Customer Reviews

How NASA Builds Teams: Mission Critical Soft Skills for Scientists, Engineers, and Project Teams

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As a Counseling Psychologist specializing in working with teenagers, I come to Dr. Pellerin's book from a different perspective. I had to opportunity to participate in a 4-D workshop conducted in the private sector and was amazed at how deeply the 4-D construct understood and spoke to the fact that teams consist of individuals who often have fundamental personality differences that influence--and bedevil--their ability to communicate and cooperate with each other. One particular intervention Dr. Pellerin has devised is a communication instrument called the "Context Shifting Worksheet" that I now use to coach teenagers in how to structure conversations with their parents and teachers that will foster shared realities, cultivate agreement, and set the ground for making valid requests for things they want and need. The instrument is a masterful invention, to say the least.
Franklin Cameron, Psy.D.

As an OD and learning consultant for nearly 20 years, this is the only approach to teambuilding that I have discovered that consistently transforms teams and has quantitative evidence to prove it. With a `team shifting context', Dr. Pellerin provides leaders and their teams with tools that are easily put into practice - and much more effective and efficient than individual training. The examples in his book are interesting and relatable for any project team member; and as a bonus, he offers free downloable resources.

I have been a manager for over 25 years and I thought I had been exposed to everything until I put in practice the principals in Dr. Pellerin's book. I have taken extensive management training and tried to put those things into practice after each training session but in reality they were all on the periphery. For me it has been putting in practice the 4D system that has been the best organizational improvement of them all. In today's business world it's all about your people. If you want to succeed then stop messing around and bring your team to their peak capacity by putting into practice the 4D system.

I've been waiting for this book for several years now, having worked with and for the author, first at NASA Headquarters and later using this approach to help project teams be successful at the Ames Research Center. Effective with any group, this material has particular appeal to technical teams because of the logical arguments, presented in a straightforward manner, and illustrated with real examples, many from Charlie Pellerin's experiences at NASA or working with NASA teams. If I had a nickel for every "Aha!" insight I've come to from reading this book (and taking part in the assessments and workshops described therein), I could retire a second time! This book offers a step-by-step, almost "by the numbers" prescription for understanding where our behaviors come from, how they influence our own and others' performance in a team situation, and how to manage our own behaviors to increase effectiveness, efficiency, and personal satisfaction--in any kind of organization. Although profound and rich in content, this book is never dense because of the unique organizing principle coming out of Pellerin's training as a physicist. If you are or want to be a successful team leader, this is truly the only book of its kind you will need.

I am a retired NASA project manager (Space Station Power System) and have worked with Dr. Pellerin. In my opinion this book is invaluable to anyone who leads a project team or an organizational element. It provides the means to assess the "health" of the team in less than 15 minutes with on-line assessments from the team members. If the team has problem areas it provides insights into these problem areas based on 8 team behaviors; allows the team leader to take actions to improve team performance. I have seen this process work. The book is entertaining to read, with many examples of actual NASA projects and problems, but most importantly, it provides a proven method for assessing and improving team performance.
Ronald Thomas

I met Charlie Pellerin when he was a man on a mission--one he is still on--to help NASA avoid leadership challenges that in the past had cost lives, time, and money. How NASA Builds Teams is a product of that mission. As one of the original team of coaches for his company 4-D Systems, I have an insider's view of how his approaches and content are valued by technical teams.

In highly technical cultures, because time is at a premium and the projects so large in scope, anything that isn't about getting the job done and done well is considered a distraction. So you can imagine how a flight project team might feel about having to take time out for a workshop focusing on soft skills--they would consider it an unnecessary, and unwelcome, distraction.

Yet those very workshops, which are based on the principles presented in How NASA Builds Teams, are consistently given outstanding scores by the participants, who say they consider the time well-spent. For busy people, that's one of the highest accolades.

Another indication of how well this material is received is that most participants choose to engage in one-on-one leadership coaching, one of the recommendations Pellerin offers in his book. Coaching coupled with regular, confidential assessments based on the 4-D approaches helps leaders get practical, useful results applying their insights and learning in real time.

In my consulting role providing project management to large-scale IT projects, and in my role as executive coach to high-performers, I am committed to helping these talented, passionate clients achieve measurable results. How NASA Builds Teams is a valued part of my coaching toolset. Using the material presented in this book can help your team or organization get the results you want as well.

