Astronaut Chris Hadfield on Readiness in a Crisis

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield is a renowned astronaut. In 1992, the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) assigned Colonel Chris Hadfield to the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. He became NASA’s Chief CapCom for twenty-five space shuttle missions. NASA selected Colonel Hadfield as a NASA Mission Specialist, and three years later, he was aboard the Shuttle Atlantis, where he helped build the Mir space station. In 2001, on the Shuttle Endeavour, Colonel Hadfield performed two spacewalks, and in 2013, he became Commander of the International Space Station (ISS) for six months off the planet. Colonel Hadfield continues to bring the marvels of science and space exploration to everyone he encounters.

Readiness is the state of preparedness. Career readiness, for example, refers to the foundation of higher education or a mix of experience that prepares a person for a particular career path. Readiness also describes the ability and willingness to perform a task at the highest level with clarity and precision in an emergency situation. To achieve this state of mind, you need to have the training and confidence to make and execute sound decisions.

“There are certain professions, astronaut being one of them, where the stakes are life or death. You have to keep yourself and your crew at a peak level of readiness to deal with things going wrong; I took that as one of my big responsibilities as the commander. . . . Something I learned a long time ago was your life is a process of getting ready for when things go wrong. Getting ready for when something happens out of the blue and you suddenly have to take action now—when you don’t have time to ask somebody else.” — Chris Hadfield

In 2013, Expedition 35 to the International Space Station experienced an emergency. The crew discovered a leaking ammonia coolant, and Commander Chris Hadfield acted fast to avert disaster. “One of the worst emergencies on a spaceship is the ammonia breakthrough because if you get one big lung full of ammonia, that could be the last breath you’ll ever take,” Chris says. Consider his tips for preparedness:

1. 1. Be confident. Trust your training when a crisis arises to help you manage your emotions. “It’s [about] years of preparation, years of training. . .so that you don’t get all keyed up with peaks and valleys of emotions of things that might potentially happen,” Chris says. “But you have a deep reserve of competence and confidence so that you can do something that seems. . .hairy or wild and do it with assuredness—that is actually what you would prefer. No one wants a nervous surgeon.”
2. 2. Move quickly. A key aspect of preparedness is your ability and willingness to act promptly. “If you’ve done the work [and] if you have built up a certain set of skills, then at some point, you need to be able to act on it,” he says. “And don’t dither. Don’t prevaricate. Just trust yourself. Decide, and move forward with the comfort of your own decision-making.”
3. 3. Study the situation. Make sure you perform a readiness assessment after the fact. “When you finish something, look back and debrief it, at least to yourself, if not with everybody else involved,” Chris says. For his part, his ability to handle the ammonia crisis on the spaceship came as a result of ongoing learning, a part of his readiness toolkit. “I’ve not only survived that one,” he says, “but I’ve learned some things from it so that when the next crisis comes along, I’ll be even better able to hopefully prevail and win and fix the new spaceship—however it chooses to break.”

When an emergency arises, quick thinking can make all the difference. Get the MasterClass Annual Membership for exclusive access to hundreds of classes, including Crisis Story, where Chris Voss, Chris Hadfield, and others share how they took decisive action when it mattered most.