A Trip to Mars & Lessons About Personality

What the research shows

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‍NASA's decades of research into teams in extreme isolation reveals that the habits, rituals and conditions you build around a team matter far more than who you put in it.

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Source: Landon, L.B., Slack, K.J., & Barrett, J.D. (2018). Teamwork and collaboration in long-duration space missions: Going to extremes. American Psychologist, 73(4), 563–575.

Introduction

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This 2018 paper in American Psychologist synthesises NASA's research into teamwork in long-duration space missions — including the challenges of studying teams under extreme isolation and confinement, and what they've learned about selecting, training and supporting crews headed for Mars. The findings translate directly to any team operating under sustained pressure.

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Key Findings

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• Team orientation is now a top hiring criterion. NASA's astronaut job analysis identified teamwork, communication, leadership, and small group living as among the most critical competencies — rated by experienced astronauts as essential requirements from day one, not skills to develop later.
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• Personality profiles matter — but not how you'd expect. The research-backed profile for long-duration missions includes high emotional stability, moderately high agreeableness, and deliberately avoiding very high extraversion. Situation shapes what any trait means in practice.
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• Fault lines in values are the real danger. Research found that over time, deep-level differences in values and personality become far more disruptive than surface-level differences. Teams that look compatible can fracture along hidden lines under sustained pressure.
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• Debriefs improve team performance by 25%. A meta-analysis cited in the paper found that teams who debrief consistently outperform those who don't — and NASA has built guided debrief tools into missions specifically to surface tension before it becomes conflict.
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• Intact team training is chronically underinvested. Despite years of intensive individual training, NASA astronauts have very few opportunities to train together as a complete crew before launch. The research flags this as a significant risk — and a lesson for any organisation.

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Pull-out Quote

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^{"Regardless of whether an astronaut spends 3 months on the ISS or up to 3 years on a Mars mission, it is clear that teamwork is essential to mission success." — Landon, Slack & Barrett, 2018}

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What We Found Interesting

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The most striking finding isn't about space at all — it's about the gap between individual training and team readiness. NASA invests years in developing individual astronauts, yet crews have almost no structured time to practise working together before a mission. The research is clear that this is a risk. The same gap exists in most organisations: significant investment in individual development, almost none in the team as a functioning unit. The conditions that make teams work — shared rituals, honest debriefs, surfacing values early — don't happen by default. They have to be built deliberately, whether you're heading to Mars or Monday's all-hands.

Disclaimer

Summary prepared by our research team with AI support; video generated using AI based on published research.