From Earth orbit to the Moon and Mars, explore the world of human spaceflight with NASA each week on the official podcast of the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Listen to in-depth conversations with the astronauts, scientists and engineers who make it possible.
On episode 357, Deputy Center Director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center Steve Koerner reflects on his 32-year-long career at NASA and discusses the values of leadership. This episode was recorded on Sept. 3, 2024.
Transcript
Host (Leah Cheshier): Houston, we have a podcast! Welcome to the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center, Episode 357, “Leadership at All Levels.” I’m Leah Cheshier and I’m your host today. On this podcast, we bring in the experts, scientists, engineers, and astronauts, all to let you know what’s going on in the world of human spaceflight and more. Throughout life, you’ve most certainly heard the encouragement to be a leader, not a follower, but I’ve learned over time that there are opportunities and importance in holding both of those roles. Even on other episodes of this podcast, many guests have discussed leadership, followership, and knowing the right time to take on the role required to accomplish goals as a team.
I’ve had the privilege of hearing our Deputy Center Director Steve Koerner speak about leadership on a couple of occasions, and it really changed the way I see myself as both a leader and a follower. Steve has had the opportunity to lead JSC in multiple different roles over his 32+ years of working here from his time as the Deputy Director of Mission Operations to Chief Financial Officer to Director of Flight Operations, and many things in between. You’ll notice this episode isn’t full of corporate jargon or inspirational buzzwords because those don’t always go hand in hand with being a good leader. Instead, I hope you hear the practical ways we can expect excellence of ourselves and those on our teams. Let’s get started.
[Music]
Host: Well, Steve, thank you so much for coming on Houston We Have a Podcast today.
Steve Koerner: Glad to be here.
Host: So let’s start with your biography. Tell me what it was like growing up, where you’re from, where you went to school. Just give me a rundown. How did you get to NASA and was that always on your radar?
Steve Koerner: Yeah, thanks, Leah. I grew up in northeast Ohio, a little town called Stow outside of Cleveland, between Cleveland and Akron. I vaguely recall watching the Apollo astronauts walk on the Moon, but I think it was like later in the missions. I don’t recall Apollo 11, or the first ones, but I remember watching it. Shuttle was more my era just thought that was an awesome space machine, but growing up didn’t really think of NASA as something obtainable, and I don’t know why I thought that, but it was just kind of something that was done but didn’t really see myself as a part of it. In fact, in high school, I don’t even know if I knew what engineers did. I had lots of people fortunately mentoring me and pointing me in the direction of engineering because I was good at math and science. But I don’t know that I could have explained what an engineer did as I was in high school. Ended up at the University of Akron. Very fortunate that every engineer through University of Akron had to complete a five-year program that included a one-year, what they called a co-op year. And so it wasn’t optional. And as a high school student, it almost caused me not to go there cause I thought, why would I want to spend five years when I could do it in four? But it turned out to be very valuable because at the time, the University of Akron had a relationship with the Johnson Space Center. Johnson’s co-op office was trying to pull individuals from around the country, not just the local area. And so, to be honest, I don’t even know how that relationship had had evolved or how it even started.
But the fall of my junior year, walked into the co-op office at the University of Akron and the co-op director said, “Hey, I just hung up the phone with Johnson Space Center, would you like to go there?” And I said, “Sure.” No interview, no nothing. It was January 1990, I was en route to Houston for my first internship here at the Johnson Space Center. And so, yeah, some may call it luck. I have another thought of how that all transpired, but certainly, I’m fortunate to be here at the Johnson Space Center and have not looked back.
Host: Yeah, the door was open for you. That’s awesome. I think it’s neat too because I think a lot of times nowadays people feel so much pressure to know what they want to do in high school or immediately after graduation. So it’s refreshing to hear you say like, you didn’t necessarily maybe know exactly what an engineer did at that timeframe.
Steve Koerner: Yeah. And it was at the time, even from the thought was stressful, man, I’m not sure. I’m not sure. But you’re right, these days it starts way early on. You better know, cause you’re mapping out your kindergarten curriculum with what you want to do in your career. So, yeah, I get it.
[Laughs]
Host: Well, since you’ve been here, you’ve had a lot of different roles. I’m not going to run down all of them, but a lot of these leadership roles I wanted to run down really quick. So Director of the Flight Ops Directorate, JSC Associate Director, JSC Chief Financial Officer, Deputy Director of Flight Operations, Deputy Director of Mission Operations. You’re currently the Deputy Center Director. So how have all of those roles built on each other since you’ve been here?
