Chris Hadfield

Obstacles are a natural part of accomplishing significant outcomes. A leader deals with obstacles by viewing them as an opportunity to demonstrate their readiness to handle a difficult situation. It’s how we face adversity that defines us as a leader. As a professor at Durham College, the challenges that I might face on a daily basis are: How do I get my students more engaged in a specific topic? What is my backup plan if the network goes down during an electronic test? How can I get someone to come to class more? These are all small issues that I face every day. However, my issues could be vastly different than those of someone else. This was nowhere more evident to me then last night when I had the pleasure of listing to Chris Hadfield deliver a key note speech at the OCCCIO conference in London Ontario. 

Chris Hadfield is a recently retired Canadian astronaut and former commander of the International Space Station (Hadfield, 2015a). Chris is not only a well renowned leader but a hero to millions of Canadians. One of the stories that Chris spoke about last night highlights his leadership style and speaks to the character traits that make him so special. In May of 2013, while Chris was the commander of the space station, one of the astronauts detected something he described to Chris as looking like small white flakes coming from the exterior of the station. Upon examining the situation they discovered that it was an ammonia leak and while it posed no immediate danger to the crew inside, it was vital to the cooling of the electrical system and, if left unchecked, would be an end game event. Chris immediately sprang into action and took control of the situation. All of the training he had done for years was now paying off. He gave orders to his crew, contacted NASA, and very soon a plan of action was put into effect. A spacewalk, which would typically take a week to plan, was ordered for the next day. The spacewalkers would determine the extent of the leak and, if all went well, repair it. Well, as history will attest, the leak was repaired and a potentially devastating situation was averted thanks to the quick thinking of the space crew (Hadfield, 2015b).

So what type of skills or traits were demonstrated by Chris during this task? First and foremost was how well prepared the astronauts were for exactly this type of situation. As Chris would later tweet the following during a similar event in 2015, “I lost count of the number of times that we practiced this exact procedure in the simulators in Houston. Serious risk requires serious prep.” (Hadfield, 2015c) Part of being a great leader requires being prepared for the worst. There are a number of traits that I can point to as to why Chris was so prepared for this situation. He showed intelligence, alertness, self-confidence, initiative, responsibility, drive, motivation, and problem solving. But traits are something that Chris believes are specific to the context of the situation at hand. Without saying so directly, Chris is a strong advocate of the contingency theory. In an interview with the Fall 2013 issue of Bridges Magazine, when asked what made a good leader he said “It depends on the purpose of the leader at the time. If the building’s on fire, you want one kind of leader. … If you’re trying to raise your children, or teach people values, that’s a different type of leader. Personality traits I think are very specific to the task you’re trying to lead the people to do.” (Remesy, 2013). Chris is great example of Ralph Stogdill's trait theory of leadership whereby great leaders share many common traits and although the traits may vary by a little from leader to leader, there are inborn characteristics which are common to all leaders such as intelligence, self-confidence and determination (Stogdill, 1974).

Chris also made the point to mention that he was on the space station with 5 extremely competent people and that his relationship with those people was a key part of being a great leader (Hadfield, 2015b). “As soon as you are given the task of leading another human being to do something, or a group of people, do your best to build a basis of experience with them, as early and as deep and as broad as you can.” (Remesy, 2013) What this tells me is that Chris has a strong relationship style of leadership. He is very concerned with the wellbeing of his crewmates, is a strong communicator, as evidenced by his ability to handle the situation, and he shows a lot of trust in his fellow workers. Clearly, part of this trust is due to his building relationships with his team. 

So when you contrast the obstacles that some leaders face and you compare them to your own you may find that your own challenges aren’t so bad and also not so different. So how can I learn from Chris bring this forth to my current job? I can be prepared for that network outage by creating a soft copy of every test. I can get to know my students better to find out what interests them to make my lectures more in line their interests.  And maybe this will help some of my students to actually show up for class…maybe!

References

Hadfield, C. (2015a). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 23:32, May 22, 2015, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chris_Hadfield&oldid=662613868

Hadfield, C. (2015b). Leadership, Teamwork & Collaboration. Speech presented at Fanshawe College. London, Ontario, May 21, 2015.

Hadfield, C. [Cmdr_Hadfield]. (2015c, January 14). I lost count of the number of times that we practiced this exact procedure in the simulators in Houston. Serious risk requires serious prep [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/Cmdr_Hadfield/status/555351861554053120

Remesy, N. (2013). Q & A with Chris Hadfield. Retrieved from Thompson Rivers University, May 21, 2015: http://inside.tru.ca/wp‑content/uploads/2013/12/TRU_BRIDGES_118168_web-big.pdf

Stogdill, R. (1974). Handbook of Leadership: A survey of theory and research. New York: Free Press