Leadership in Difficult Terrain:
Lessons from Space Expeditions

Beyond the comfort zone: Lead­er­ship lesson derived from space travel 

How can lead­ers help their employ­ees perform at their best under unusu­al or diffi­cult condi­tions? Psycho­log­i­cal research for space trav­el offers valu­able answers and food for thought. In prepa­ra­tion for long-term missions in space, it exam­ines team dynam­ics, moti­va­tion, perfor­mance and coop­er­a­tion under extreme stress – with insights that also support managers in every­day busi­ness life on Earth. This Valdivia Lead­er­ship­Im­pulse feature invites you on a metaphor­i­cal jour­ney to Mars – and to ideas on how to improve team cohe­sion and work results even under the most diffi­cult conditions.

Count­down to success for your teams

Research into team psychol­o­gy in space trav­el primar­i­ly exam­ines the dynam­ics of commu­ni­ties. In doing so, it often provides valu­able insights into key topics of modern lead­er­ship in disrup­tive times. In the follow­ing, we will focus on three areas of space trav­el research that are impor­tant for success­ful leadership:

• What does an opti­mal team compo­si­tion look like? What success factors should those respon­si­ble consid­er? And what are the possi­ble caus­es of disruptions?
• How can crit­i­cal situ­a­tions be prevent­ed or defused?
• From the perspec­tive of an astro­naut, what prin­ci­ples best help teams to work success­ful­ly even under extreme exter­nal pressure?

Diver­si­ty in the team increas­es the chances of success

A detailed long-term study¹ compares the chances of success of homo­ge­neous and hetero­ge­neous teams. Two vari­ables are consid­ered: person­al­i­ty and profes­sion­al skills. The result:

• Teams made up of people with simi­lar person­al­i­ties and skills devel­oped the least team spir­it, were prone to stress and health prob­lems, and performed poorly.
• Teams with differ­ent skills but simi­lar person­al­i­ties performed only slight­ly better, devel­op­ing only slight­ly more team spirit.
• Teams with differ­ent person­al­i­ties but simi­lar skills also devel­oped slight­ly more team spir­it, but performed better, were health­i­er and more resis­tant to stress.

Teams made up of indi­vid­u­als with differ­ences in both vari­ables were the clear winners: with strong team spir­it, good perfor­mance, health and stress resis­tance. Although the study does not take into account hier­ar­chi­cal role distri­b­u­tion, for exam­ple by a comman­der, it never­the­less offers point­ers for every­day busi­ness life on how teams can be put togeth­er or led to improved performance.

A metric for teamwork

Anoth­er study² describes a set of person­al char­ac­ter­is­tics (“group living skills”, GLS) that can be used as a useful measure of team­work abil­i­ty, even under stress:

• Clean­li­ness and tidi­ness, both in person­al belong­ings and work materials
• Appro­pri­ate use of humour
• Appre­ci­a­tion of the knowl­edge, skills and perfor­mance of team members
• Consid­er­a­tion for person­al atti­tudes and preferences

These often under­es­ti­mat­ed factors are partic­u­lar­ly suit­able for system­at­i­cal­ly assess­ing team­work skills – for exam­ple, when select­ing members for teams that have to work under high pres­sure. At the same time, the GLS metric points to levers that managers can use to iden­ti­fy and correct unde­sir­able devel­op­ments during ongo­ing operations.

Team build­ing on solid ground

Many other expe­ri­ences from space trav­el also facil­i­tate team build­ing. This also takes some of the pres­sure off managers as the project progress­es³:

• Get-togeth­er before the kick-off
  Profes­sion­al conflict manage­ment, joint plan­ning, team deci­sion-making and shared lead­er­ship work better when a team gets togeth­er, gets to know each other and agrees on the ground rules before the actu­al work begins.
• Shared and joint leadership
  Simi­lar to astro­naut candi­dates, larg­er teams often have sever­al members with lead­er­ship expe­ri­ence. The task may require them to lead the team alter­nate­ly or joint­ly in coor­di­na­tion. It is help­ful to prepare those involved for chang­ing lead­er­ship roles in target­ed training.
• Train­ing in open­ness and understanding
  To realise the bene­fits of diver­si­ty with­in the team, mutu­al toler­ance, an under­stand­ing of differ­ences and mech­a­nisms for deal­ing with conflicts construc­tive­ly are required. Prac­tis­ing these skills through guid­ed train­ing requires an initial invest­ment, but can help to avoid addi­tion­al costs later on due to delays and mistakes.