Steve Koerner: Yeah. It sounds like I can’t hold a job, doesn’t it? You know, I would say at some point, I don’t know if there was a definitive time, but over the course of some of that in the last 20 years spent some time thinking about leadership and my career and how that all plays out. And mostly from a self-reflective, self-awareness, what matters to me type of thing. And so, you know, how did all those evolve? I think I recognized limitations as I got into progressively bigger roles. But I did that eyes wide open and with the intent of I wanted to prove to myself I could lead in an area that I wasn’t an expert. So I benefited from certainly starting in an area that I was familiar with, operations, where I grew up. But then had to almost forcibly tell myself to step out of my comfort zone at times to go try some other things. And I benefited from folks that I worked for given me the chance to try while I was optimistic, of all the possible outcomes, success was just one of them. So anyway, I was glad to be able to have the opportunities that have been afforded to me.
Host: And you talked about, you started in operation. So you were a flight director, sorry, you were a flight controller. Did you always want to take that step into leadership after that? Were you always a leader in school, the leader of the group project? Or was that something that once you got here and you saw the opportunities you wanted to pursue that?
Steve Koerner: You know, just like I mentioned a few minutes ago where I don’t know that I could have defined what an engineer did. I don’t know that I thought much about what’s a leader? And I love looking into the argument of management versus leadership and those types of things. But to me, it was more of, I mentioned earlier I was thinking about my career and what I wanted it to be. I never sat down and mapped out my next job is going to have this title. But I did come to the realization there were certain attributes I wanted in any job that I did, and they boiled down to having fun. Three things: having fun, learning something, and providing value. And so providing value, often I needed an advocate or somebody to tell me that, “Hey, you should go do this cause we think you will provide value.” There were often areas I wasn’t sure I was the right candidate, or I was the right individual to step into that. And so was afforded the luxury of consulting others and hearing them say, “Yeah, we think this is something that you absolutely could do well.” And so from a leadership perspective, to me, it’s not a thing written on a business card. It’s something that’s a characteristic of you. So you asked, “Is this something that you’ve always done?” Probably both positively and negatively. You know, some of the projects I hated most in school was group projects cause I was the personality that if I wanted it done right, I wanted to do it myself.
Host: Me too.
Steve Koerner: So hard to answer. Is that something that all of a sudden I just flipped a switch and was in charge of things I think I tended toward being successful and what does success look like? Or how do we win? What’s the goal and how do we best get there? And so that was always probably my motivator. And so as a result, may have, oh, added some influence perhaps positively at times and maybe not as appreciated at other times, but absolutely, it was always focused on the goal.
Host: Well, looking at your resume and all of your different roles, do you think it’s important for a leader to have had a broad spectrum of roles like that?
Steve Koerner: I do. And let me caveat that. Often individuals will approach me looking for a recipe or a checklist of, hey, I want to someday do this. And so, you know, how did you do that? And what’s the magic formula? And there’s not one, again, I mentioned for me personally, lots of self-reflection on my personality, my values, my priorities. And so, in order for me to demonstrate that I could do this well, I needed to do it in an area that I wasn’t a technical expert or that I didn’t have the capability like I just joked a minute ago to do it myself. I needed to rely on the team. And so that was something that I was intentional about. Where can I go that I can’t do the work? I need the team to do it, and I want to be able to knock down hurdles or provide resources or whatever to make them successful. But I was intentional about looking for areas where I couldn’t just carry the ball by myself, if that makes sense.
Host: Yeah, that makes sense. Let’s see, you grew up here at NASA. This has been your career; you haven’t left the agency. So do you think that we should look for leaders within the agency only? Do you think there are times where an outside hire is a good choice? What do you think about that?
Steve Koerner: Great question. I don’t know that you’re going to like my answer cause it’s going to go with the depends. And let me explain on why I say it depends. It’s a constant challenge because we’re certainly more familiar with the internal candidates and people that we know. We know that strengths and weaknesses and we know what they bring to the table. And so we may be incentivized, biased. I’m not sure what the right term is to go with who we know for a particular selection that we’re looking for. The challenge is it really depends on what does success look like for that role that you’re trying to put this individual into. And often it could be that an internal candidate is the exact right person, that it’s running on all right cylinders and you need someone who’s familiar to keep the train running smoothly down the track. Or it may be that, you know, the train’s off the track and we need change. And so someone from the outside with a fresh perspective may indeed be the right person. You know, right now, figure out how to say this. So the Johnson Space Center leads human spaceflight. We’ve done that for 60 years. That hasn’t changed. We lead human spaceflight, but the how has absolutely changed. And so what I mean by that is in the ‘60s, it was beat the Soviets to the Moon, in the ‘70s, it was cooperate with the Soviets on a mini Skylab type thing. In the ‘80s, it was fly the space shuttle and glide this thing onto a runway at the end of the mission; ‘90s and subsequent work with international partners to assemble a space station. And so the how is constantly evolving. That’s my point.
