I have always been fascinated by the space program.
Thus I was thrilled to find a new documentary on the Apollo 13 mission on Netflix—Apollo 13: Survival – last week.
Wikipedia describes the mission this way:
During Apollo 13, a NASA mission in the Apollo space program and the third meant to land on the Moon, an explosion occurred on board the spacecraft en route to the Moon on April 14, 1970.
Jack Swigert, the command module pilot, reported to the Mission Control Center in Houston, Texas: “Okay, Houston … we’ve had a problem here.”
After being prompted to repeat his words by Jack R. Lousma, the capsule communicator at Mission Control, Jim Lovell, the mission commander, responded: “Ah, Houston, we’ve had a problem.”
From that moment, the mission changed from landing on the moon to getting the astronauts home.
As I pondered Apollo 13 the other night, I realized that the space program has always been about remote leadership: teams of people in different places working towards the same goal.
As we wrap up our series on remote leadership, I want to highlight something significant from Apollo 13.
Ready?
When something was wrong, they clearly articulated that something was wrong.
When I worked in an office, I could sense the emotions of others more from their body language than from their words. Frustration, joy, anger, excitement and exhaustion leaked from how they carried themselves.
In the remote world, it is much harder for me to tell how my teammates are feeling and how they are doing.
Therefore, I need to get better at boldly asking them questions like:
- What is frustrating you right now?
- What are you excited about?
- What can I do to help alleviate your frustration?
At the same time, I need to get better and clearly articulate how I am doing.
For instance, yesterday we had a meeting. My boss mentioned a few things he thought we should do. And while I agreed that we needed to do them, I also knew that they were secondary or tertiary action items.
My old self would have just pushed those feelings down and worked on the boss’ directive, but I also know that is not what he wants from me. So, I listened to my frustration and said what I thought we should be working on first.
We had a healthy, productive conversation, and because of that, we were able to make better decisions for the long-term of the business.
So here’s my final encouragement for remote leadership.
Make sure everyone on your team has permission to speak up and say, “Houston, we’ve had a problem.”
In the remote world, their body language will not give it away!
