Countdown To Teamwork

In “Countdown To Teamwork” Astronaut Mullane delivers a hard-hitting, substantive teamwork and leadership program that is also wonderfully entertaining. The motivational speaker centers on the following fundamentals of teamwork: Guarding against a 'Normalization of Deviance,' Responsibility, and Courageous Self-Leadership. Using video projected as part of his PowerPoint program, Colonel Mullane opens with a dramatic narration of a shuttle countdown and launch. “Countdown To Teamwork” is remarkably inspirational and humorous. The audience will come away from the program with a renewed sense of their potential and the potential of their teams.

Countdown to Safety

In his program, “Countdown To Safety”, Astronaut Mullane delivers a powerful message on the individual’s role in keeping themselves and their teams safe in hazardous environments. The business and motivational speaker introduces this subject with a recount of his own near-death experience in a fighter jet, when he failed to speak up about an unsafe situation. He assumed another crewmember, with more flying time, “knew best” about the safety of their operations. At a critical moment in a hazardous operation, Mullane surrendered his responsibility for safety to someone else and became a “safety passenger”. The result was his (and the pilot’s) narrow escape during their ejection from the crashing jet. Mullane continues this thread: that each individual brings to their team a unique perspective on safety. Only when every person’s perspective is available for analysis can a team be truly safe.

Guarding against a "Normalization of Deviance"

Normalization of deviance is a long term phenomenon in which individuals or teams repeatedly accept a lower standard of performance until that lower standard becomes the “norm”. Usually, the acceptance of the lower standard occurs because the individual/team is under pressure (budget, schedule, etc.) and perceives it will be too difficult to adhere to the original higher standard. Their intention may be to revert back to the higher standard when this period of pressure passes. However, by getting away with the deviation from the higher standard, it is likely they will do the same thing when the same stressful circumstances arise again. Over time, the individual/team fails to see their actions as deviant. As a motivational speaker and expert, he uses the Challenger tragedy to make this point. Under tremendous schedule and budget pressures and over multiple launches, the NASA team accepted a lower standard of performance on the solid rocket booster O-rings until that lower standard became the "norm". By the dawn of Challenger, the NASA team had become so comfortable with seeing occasional O-ring damage and getting away with it, the original standard, in which ANY O-ring damage was defined as intolerable deviance, was no longer considered. Disaster resulted. Teams maintain their high standards of performance by "setting the highest standards"; "connecting the dots" (to insure multiple problems aren't just symptoms of a single “normalization of deviance” problem); and by "considering the instincts of team members" in the decision making process (with Challenger, some engineers had a gut feeling there were serious O-ring design issues but management refused to react to “instincts”).

Trust

Trust is achieved through “need” fulfillment. We all look to our leaders to fulfill these fundamental needs: to be treated with respect as an individual; to get honest recognition for our work; to have a voice in matters that concern us. When leaders fulfill these needs, the bonds of trust strengthen and through this trust the true potential of the team is realized. The motivational speaker draws from his experiences as a combat flyer in Vietnam to illustrate how need fulfillment by combat team leaders builds trust and through this trust the warrior potential of the combat team is realized. The same warrior potential exists in corporate teams and leaders can unleash this potential by identifying and fulfilling the needs of their people.

Courageous Self-Leadership

Mullane uses his life story to develop these points on self-leadership: self-leaders set very lofty goals; they stay focused on what's important; they constantly do their best at every task. Mullane develops this philosophy of self-leadership: "Success isn't a destination. It's a continuous life journey of working toward successively higher goals."

Courageous Team Leadership

Again, Mullane uses aspects of his life story to develop this point...that truly courageous team leaders maximize the potential of their people through this leadership philosophy: "I want YOU, to be more successful than ME." Most audiences are shocked to learn how ordinary Mullane was. Most people assume because he is an astronaut now, that in his youth, he was a super-child, destined to have great success. That is not true. The motivational speaker uses slides and video to prove he wasn't a child genius. He wasn't a sports star. He wasn't popular. He didn't date the homecoming queen. Yet he realized a lifetime dream. His success occurred, as is does for all of us, because of leaders (parents, teachers, scout masters, bosses, etc.) who didn't see him as he was, but looked past that to his potential and worked to develop that potential through this courageous leadership philosophy, “I want YOU, to be more successful than ME”. “Countdown To Teamwork” is very inspirational. It also contains great humor and inside space/astronaut stories. There will be many laughs and everybody will come away from the program feeling inspired and motivated to be the best possible team members and team leaders.