Today’s how is we want to incentivize industry to be successful. There are other things in the how, but one of the primary focuses we have is how do we incentivize U.S. industry to be successful? And so we’ve thought about what things can we be doing today to help us be successful in that effort? And we’ve looked at industry exchanges. Maybe we send some of the NASA folks to industry. Maybe we bring some of the industry folks in. Certainly, there’s ways to do that. But maybe it’s hiring folks that have been in industry and bringing them into our team. And so the reason I mention all that is there are absolutely times when an external candidate may be exactly what you’re looking for. And I know personally it was hard for me because I may be comfortable, or I may know the person that’s been sitting next to me for years. And so I may not know the external candidate as well, but absolutely has to be in the trade space.
Host: Well, what did you think it meant to be a leader before you were one? And how well has your perspective changed since then? I mean, I’m guessing so.
Steve Koerner: Yeah, absolutely. You know, I used to think that if you just trickled up the right amount of facts, the person in charge would spew down the right answer. You know, kind of Moses to Mount Sinai. You walk up the mountain, you come down with the 10 commandments that somebody wants you to go implement. Boy, was that a misperception. How it’s changed for me is it’s about enabling individuals so that we can accomplish our mission. Performance matters, but how do we get that performance? It’s about taking care of people.
When I was running flight operations, Ray Heineman was running aviation ops and he had an expression that I’ve have used multiple times, but it was take care of our people so we can accomplish the mission. And so that kind of, in 30 seconds of thinking about, it’s kind of the mantra that I’ve got about what leaders do take care of your people. So we can accomplish our mission. You’ve mentioned that my entire career has been here at the Johnson Space Center and human spaceflight. We benefit greatly from having human spaceflight as our mission. It doesn’t take a lot of effort to convince people to be motivated to do their job well. And so, how do we provide resources and knock down hurdles so people can do their jobs well?
Host: All of those things are how you see a leader. But earlier you mentioned leadership versus management, and I’d love to hear your thoughts on the differences between the two.
Steve Koerner: Depending upon the time of day, I could argue lots of different ways, but I think the easiest way for me to think of it is, and someone will probably quickly argue with me, but I think of it as management as a process that’s good. Maybe managing the status quo. And that sounds perhaps bad. I don’t mean it to be bad, but leadership is about change. We want to move from here to there. We’re currently here, we want to get there. How do we get there? It’s about change. And I was just talking to some folks last week, the agency, in its executive leadership qualifications, spells out leading change as one of the attributes that it’s looking for. And I often wonder if we’ve maybe missed that a little bit because we give change this identity of this dragon that needs to be slayed as, oh no, it’s change. Oh, we’re changing. But that’s what we do as leaders. We move from here to there. We’re constantly changing. I just talked about how human spaceflight has evolved. It’s all about change and how are we managing change and moving forward. And so to me, when I think of, you know, what is a leader, a change agent, someone who is moving us from where we are to where we need to be effectively.
Host: Well, let’s say your processes are all operating as intended. And so you could keep it status quo like a manager. Let’s say that everything that you’re doing moving forward in human spaceflight looks good.
Steve Koerner: Which I would argue we’ve been very effective in how we’ve done human spaceflight.
Host: Right. And I agree. I think the way we’re doing business currently is a lot of change. But let’s say we get into a routine, and it becomes never easy, but more manageable. What are other ways that you can continue to improve when it just looks like everything is going smoothly?
Steve Koerner: Yeah, I think maybe the way to answer that is like with like a sports analogy. You know, the Astros won the World Series, and they could be content to continue doing with whatever they did that year to win the World Series. But the environment’s changing around you, and how are you being aware of that? How are you watching for that? Resources may or may not be more constrained. I think we constantly have to be looking at how we can do better with the resources we’re given. There’s always the argument, oh, we could use more money, but we are given a lot of money. And so how do we constantly assess how we’re doing things from a resource perspective, from a facilities perspective, that is constantly going to be evolving. And so the thought of the status quo being sufficient is probably a mistake to think, ah, it’s smooth, let’s just coast. Constantly have to be assessing. In fact, you know, here at Johnson we’ve got this strategic initiative campaign we call, “Dare. Unite. Explore.” People may raise their eyebrow and say, “Yeah, tell me what that is again.” And I like to say it simply, “It’s just doing things today so that we can do tomorrow’s mission well.” And so what things should we be doing today so that we can accomplish tomorrow’s mission. Today may be going great. That’s no judgment on how today’s going, but who’s looking up and looking down the road to determine what things we need to be doing so that we ensure we’re doing things well tomorrow?
Host: I don’t know about you, but growing up, we are always taught the value of leadership. We study good leaders. We want to be like them. We take their traits and try and emulate them. And it’s almost a really bad thing to be a follower. And I’ve heard through several different guests on this podcast the importance of being a good follower. And so, I would love to hear your thoughts on what it looks like to be a good follower. Yeah, I would just like to hear that.
