What the Artemis II Crew Knows About Leadership That Most Leaders Don't
From watercooler talk to Mission Control: integrity is either building trust or eroding it, and it's happening whether you're paying attention or not.
Today, we celebrate the safe and precise splashdown of the Artemis II crew and Orion capsule Integrity after a successful mission flying around the moon. Mondays have always been my favorite day and I’m coasting into this week powered by Moon Joy, the collective and curious term that became a catchphrase on the capsule communication channels over the last ten days as we watched our four favorite astronauts.
I’ve been thinking specifically about the incredible opportunity it’s been to listen to the livestreams, experience the unique moments, and share in the collective joy of everyone tuning in to the NASA livestreams worldwide. People have posited that we’re not just riding on a high of scientific exploration and discovery, but that we observers are transfixed with the sheer competency on display from everyone involved. Competency that feels rare and, for a generation that grew up after the Apollo era, genuinely new.
But would you believe me if I told you that that experience could be every Monday? Or Tuesday? Or every week?
No doubt you’re already familiar with the term “integrity,” but we each apply different ethical or moral filters to its definition. Removing the ethical or moral bias, integrity is simply the positive workability of a thing. A thing works to deliver its function or it doesn’t. When a thing works, it builds trust; when it doesn’t work, it erodes trust.
In a Harvard Business Review interview, Michael C. Jensen shared that integrity is “honoring your word” to create workability. What we observed with the Artemis II crew and support teams was a public demonstration of incredibly high integrity built on a foundation of high trust.
Think about it: the crew in the capsule had to trust that a listening ear in Houston was always ready to respond with critical information. Operations teams on the ground had to trust that the crew was executing specific checklists and procedures as trained.
Extremely high levels of trust existed in both directions. Why? Because the preparation and training first created something on which to agree. Then each of the crew members in space or on the ground made commitments to guide how they interacted with the training, checklists, and each other. Because everyone delivered on those commitments, the workability of the plan was high, and we saw the incredible integrity on display for the whole world to admire.
Building this trust and developing this level of integrity began years ago as each person committed to developing their unique abilities and pursuing interesting, diverse experiences. It continued through every research project, crew application, training program, and test exercise. They were, clearly, people who kept their word at every point along the way. We saw what years of operating with high integrity actually produces: a demonstration of what humans are capable of when they honor their commitments consistently.
In The Speed of Trust, Stephen M.R. Covey argues that one of the fastest ways to restore trust is to make and keep commitments—even very small commitments—to ourselves and to others. Trust creates an invitation forward; the lack of trust encourages distance. When things need to move forward, you need to have built prior trust.
How would your leadership survive a 24/7 livestream of all your activities and communications? Would the world be as inspired by what you’re committed to and how well you keep your word? Would your integrity on display motivate your team toward the vision you’re asking them to believe in?
Here’s the truth: your team, your boss, and your coworkers already have a front-row seat to how well you keep your word. Every time you walk into the conference room 3 minutes late or every email you send at 5:08 PM to technically meet a deadline is a demonstration of your integrity level.
In fact, I propose that the most dangerous landmine to your integrity is hiding behind a friendly face: office camaraderie. I can tell you this from personal experience. I’m wired to create connections everywhere, and I’m also extremely present wherever I am. This is a minefield for integrity because it’s super easy for me to make a commitment like “yeah, I’ll send that when I get back to my desk,” or “sure, I’ll make that warm connection for you,” only to hop back into the present conversation. By the time I get back to my desk, I’ve long forgotten and it doesn’t surface in my brain until 11:49 PM three days later. Which means that every hallway conversation is a trust transaction you didn’t know you were making. How does that reframe how you view watercooler talk? This is exactly the kind of invisible pattern I wrote about in “Your Greatest Strength Is Quietly Working Against You.”
Once I became aware of this, I added a note widget to my iPhone screen so that I can quickly capture anything that arises in conversation. People feel the commitment differently when they watch me write it down. I’ve built trust even before delivering because they saw my word become an action item, increasing both my accountability and their belief that I’ll deliver on my word.
If you cringe at the thought of living your life on display for the world to see like NASA, I have good news. You control your level of integrity. You can improve it by increasing the level to which you keep your word. If you’re like most people — human — we can assume that you don’t keep your word 100% of the time. This means there’s always capacity for growth. Think about it: if you make ten commitments to someone and deliver nine of them, can they trust that you deliver all your commitments? What happens when you make ten commitments and keep all ten? They trust you. They don’t articulate it as workability, but they feel it, and they act on it. By rigorously keeping your word, your perceived and real integrity grows, your trust account balance increases, and you create more forward momentum toward your goals.
What we didn’t see on the NASA livestream were last-minute decisions to enter high-performance just for this project. What we saw was a lifetime of small commitments compounding into something extraordinary.
Here’s a quick way for you to improve your integrity this week: find one commitment you haven’t honored. Honor it this week — late, with an explanation, and without excuses. That’s where integrity and trust rebuild.
By dialing your integrity level up, you accomplish more than you thought possible, sooner than you expected, and find it more fulfilling than you anticipated.
Every Monday can feel like that. You can live every day and every week with the same level of integrity as our new Favorite Four™ and experience all the Moon Joy you can handle.
The trust and integrity you build now, before your next role, team, or high-stakes moment, is the trust you’ll have available when you need it most.
The leaders who build this kind of trust before they need it are the ones doing the harder work of leading from who they are, not just what they know.
Let’s talk about the trust you’re building right now →
Aaron Ott is an executive coach who helps leaders promoted for expertise become the leader the role actually requires. He spent 19 years navigating the expert-to-leader transition in the non-profit and for-profit spaces. His coaching practice is built on one belief: you’re not stuck and you’re not a fraud — you’re in the most important career transition nobody prepared you for. He lives in Omaha, Nebraska with his wife, Sarah, who is a non-profit operations leader, author, and writing coach. This article is 100% human created. AI-created content variants may help publicize this piece.