Beth Hand, MBA, PCC
Executive Coach & Management Consultant

This is an amazing work. In "How NASA Builds Teams," we find an astrophycist and former high-ranking NASA executive, Charles Pellerin, laying out a succinct and remarkably intuitive framework for comprehending and enhancing human interaction. It's part philosophical work, part business book, part self-help manual. It's all extremely useful. Pellerin combines the conceptual brilliance of his 4-D system with hard-earned insights from his years as a NASA executive and consultant. The product is one whose applicability goes well beyond improving the "soft skills" of scientists and engineers, the target audience. To me, "How NASA Builds Teams" falls short principally in that its title doesn't do justice to the broad pertinence of Pellerin's ideas. This book will be of great value to anyone on a team or managing one, period.

You would think that all it takes to build successful teams is to get a bunch of sharp, well motivated, self starting, creative people together, and then sit back and wait for the magic to happen. Unfortunately, given my experience at NASA (41 years), Ball Aerospace (4 years), and Townsend Aerospace Consulting, LLC (1+ years), that's not what happens at all. The main thing that I've learned over the years is that you have to have exactly the right people working together to have a truly successful team, people who can work together with equally creative people without feeling threatened, people who can work with other people who think differently from themselves, and people who don't feel the need to withhold information to maintain a position of power within the team. If you don't have such a team, or perhaps don't know that you don't have such a team, then you are most likely headed for trouble.

As I advanced within NASA to become the Deputy Center Director at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center for almost 7 years, building successful teams became increasingly more important to me. Fortunately, that's when Charlie Pellerin and I became re-acquainted. We had worked in the same office at NASA Headquarters in the early 80's, but then after Charlie left to go the University of Colorado, we had lost touch. But Charlie was back with his 4-D approach. So, I tried it on some projects at Goddard, e.g., LISA and STEREO. LISA was being implemented by Goddard, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and the European Space Agency (ESA), where each of these organizations wanted to be in-charge, and where there were many large egos that needed to be continuously fed. But Charlie came in with his 4-D approach and made true magic. Ditto for STEREO, a project being implemented by Goddard and the Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), two highly successful organizations with entirely different cultures. Again, Charlie came in with his 4-D approach and made magic. Then, as a VP&GM at Ball Aerospace for almost 4 years, he did likewise with a project in my Business Unit called Kepler being implemented by JPL, NASA Ames Research Center, and Ball Aerospace. At the time that he showed up on the scene, things were truly not going well from a "team-working-well-together" perspective. Again, Charlie pulled his 4-D approach out of his hat, and put it to work. Another teambuilding success for Charlie's 4-D approach. Charlie's 4-D approach really works and works well.

So what does all this have to do with Charlie's new book "How NASA Builds Teams"? Well, in his book, Charlie explains his 4-D approach in great detail, and what is really unique, is that he supports his approach by sharing with the reader real data from doing real teambuilding with real NASA teams, such as LISA, STEREO, Kepler, all mentioned above, and many, many more highly successful NASA Teams. Furthermore he makes his 4-D assessment tool available to anyone on-line. So, while you may want to actually use Charlie's 4-D Systems company to help with your major teambuilding needs (and I do recommend that), you can learn a lot from simply reading and studying Charlie's book, and in particular, examining the data that he makes available to show how things can really change over time by focusing on where the problems are. Then you should be able to apply these techniques and principles to your daily life as a leader/manager of people, whether it be to get your immediate staff to work better together, or to help get that special tiger team you set up to solve a problem to work better together.

So, I heartily recommend that you buy & read Charlie's book. It's a great deal!

Here we have a book for those of us who are fully committed to achieving breakthrough improvements in the performance of our teams. "How NASA Builds Teams" is based on a strong conceptual foundation that is vetted and fine-tuned with decades of experience. It offers solid advice on methods and techniques, which are refreshingly different from the standard prescriptions.

In the introduction to the book, Dr. Charles Pellerin says, "You now have access to what I believe is the most effective teambuilding system in existence." I am sure anyone who reads the book and uses the resources on the website of 4-DSystems would fully agree with this statement.

When I found this book after years of exploration in management and leadership, I realized that the simple framework offered by Dr. Pellerin is exactly what I needed. "How NASA Builds Teams" is one of those rare books that gives gestalt moments, several of them in every chapter.

The author has spared the reader and practitioner from the intricacies of psychological theories. Yet it is evident that he has drawn from the works of great psychologists like Carl Gustav Jung. Dr. Pellerin acknowledges this, and develops Jung's concept of Psychological Types to use it effectively in the context of leadership and team development.