Steve Koerner: Well, so the way I think about that, it’s the scenario really drives, how much of your leadership responsibility can you delegate? And let me elaborate on what I mean by that. I feel like, NASA, any organization is desperate for good leadership. And so what are we doing to ensure we have good leadership today and tomorrow? And so, part of that taking care of your people so you can accomplish the mission is how are we taking care of our people to become the leaders we need them to be? And leadership is not about self-promotion. It’s not about winning the argument. In fact, I mentioned a little bit ago that I’ve spent some time thinking about it. And for me, the biggest hindrance to me being effective as a leader is my own pride.
If you’ve ever been in an argument where in the middle of the argument you realized you were wrong, but you kept arguing just to win, that’s your pride. And so, as a leader, if my mindset is I’m trying to help individuals be successful but I’m also trying to develop leaders, how am I doing that? Am I giving them the chance to have ownership of whatever we’ve asked them to do or take responsibility and make decisions? Or am I just asking them to bring me the information and me make the decision? That’s not helping them. And so with that mindset of, hey, part of leadership is developing people, it becomes less about my answer has to be the right way and more about what is the right answer. We’re not seeking to win the argument. We’re seeking to find what I’ll call technical truth. And so absolutely being able to rely on the experts and know when to back off and let the experts lead, know what questions to ask. So, I don’t know it’s so much about relinquishing leadership and becoming a follower. It’s enabling others to lead at times. Maybe an example would be, you know, if there were a couple of us in the room, I said, where do we want to go to lunch? And somebody said McDonald’s, and somebody said, Burger King, do I need to weigh in on that? Or can we practice decisiveness and let the least experienced person choose or something? How do we get people comfortable making decisions? What’s the risk involved? Going to lunch, very little risk. But that self-confidence, that I don’t need to win the argument to provide value to myself, it’s, hey, this individual’s onto something, let me let them run with it and see that this not only can they help us provide mission success, but it also boosts their confidence in being able to be decisive and help us navigate risk.
Host: Well, let’s say you’re in a conversation with somebody and you have competing ideas on what’s right, and you don’t have that moment of realizing that the other person is right, and you are wrong, but you really stand to what you believe. At what point, how do you know you should continue pressing forward with your idea as the leading thought versus step back and follow somebody else’s path?
Steve Koerner: Yeah, I think that’s where it certainly the level of expertise that I have on that particular subject will weigh in on. And again, that may be the risk involved. If it’s not, if the outcome is worth letting that individual choose the route, then go for it. If it’s the risk is such that no, the processes need to be shored up and ensure what we’re doing here and hear me, I’m not saying I’m going to delegate the authority or the responsibility been that’s been given to me. I will always have someone’s back if they, if I’ve asked them and they say, hey, it’s blue and it turns out to be red, I’ll always have their back and we’ll figure out next time how we can do that better. But it’s about trusting the people and giving them ownership of the problem you’ve asked them to solve. And so it’s easy to sit back and let them take lead on that when that’s the mindset. So I don’t know if that makes sense or not, but there are times where you have, where if we disagree, I’m not going to, I need to think about how to say this more clearly. There are times where the answer that I give will be the answer. And so it’s not always that if I think it’s blue and you think it’s red, and I know it to be blue, I’m not going to let you convince the team otherwise. But the way to do that can still show support for you through asking questions, through how you handle that situation. And so that’s, you know, you mentioned a minute ago about, we’ve always been taught to observe other leaders. One of the things I’ve done and I recommend to others to do is when I’m in forums, and this was probably started doing this about probably after Columbia watch and how we return to flight after the Columbia accident, and how various people conducted themselves in that effort. And I was fascinated with observing individuals who I thought were effective in leadership, let’s say running a meeting, making decisions, managing risk, and what caused me to think they were effective or people that I thought weren’t effective. What caused me to draw the conclusion that that wasn’t very effective? And then of those things that I observed, what could I apply to myself? Decisiveness was a big one. Respect for other people was a big one. Getting the team through a difficult technical decision when the team was a very, so diverse that most people didn’t have the technical expertise on any given subject. And so the questions that were asked the way in which team members were shown value, anyway, just certain attributes that I observed in people, I thought, man, how can I do that? Or how can I not do that based on my personality? Cause I learned a long time ago, I’m not changing my personality. And so what’s effective for me? And it may not be for everyone. And so maybe the key point is, are you self-aware about what works for you? And are your values and priorities aligned such that you can then be most effective as a leader?
Host: That’s great. And I think that’s something that everyone can practice. It doesn’t have to be, you know, in an accident review board or something like that, but in a general meeting, you know, we all sit in tons of meetings a day and what makes some of them beneficial versus the others. So that’s something that I’m going to take forward, too. Let’s talk a little bit about something that I struggle with, and I’m not the Deputy Center Director, I am just a team lead, but how do you deal with it when people don’t necessarily like you as a leader? How do you get over that feeling? Because I’m the kind of person that I have to feel like everybody likes me.
