How NASA builds teams : mission critical soft skills for scientists, engineers, and project teams / Charles J. Pellerin.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 249-251) and index.

Understanding and analyzing context. Think you can ignore context? Hubble's flawed mirror might wake you up -- Managing social context manages technical performance -- The 4-D system : a simple tool to analyze team and individual performance -- Using 4-D assessments and representative results from NASA. The 4-D assessment process -- NASA's 4-D teambuilding results -- 4-D diagnostics : how to color code your team's context. Using the 4-D system to color your personalities -- Using the 4-D system to analyze culture -- Incoherent project mindset colors? Update your resume -- Shifting the context. The context shifting worksheet (CSW) -- Red story-lines limit team performance -- Manage your emotions to manage your team's energy -- People need to feel appreciated by you -- Mine the gold in your shared interests -- People need to feel included by you -- Building trustworthy contexts -- Creating the future you want -- Your team cant afford drama -- Don't put good people in bad places -- Hubble's legacy.

To improve communication, performance, and morale among NASA's technical teams, the author (a former NASA astrophysicist) developed the "4-D" teambuilding process described in this book. Relying on simple, logical processes that appeal strongly to technical teams who eschew "touchy-feely" training, the author applies simple, elegant principles from his physics background to the art of teambuilding. For example, he uses a coordinate system to analyze the characteristics of team performance into actionable elements. He also 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.