The four dimensions that Dr. Pellerin has identified - Cultivating, Including, Visioning and Directing - proves to be the essence of effective leadership. It would be appropriate to say that these four dimensions are necessary and sufficient for effective leadership and high performance teams. The question would then be, "How do I develop these four dimensions in myself, and how do I help my team to operate in all these four dimensions?" Dr. Pellerin gives the answers, with convincing evidence based on his work with thousands of professionals and hundreds of teams from NASA and other high technology organizations. He urges us to discover our innate personality foundation. Being conscious about it helps us to build over our strengths and avoid the pitfalls of an extreme one-sidedness.

Chapter 7 provides a comprehensive coverage of using the 4-D System to analyze cultures. Insights gained from reading this chapter would open our eyes to differences within and between teams. The book provides a simple framework for understanding culture and using that understanding to formulate marketing strategy, create winning proposals and manage project teams creating profound value for customers.

Techniques for resolving interpersonal issues, dealing with conflicts, moving people to action and influencing them to give you what you want are key take-aways. He calls this Context Shifting, including examples from his work with clients - a contractor who won a $1 billion contract against tough competition, and another who was able to recover a denied fee of $3 million. The denied fee case is all too common. The usual outcome is a prolonged power struggle between the supplier and the customer. In contrast, the Context Shifting Worksheet enabled his clients to engage in the right dialogue process, which gave tangible results.

In chapter 10, Dr. Pellerin talks about how our Story-lines influence others and us. Green Story-lines are liberating, and lead to high performance. Red Story-lines are limiting, and lead to inhibited performance. Leaders influence others through the words they speak. Great leaders run Green Story-lines and avoid Red Story-lines.

Dr. Pellerin guides us through a set of eight behaviors, required for building and nurturing high performance teams. While talking about the importance of appreciation, he tells us: "I will tell you a small secret - appreciation is a business word for love. We all need it." Further, he talks about the importance of living our lives in a state of gratitude. Dr. Pellerin explains that excess criticism tips the team towards a negative culture, which in turn leads to poor team performance and even major disasters.

Every manager and leader faces the question: `How should I deal with conflicts?' Dr. Pellerin's advice is simple and powerful: Identify and act on shared interests. He gives an example of his successful collaboration with Japanese scientists. He also cites his experience of managing a conflict that was preventing him from hiring an expert while preparing for the Hubble Servicing Mission. Almost every project manager can easily relate to dilemmas like this.

Based on personal experience and observations, Dr. Pellerin tells us how effective leaders manage their persona (mask) and expression of authentic selves. His interview of his own persona makes for an interesting reading (pp. 179 -180). He says that personas prevent us from authentic relationships with others. Dr. Pellerin carefully explains the power of appropriate inclusion and the pitfalls of thoughtless omission. He explains how he dealt with sensitive issues related to resource allocation by listening deeply. He also provides guidelines for effective team meetings.

Chapter 15 deals with building trustworthy contexts by honoring all commitments. We each demonstrate our trustworthiness, or lack thereof, by how we keep our agreements. The author provides a four-step process for dealing with broken agreements. Surprisingly, apologizing comes last in the process. The first step in the process is telling the truth, "I broke my agreement with you." This applies even when the circumstances leading to the breaking of the agreement were beyond one's control.

In Chapter 16, titled Creating the Future You Want, Dr. Pellerin describes how he developed the Great Observatories program and faced the challenges of the Hubble Servicing Mission, strengthened by the power of 100 percent commitment. The narratives provide for enjoyable reading, even while the author conveys the most important lesson of all - commit yourself 100 percent to the results that you want to achieve. This is one of my favorite chapters in the book.

I am grateful to Dr. Charlie Pellerin for sharing with us his wonderful insights through such a well-written book. One of the strengths of the book is that it avoids Guru-speak, which is all too common in the genre of management and leadership books. This could also be the reason it has not yet become a best seller on popularity ratings. However, I am sure that "How NASA Builds" Teams is a book that is bound to become a classic over time.

You know you're in for an honest, page-turning, pull-back-the-curtain book as soon as you read the opening paragraph about launching the multi-million dollar Hubble Telescope into space . . . with a flawed mirror.

Kudos to the author for revealing what really happened behind the scenes of this very expensive error and how it was utlimately corrected by a team that came together with a clear, committed vision. The result? The Hubble is considered by many to be man's greatest scientific achievement. Pellerin's insights can be applied by ANY team that wants to mimimize mistakes and maximize productivity, results and harmony.