Steve Koerner: Yeah, certainly. You’re not alone. Most people want to be liked, me included. But what was helpful for me is, I’ll go back to that mission success is the goal. And so I’ve actually, I’ve watched someone, I mentioned observing people and their styles and their behaviors, who I think verbally stated that one of their main goals was to try and make everyone in their office happy, aka they wanted to be liked. And we all know if we paused and thought about it, that’s not possible on any given moment. Back to the McDonald’s/Burger King, soon as you pick one over the other, someone’s not going to like your decision and therefore apparently not like you. And so for me it was a recognition of, yeah, I certainly am not out to be disliked, but that is not my priority, to come in here and be liked. And maybe being a parent was helpful. I could get my kids to like me by serving ice cream for dinner every night, but that wouldn’t accomplish the mission success that we were after. And so it was an intentional mindset of not trying to be disliked, but my goal is not to be liked by everyone. It was also helpful for me to think about, back to, this is me personally, thinking about where I find value, and I think I can state accurately, maybe I have to caveat this a little bit, that, you know, I don’t find my value in whether people like me or not. Again, I want to be liked, but that’s not the primary goal. And so this job is not who I am. It’s what I do. And so with that, if people don’t like what I do, it doesn’t, it’s no skin off my back because it’s not who I am. If that makes sense. And that’s easy to state. And so, I get that. And so modeling that behavior or demonstrating that behavior, the proof will be in what others see around me. But that’s my intent is to not have it as a priority to just try to be liked.
Now, one other thing I’ll add is I have seen where maybe I’ll change the word from “like” to “being nice.” The desire to be nice often will conflict with mission success or performance or whatever. And this is one that I wrestle with because I’m trying to think of a good example. We absolutely want to hear from everyone, their ideas, speak up. If you have an idea, we want to hear from you. We’ve got tools and spots. You can drop stickies. And we want to hear people’s ideas, but out of the desire to be nice, we have a hard time down selecting those ideas. And so, many of you maybe, have heard me use this example and I can’t take ownership of it. I think I heard it from a guy named Patrick Lencioni who wrote Five Dysfunctions of a Team. I’ve been to a few places where I’ve heard him speak, but he talked about when a bad idea comes in, how do you deal with it and still “be nice.” I don’t think that was his necessarily the word he used. But so if you were to suggest, “Hey, Steve, I have an idea.” Sure. I want to hear everybody’s ideas. Let’s blow up some balloons and go walk around the duck ponds by Building 1. Would someone say, “Leah, help us understand why that’s a good idea?” Cause no, we’re not doing that. Or out of being nice, would you find yourself walking around the duck pond holding a balloon, having no idea why you’re doing it, but you just didn’t want to follow up on an idea and come across as not being nice and squelching someone’s idea? And so this is a fun one to wrestle with because we do absolutely want to hear from everyone. But how do we then take the good ideas and use those effectively without coming across as not nice by just not taking someone else’s idea that was out there? Maybe it goes back to your question earlier about when you’re in a discussion with someone and they’re really wanting to do something. Can you agree to priorities on what you’re attempting to accomplish? And do it again. Do it in a way that shows value to the individual. I think we wrestle with that cause it instantly becomes kind of the crab in the bucket kind of thing. The way to get out of the bucket if you’re in with a bunch of other crabs is pull the other crabs down around you. That’s what we’re not trying to do that. How do we promote individuals and get them to speak up the next time while trying to be decisive and make a decision at the current time?
Host: I think something you touched on is your identity being outside of your job, which I think is really important. And I’d like to hear your perspective on if you think that’s important for all leaders, because we spend so much time in our jobs, you know, at minimum we’re nine hours a day. And that doesn’t include long days or nights or weekends or holidays or anything else that we commit to. And so a lot of your identity can get wrapped up in your job. And it’s great to be proud of what you do and to love it. But do you think that people make more objective and better decisions when they have a separate identity from just who they are at work?
Steve Koerner: Yeah, that’s a tough one cause I can’t speak for others too well on that one. I get that this job’s awesome and there’s people that want to pour themselves into it and may say that their identity is found here. And so that I got no problem with that. That may be the exact thing that works for them, for me personally, that was a challenge. And maybe it came across early on because, you know, as an engineer, when I got my first, I think I was a group lead, I was trying to figure out how do I determine was my day valuable? And so I was creating, oh, I got through X number of emails today, or I sent out 14 texts today and I was creating metrics that had absolutely nothing to do with anything of importance. But in my mind, I was able to say, I spent 10 hours at work today. What did you get? You know, so I was using hours and things as metrics, because I was the engineer desperately looking for metrics to determine was my day valuable or not. And at some point, I don’t know how I stumbled across this or how the realization hit me was, you know, number of emails, number of texts, number of hours actually have nothing to do with the amount of value you’re providing. Now, the job is difficult and does require hours. So hear me, I’m not suggesting that, but it’s not a metric that I use to determine value. Does that help other leaders? I have spent a lot of time thinking about what would help others. And I’m very careful, not to sound authoritative or maybe it sounds like I get on a soapbox and preach, that’s not my intent, but am trying to characterize things that I found value found valuable or find valuable, and maybe others can benefit from that. And so it’s just sharing my experience and maybe others can take advantage of that, not have to go through some of the hurdles that I’ve gone through. Often, we say we want to be problem solvers. Well maybe the problem’s already been solved, and we need to seek the solution that’s out there. And so enjoy meeting with individuals or talking to people about my experiences so that folks that I’m talking to maybe can walk away with a nugget or two that helps them.
