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How NASA Builds Teams: Mission Critical Soft Skills for Scientists, Engineers, and Project Teams |  | Author: Charles J. Pellerin
Publisher: Wiley
Category: Book
List Price: $39.95
Buy New: $21.94
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Rating:  41 reviews
Sales Rank: 79,712
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 288
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.3 x 1.1
ISBN: 0470456485
Dewey Decimal Number: 658
EAN: 9780470456484
ASIN: 0470456485
Publication Date: July 7, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Every successful organization needs high-performance teams to compete and succeed. Yet, technical people are often resistant to traditional "touchy-feely" teambuilding. To improve communication, performance, and morale among NASA’s technical teams, former NASA Astrophysicist Dr. Charlie Pellerin developed the teambuilding process described in "How NASA Builds Teams"—an approach that is proven, quantitative, and requires only a fraction of the time and resources of traditional training methods. This "4-D" process has boosted team performance in hundreds of NASA project teams, engineering teams, and management teams, including the people responsible for NASA’s most complex systems — the Space Shuttle, space telescopes, robots on Mars, and the mission back to the moon. How NASA Builds Teams explains how the 4-D teambuilding process can be applied in any organization, and includes a fast, free on-line behavioral assessment to help your team and the individual members understand each other and measure the key driver of team performance, the social context. Moreover, these simple, logical processes appeal strongly to technical teams who eschew "touchy-feely" training. Pellerin applies simple, elegant principles from his physics background to the art teambuilding, such as the use of a coordinate system to analyze the characteristics of team performance into actionable elements. The author illustrates the teambuilding process with entertaining stories from his decade as NASA’s Director for Astrophysics and subsequent 15 years of working closely with NASA and outside business teams. For example, he tells how the processes in the book enabled him to initiate the space mission to fix the Hubble Space Telescope’s flawed mirror. Free downloadable resources will help you: -
Identify your teammates’ innate personalities -
Diagram your culture (And compare it to your customer’s) -
Measure the coherency of your project’s paradigm (Get this wrong and you will be fired!) and -
Learn to meet people’s need to feel valued by you. Further, you can download and use Pellerin’s most powerful tool for influencing the outcome of any difficult situation: the Context Shifting Worksheet.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 41
A Masterful Invention July 28, 2009
Franklin Cameron
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
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.
A Fascinating Read July 5, 2009
S. Horn (Washington DC, USA)
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
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.
How NASA Builds Teams July 10, 2009
Ronald L. Thomas
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
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
Essential reading for anyone interested in improving team and individual performance July 29, 2009
Alexandra Ross (Boulder, Colorado)
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
As 4-D System's first full-time leadership coach, I have had the privilege of using this material for 9 years with NASA flight project team leads, line managers and executives. With this simple, yet powerful organizing system, I have witnessed many teams and leaders improve their performance, which has created profound change in two categories: 1) better working relationships up and down the management chain and, 2) positive impact on the bottom line.
Dr. Pellerin's book synthesizes all of this powerful teambuilding information into How NASA Builds Teams, and turns it into actionable principles that you and your team can start using today. Clearly, I have a bias because I have been using the 4-D system to coach clients for years. The good news is, you don't have to take my word for it. The 4-D website allows you to access a free individual assessment and free team assessment, so you can see for yourself.
Whether your team needs serious work or simply some fine-tuning, this book is one of the best road maps you'll find for that journey.
Alexandra Ross, MA, MCC
Leadership and Executive Coach
A logical approach to making your team successful August 3, 2009
Lawrence Caroff (Sunnyvale, CA United States)
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
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.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 41
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