{"id":550356,"date":"2026-06-23T17:01:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-23T17:01:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/550356\/"},"modified":"2026-06-23T17:01:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T17:01:11","slug":"nasa-backed-study-reveals-key-to-teamwork-under-pressure-msutoday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/550356\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA-backed study reveals key to teamwork under pressure\u00a0 | MSUToday"},"content":{"rendered":"

Whether it\u2019s to the moon or Mars, a NASA mission requires some essential preparations: designing and developing the spacecraft, astronaut training and safety checks, clear goals, and strategies and procedures for maintaining communication between crews on Earth and in space.<\/p>\n

\"ProfessionalDorothy R. Carter, associate professor of management in the MSU Broad College of Business. Credit: Harley J. Seeley.<\/p>\n

Dorothy R. Carter<\/a>, associate professor of management<\/a> in the Michigan State University Eli Broad College of Business<\/a>, studies leadership and teamwork within organizations. She received funding from NASA for a collaborative project called Project FUSION, or Facilitating Unified Systems of Interdependent Organizational Networks, analyzing how to understand and mitigate communication delays between Mission Control on Earth and a crew of astronauts on a mission to Mars. <\/p>\n

\u201cNASA realized the collaboration for a long-duration mission, like sending a team of humans to Mars, goes far beyond just the members of the crew on the spacecraft. The astronauts have to continue to collaborate with many people on Earth,\u201d Carter said. \u201cTo do that effectively requires a large, collaborative \u2014 or \u2018multiteam\u2019 \u2014 system.\u201d<\/p>\n

To conduct this study, Carter and her team collaborated with research volunteers living and working inside NASA\u2019s human exploration space analog, or HERA, capsule at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Participants in in the Kesseler Team Leadership Laboratory at Michigan State University acted as Mission Control for the HERA \u2018astronauts\u2019 in real-time simulations with different degrees of communication delays. The team then ran the data collected through the simulations through a computer model to mimic a larger sample.<\/p>\n

The Project FUSION research team identified \u201ccollective attention\u201d \u2014 when multiple people from different disciplines focus their attention on the same issue at the same time \u2014 as the key mechanism for large, complex, multi-team organizations to problem-solve effectively. Carter\u2019s research, recently published in the journal Personnel Psychology<\/a>, is the first study to directly position collective attention as the central link between communication delays and team performance. <\/p>\n

\"ExternalThe Human Exploration Research Analog, or HERA, at Johnson Space Center is used to help astronauts study and prepare for future space missions. Courtesy: NASA.<\/p>\n

\u201cCommunication delays disrupt collective attention dramatically. It\u2019s just more difficult for us to focus on the same thing at the same time when we can\u2019t communicate with one another in real time,\u201d said Carter. <\/p>\n

Carter and her team are producing a set of countermeasure recommendations to help large, complex organizations such as NASA deal with disruptions in collective attention more effectively. They found that interventions that target someone\u2019s experience level with a task (capacity), address message simplicity (clarity) and create a sense of shared leadership among team members (connectivity) can help preserve collective attention in situations with delayed communication. <\/p>\n

\"PersonA HERA crew member participating in a simulated mission to Mars. Courtesy: NASA.<\/p>\n

\u201cBased on our research, there are many different interventions that we think could help support collective attention, even during periods of communication delay,\u201d said Carter. \u201cSome examples include developing trust between members of Mission Control and the crew in space before the mission takes off, trainings on how to speak simply and clearly, engaging in structured debriefing processes and communication protocols, and getting a sense of everyone\u2019s strengths and weaknesses to know who is best positioned to take charge in certain scenarios.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ultimately, Carter\u2019s findings suggest that sustaining collective attention in high-stakes, distributed environments requires intentional design, both in how teams are trained and how they interact. <\/p>\n

\u201cTeams should be prepared to think clearly, communicate in simple ways and build strong connections with each other. These steps help everyone stay focused on the same goals, even when communication is broken up or delayed,\u201d Carter said. \u201cThese ideas also help us better understand how teams work across time and distance and provide a starting point for helping them succeed in challenging, high-pressure environments.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Whether it\u2019s to the moon or Mars, a NASA mission requires some essential preparations: designing and developing the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":550357,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[77],"tags":[127958,152391,235819,235820,18,145459,235824,235829,44948,19,17,235823,13566,191177,235817,235821,1024,235816,235826,235822,235828,235827,133,235825,27392,235818],"class_list":["post-550356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-artemis-ii","tag-astronaut-training","tag-collective-attention","tag-communication-delays","tag-eire","tag-hera","tag-high-stakes-environments","tag-human-exploration-research-analog","tag-human-spaceflight","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-leadership-in-teams","tag-michigan-state-university","tag-mission-control","tag-msu-research","tag-multiteam-systems","tag-nasa","tag-nasa-study","tag-nasa-funded-research","tag-organizational-behavior","tag-performance-under-pressure","tag-project-fusion","tag-science","tag-space-communication-lag","tag-space-missions","tag-teamwork-under-pressure"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=550356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550356\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/550357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=550356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=550356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=550356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}