Host: Well, here’s another one that I struggle with, and we’ve talked about this just a moment ago. When you’re now past the part of we don’t have to be liked as leaders. So once you’re okay with not being liked all of the time.
Steve Koerner: Before we leave that, so one other thought that hit me that I want to make sure we address is, and maybe this is where you’re heading, you know, is conflict management. I feel like that me personally, the agency culturally, we do not do a good job of managing conflict. And so I’m intentional about how we can do that better. And so thought about, you know, how if we’re talking about being liked, I think part of conflict management is, well, I don’t want to, I’d rather avoid the conflict and just not stir the waters and that way maybe everyone will like me. Man, that’s a huge hurdle. Human spaceflight, we need conflict. As Director of Flight Operations, I got to go with the crews as they were getting ready to launch. Not all the way to strap them in, but as they’re heading to the launch pad, or even as flight ops are in my current job, I’m often with the families as we’re launching the crew members. And think about that, being in Baikonur for a Soyuz launch with family members of a crew. And if I were to say to them, “Hey, it’s okay, in all our meetings I was liked,” is that give a sense of confidence about what we’re about to do here? And so I have to remind myself, human spaceflight’s hard. It’s not about being liked. And so, it requires conflict to get to the best answer, I could avoid conflict by everybody saying, hey, what’s the mixture ratio for the rocket engine between fuel and oxidizer? Everybody write down what number they think that ratio needs to be, and we’ll average them and that’s what we’ll use. Do you think Reid and Victor and Jeremy and Christina want to get on the rocket that we by consensus came to the—no. And yet, how do we get to that answer? It’s arm wrestling. It’s debating, it’s bannering in a way that’s professional and productive and promoting people, but we absolutely need to manage conflict. And why I’m kind of harping on that, is I think management of the conflict starts at the head of the table. And so how that’s done, can be done super effectively if the head of the table allows it to be, and maybe it’s you celebrate it, do you stop in a meeting and say, “Hey, did you hear that Joe just thought it was 10 and Mary just thought it was 15? We got some conflict here. Let’s sort this out people.” And call it out, address it. You know, I’m making up a silly example. I get that it’s not that simple, but we absolutely need to be intentional about managing conflict and not avoiding it. Our mission success demands it.
Host: And yeah, I kind of wanted to touch on that with how do you deliver not good news to people? I mean, it’s hard when you hear critical feedback of someone, or you notice something in performance that needs to be addressed. How do you bring that up?
Steve Koerner: Yeah. I benefited, I mentioned a few minutes ago, I was a group lead in an organization, and fortunately early on in this, in my group lead experience, I had to do that. And really, it turned out to be very favorable. And I get that it’s not always the case but let me explain and then I’ll extrapolate on how that’s been valuable for me. But I got to an organization that I didn’t know all the people that well, but it quickly became apparent one individual was struggling completing a particular task that she’d been given. It was apparent. Everyone else in the group knew. It was hindering our being able to accomplish something we needed to get done. And I don’t remember how long, but I wrestled with, boy, I need to address this, and here I am the new guy and I’m about to tell someone they’re not doing something well. And I was roleplaying all the potentials of, who are you to tell me? And so it was probably a week, maybe week and a half, I wrestled with, I need to do this. And a colleague of mine used the expression, hey, it’s not a fine wine that’s going to get better with age. And so I called this individual in and I pointed out that I felt, I said, “Hey, I feel like you’re wrestling and you’re struggling with this project.” And she said, “Yes, I know.” And she broke down in tears and she said, “But I’ve been too embarrassed to tell anybody that I needed help, and I didn’t know, and I was struggling.” I’m like, well, that’s what we’re here for, to help you out. I mean, and so she was actually appreciative that I brought it up and she, this may have evolved in my recollection over the years, so there may be some revisionist history here, but was almost thanking me that now we could talk about it and the team could talk about it, and it was something that we moved forward with. And so that was huge for me that not only, you know, performance matters. And so if someone’s struggling with performance, is it the process? Are they equipped? Is it resources or is it skills? And if it’s skills, can we train it? And so absolutely have to deliver the not nice news, because mission success matters.