The flight to Mars as a bench­mark for stress 

Space stud­ies often deal with prepa­ra­tion for extreme long-term missions such as the flight to Mars^3/4. In doing so, they gain valu­able, prac­ti­cal expe­ri­ence that can also be used to improve the chances of success for complex, long-term projects in companies:

• Good infor­ma­tion flow and trans­paren­cy strength­en trust. This is partic­u­lar­ly impor­tant when – as in the case of a flight to Mars – respons­es to ques­tions or messages arrive with a delay or are absent at times.
• Astro­nauts on Mars missions will often have to make deci­sions and take action inde­pen­dent­ly of flight control. Struc­tured debrief­in­gs using an anony­mous ques­tion­naire have proven to be a good means of reas­sur­ing teams and ensur­ing stabil­i­ty. They strength­en the resilience of team process­es, enable honesty and construc­tive conflict reso­lu­tion, and thus improve over­all team performance.
• Real­is­tic work goals stabilise a team’s perfor­mance and morale. Unre­al­is­tic goals can easi­ly create the impres­sion of constant failure.

Lead­er­ship insights from an astronaut

Astro­naut and engi­neer­ing profes­sor Mike Massimi­no⁵ has described his expe­ri­ences with lead­er­ship roles under extreme condi­tions in books, lectures and inter­views. In a lecture⁶, he summarised the essen­tial char­ac­ter­is­tics of success­ful lead­er­ship in four points:

• A clear purpose ensures a clear course.
• Deter­mi­na­tion helps to over­come obstacles.
• Good prepa­ra­tion is also useful when the unex­pect­ed happens.
• Team­work makes every­one stronger together.

Above all, a leader should know the team members very well in order to resolve even crit­i­cal situ­a­tions with posi­tive approach­es. Massimi­no recom­mends a conscious reflec­tive lead­er­ship tool^{7 for} this purpose: “Create a ‘good thoughts account’ for each team member, in which you record every­thing posi­tive about that person – for exam­ple, what you can learn from them or what you have in common. Then, when some­thing goes wrong, you won’t react with anger, but filter it through good thoughts.”

Conclu­sion

Lead­er­ship under extreme condi­tions can be under­stood as lead­er­ship “in zero grav­i­ty”: famil­iar points of refer­ence are miss­ing, and there is no longer a clear “up” and “down”. In such situ­a­tions, orien­ta­tion aris­es less from hier­ar­chy than from clar­i­ty – from know­ing what is impor­tant, even if not every­thing can be planned or predicted.

Space trav­el stands for high perfor­mance under extreme condi­tions: mini­mal toler­ance for error, maxi­mum complex­i­ty, constant pres­sure. Success­ful lead­er­ship here is not demon­strat­ed by loud­ness or control, but by prepa­ra­tion, mental clar­i­ty, precise commu­ni­ca­tion and a strong sense of respon­si­bil­i­ty. Trust becomes the central guid­ing principle.

For compa­nies and their lead­ers, these insights provide proven prin­ci­ples for crit­i­cal situ­a­tions: think­ing in scenar­ios, shar­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty, secur­ing deci­sions – and at the same time being able to let go. Lead­er­ship then means provid­ing guid­ance where rigid guide­lines no longer apply.

Sources

1. Iser Pena, Hao Chen: “Explor­ing team dynam­ics and perfor­mance in extend­ed space missions using agent-based model­ling”, Depart­ment of Systems and Enter­pris­es, Stevens Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy, Hobo­ken, New Jersey, Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, Octo­ber 2025
2. Landon LB, Miller JCW, Bell ST and Roma PG: “When people start getting real: The Group Living Skills Survey for extreme work envi­ron­ments”, Front. 15:1348119, doi: 10.3389 / fpsyg.2024.1348119, April 2024
3. Lauren Black­well Landon, Kelley J. Slack, Jamie D. Barrett: “Team­work and Collab­o­ra­tion in Long-Dura­tion Space Missions: Going to Extremes,” Amer­i­can Psychol­o­gist, June 2018
4. Rain­er W. Sauer: “Deal­ing with Change – Why the inhab­i­tants of the ISS are good team play­ers”, verwaltungstraining.blog, 2023
5. Mike Massimi­no, NASA astro­naut (2 Hubble repair missions), profes­sor of engi­neer­ing at Colum­bia Univer­si­ty, New York City, since 2014
6. “Astro­naut Mike Massimi­no’s lead­er­ship lessons from space,” Dassault Systèmes Blog, July 2022
7. Mike Massimi­no, quot­ed in “Michał Poczwar­dows­ki: High Stakes Lead­er­ship: Two Key Rules from Orbit,” perspectiveship.com, Octo­ber 2025

(Image source: istockphotos.com)