times astronaut. That’s a record, and he’s a Brit which are two reasons to be in awe.

In this instance, my focus wasn’t upon the work he did on a crippled Mir station that turned him into a hero among heroes, but what it takes to be a leader in the modern world.

The leadership conundrum

The reason I ask this is because in technology circles, there’s much talk about the role of leaders and leadership where the demands of different generations sometimes appear to clash. The much vaunted, and dare I say sometimes feared Millennials, come up from time to time but that’s possibly another story.

Foale is uniquely qualified to answer these questions because having been turned down twice, his third time application essay to join the NASA astronaut program focused upon team building. That infers issues around leadership. He joined the program in 1987 and flew on a variety of missions from 1992 to 2004.

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