Back to my pseudo joking about telling the astronauts that, hey, yeah, we’re good. I didn’t deal with any of the issues. But that’s like, should be the number one priority for somebody applying for the job are you’re going to be able to deliver tough news in a way that’s effective. You know, you don’t, it’s not helpful to come in and start off. Well, you know, your socks don’t match. And, no. If your goal is to take care of your people, how are you doing that effectively so that they’re willing to hear from you when you need to point out things that need to be addressed.
I was just joking with someone this morning that if I had wanted to be a neurosurgeon, I hope someone would’ve tapped me on the so shoulder and said, “You know what, Steve, that’s probably not for you. Let’s point you in a direction where you can be valuable.” And so someone would’ve had to deliver not good news to me. But how that is an awesome trait to be able to do well and how do we practice that? And so I think that’s something we can do better at equipping our folks that are in those roles to give feedback to that. That’s something that’s extremely important. So when you look at it from the perspective of not only are you helping the mission success, you may actually be helping the individual, then man, it’s our job to figure out how to do that well.
Host: How about building up your team members? How do you develop confidence in them? How do you help them develop confidence in their abilities or help them take full responsibility of their work?
Steve Koerner: A little while ago we talked about that. I came here in 1990 as a co-op student and have been here one of my first supervisors, early ‘90s, in like my first day or early on in one of my first meetings and then every time after a performance appraisal time had a one pager of their expectations for me. I thought it was awesome. I don’t necessarily remember them all, but just kind of things to keep in mind. He just called it his, he had a certain name for it, I forget, but just a one pager of expectations. I thought every supervisor at NASA did that. And since that day, that hasn’t happened. Now what I do is I have created my own. And whether it’s a supervisor or with someone I’m mentoring, I have five expectations, and I’ll get to answering your question in a minute, but I have five expectations that I communicate, whether it’s someone that I’m a supervisor of, or someone that I’m just giving them some informal thought to think about. And let me walk you through those, which will attempt to answer your question.
So the first expectation is excellence. Want everybody known performance matters. The Houston Astros could build a great team if they required one, or excuse me, could build a team really quickly if they only required one hit a year, probably payroll could probably be 10 bucks and they wouldn’t win any games, but they’d get their team built quickly. So, no, they demand excellence. What can we do to ensure excellence, but excellence is an expectation. And so in everything we’re doing, what if that is our goal, we want to be excellent. I may not be able to tell given individuals what they specifically need to be doing to do excellent work, but hopefully they know. And so if not, pause right now and think about what excellent work looks like and where your job is.
So first is excellence. Second is, I’m going to use three words: responsibility, accountability, and ownership. I think we struggle with this one collectively across the agency in general. But we’ve asked people to do a job. Go do you, do not have to come ask me, mother may I, I want you feeling ownership of your job. I want you feeling responsible for it. Not passing the blame when it doesn’t go well and not accepting the glory when it does go well as an individual, but ownership of the job. What do we need to make you successful in that job? We spend a lot of time, Dana Weigel can correct me on this so we can fact check her, but she was having to give a briefing relatively recently at a various level of headquarters, and I think she had to give 13 pre-brief to people before she ever got to the intended audience, just so everyone could have an insight into what she was saying before they got to her boss. That’s horrific. Do people take ownership and responsibility and delegate to the folks to go do what they need to do? I said a minute ago, we’ll always have your back, easy for me to me to state that. And so that you can line your birdcage with that piece of paper that you write that on if you’d like. The proof will be in is the observation true that’s entailed. So expect excellence, expect people to feel ownership of their job.
Thirdly, communicate. If you’re going to, if I’ve just said, hey, you don’t need to ask mother may I, if you’re going to do something that Vanessa’s not going to be happy with, please give me a heads up before she comes and barks at me, and I say that jokingly, Vanessa would never bark at me. But I think you get the point of my expectation is if I’m asking you to go communicate at the level you think’s appropriate around how that had played out.
So excellence, ownership, communication, positive attitude is the fourth one. Human spaceflight’s hard. There are days that are great. There are days that aren’t, not saying make the days that aren’t seem great by phoniness, but are you permeated by a positive attitude? I can’t remember if I heard him talk or if I read it in a book, but Colin Powell was talking about when he was joint chief of staff, he was in a, essentially a boardroom, during one of the Gulf Wars where there was a particular battle that wasn’t going well. I can’t remember the exact characteristics, but it was a dire situation to hear him categorize it. And he feels like the positive attitude of one person in the boardroom permeated the boardroom, permeated the command structure, permeated the battle, all because one person had a positive attitude. The opposite is true for negative attitude. And so, will not permit folks on my team that have negative attitudes. And so how do you approach a job with a positive attitude and knowing that’s an expectation?
And so excellence, ownership, communication, positive attitude. The last one is success. Back to my baseball analogy, no starting pitcher. Everyone out expecting to lose. No manager ever sent out a starting pitcher expecting them to lose. We’re expecting people to be successful. So if success is not looking like an outcome, lots of things to question about that are our processes set up? Have we trained? Have we got resources available? But want everybody knowing that that’s the expectation you have for them is to be successful. And so if they’re not being successful, the team’s not being successful, we’ll figure out how to navigate that. A good example that came to mind for me recently, we do this federal employee viewpoint survey, and this was from last year’s, but, again, this year, one of the highest, I’ll say negative inputs was on workload and people feeling burned out. But one of the organizations that had what I’ll say the best score in that area was our Safety and Mission Assurance Directorate, and asked Willie Lyles, you know, why is that, do you think? And it wasn’t that he reduced the workload there, but he was telling our management team, and hopefully I’m recalling this accurately, Willie can correct us, but he had a conversation with his team where he said, “Yeah, we’ve got a lot of work on our table and I’m going to roll up my sleeves and we’re going to get after it together.” And there was this sense of we’re in this together and my manager, my leader’s here to support me. And so Willie just simply taking the time to say, let’s roll up our sleeves. I’m right here with you. They got a little higher score in that area. Now was that attributable to his comments? No idea. But, again, he was out there positive attitude, talking about success was the goal, and just lots about how he handled that I thought were relevant.
Host: I think we have time for one more question. And so a lot of people listening to this are probably not managers or in a leadership position. So what are ways that you can be a leader in your current position without actually having that in your title?
Steve Koerner: Yeah, for me it was a recognition of somebody somewhere was modeling their behavior because of something I was doing, and I’ve already used a parenting analogy, so I’ll use another one. I like watching sporting events on TV, and sometimes I’ll get a little animated talking to the television. And one day, my 2-year-old son didn’t even know I was in the room, and there he was yelling at the TV just like his dad did. I didn’t have intent, that wasn’t intended. And so my reason for mentioning all that is, whether it’s in our title or not, someone is looking at you and doing something the way they do it because they’ve seen it in you. And so you can be intentional about influencing that, or as I was with my son, not intentional and realizing I was perhaps not passing along something I wanted to. But recognize that you are leading someone in something. And so are you intentional about improving as a leader? There’s no pinnacle. You never ascend to the top of the mountain and declare that you’ve got there. You constantly have to work at it. We talked earlier about the environment’s changing. Things are changing. And so be intentional about getting better as a leader. Everybody wins when leaders get better. And so what are ways to do that? Seek feedback. We have a performance appraisal system that is adequate, I would say, I’m not trying to throw judgment at it, but if you simply rely on that, that’s not what I’m talking about. Be intentional about, hey, boss, did you notice that yesterday I changed how I normally did this, thinking it might improve? Did you even see that? Or, you know, seek feedback and welcome the negative feedback.
Some of the best opportunities I’ve got to improve is when someone pointed out something I wasn’t doing well. Now I’d say not to, that’s not to dwell on them, but man, look at them as gifts when someone says, ah, you didn’t do that as well. Okay, thank you. Resist the urge to defend whatever you did. Just say thanks and figure out how to move on. But then maybe, the biggest point is focus on your strengths and continue to get better at them. Don’t rest on those. Trying to think of an example. LeBron James is not out working on his curve ball. I have no idea how he pitches. He may be the world’s worst pitcher, but he doesn’t care. He’s out there working on his shot. You know, and so what are your strengths? Are you getting better at your strengths? Yeah, we’ve all got weaknesses. You determine whether those are hindering you from being successful in the job we’ve asked you to do, but be intentional about developing as a leader. It’s different for our HR department will do a great job trying to lay out certain things you can do, but take ownership of that yourself. Some of that may work for you, some not, but you know, best. And so be intentional about getting better as a leader would be my closing advice.
Host: Well, I think it’s a great point to close on and I really appreciate you coming here and sharing all of your thoughts and your experiences and the encouragement for everyone to lean into developing themselves as a leader. So thank you, Steve.
Steve Koerner: Hey, glad to be here, Leah, thanks for the invite.
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Host: Thanks for sticking around and I hope you learned something new today. If you want to know what else is up with NASA, visit us online at nasa.gov for the latest. You can also continue your audio journey at nasa.gov/podcasts. Reach out to us here at Johnson Space Center on social media, whether that’s Facebook, X, or Instagram, and use #AskNASA on your favorite platform to submit your idea and make sure to mention it’s for Houston We Have a Podcast.
This episode was recorded September 3, 2024. Thanks to Will Flato, Dane Turner, Abby Graf, Jaden Jennings, Gary Jordan, Ashley White, Jasmine Nehilla and Scott Collins. And of course, thanks again to Steve Koerner for taking the time to come on the show. Give us a rating and feedback on whatever platform you’re listening to us on and tell us what you think of our podcast. We’ll be back next week.
This is an Official NASA Podcast.