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NASA 4-D Leadership Course

The explosion of Space Shuttle Challenger rocked the world and the seven astronaut fatalities and subsequent failed missions led to multiple senate inquiries and the eventual realisation that it was social context, and not technical incompetence, that led to this and other failures. The 4-D leadership course was designed to foster 8 key behaviours that have transformed life at NASA.

About the NASA 4-D Leadership Course

Originally architected by Charlie Pellerin, te former Director of Astrophysics at NASA, the 4-Dimensional Leadership Course is critically different in that it equips leaders to create the social conditions for high performance. Updated with contemporary neuroscientific studies and simulations from the current space program, this leadership framework played a pivotal role in NASA becoming ‘Best Place to Work’ in the federal government for the 13th year in a row (as of May 2025).

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The Experience

Expert practitioners deliver stimulating, immersive and memorable learning experiences, using simulations drawn from the current space program. These transfer readily and are immediately applied to your workplace. Leadership course learnings are exchanged creating rich peer-to-peer learning.

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Leadership Lessons from Frontiers Like Space

Crazy Might Work has updated the NASA 4-Dimensional Leadership Program with contemporary neuroscience and immersive experiences from the current space program. In this episode of the Space Connect podcast, recorded at the Australian Space Summit in May 2024, Paul Hawkins talks to host Adam Thorn about the program.

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Benchmark Against NASA

The 4-D Leadership Course enables organisations to benchmark their teams against over 1,500 NASA project and engineering teams. These comprise astronauts, scientists, engineers and managers. We review the results with you and create a Playbook (based on the NASA version) to operationalise your behavioural insights. Typically, teams improve by 4-5% each time they benchmark the leadership course behaviours.

Acquire 8 Leadership Capabilities

The program develops eight critical leadership capabilities.

1.

Connect a team and create a sense of shared purpose.

2.

Develop individuals relative to their idiosyncratic strengths.

3.

Set and maintain individual boundaries and team standards.

4.

Include appropriately whilst avoiding wasteful over-inclusion.

5.

Align responsibilities, accountabilities, and authorities for autonomy.

6.

Challenge dysfunctional beliefs and behaviours with radical candour.

7.

Acknowledge uncomfortable truths, but transition to an optimistic mission.

8.

Co-create and communicate a collective vision using all four dimensions.

The Benefits You’ll Gain

High Performance

Be equipped with the skills to create psychological safety and high-performing teams.

Alter Social Context

Acquire the ability to recognise and shift teams away from ‘red story lines’ to reality-based optimism.

Be Inspired

Take inspiration from the lessons that made NASA the Best Place to Work in Federal Government for 13 years in a row.

Save Time

Establish high-performing teams without the usual ‘forming’, ‘storming’, ‘norming’ and ‘performing’ dramas.

Immediate Application

Apply these behaviours to your organisation for accreditation and immediate impact.

Who Should Attend?

LEADERS AT ALL LEVELS
You are never too young or too old to master the leadership skills that make teams high-performing.

CHIEF LEARNING OFFICERS
HR
Executives looking for something unique in the leadership development space.

CULTURE TRANSFORMERS
If you think that leaders working with their teams can transform your culture, you are right.

Delivery

The public leadership course runs as 8 x 2 hour modules, delivered virtually, once a week. Organisations running the leadership course internally can customise the cadence and delivery to suit. In both formats, the leadership course is designed to be immersive and experiential, with participants applying new skills to real organisational challenges between sessions.

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Crazy Might Work has won Workforce Initiative of the Year in the Australian Space Awards for our 4-Dimensional Leadership program, initially made famous by NASA. Thank you to all of you who have gone with us on the NASA 4-D Leadership journey. Winning this award will extend the program’s impact internationally and enable us to build better leaders around the globe.

Thank you to all of you who have gone with us on the NASA 4-D Leadership journey. Winning this award will extend the program’s impact internationally and enable us to build better leaders around the globe. The acceptance speech caused a few giggles.

Winner_Seal_Workforce Initiative of the Year

Run the Program In-House

The NASA 4-D Program can be run in-house in face-to-face, virtual or hybrid formats to suit your geographical footprint and operating cadence. This option enables you to benchmark your team against the 1,500 NASA teams that have voluntarily completed the program and use the NASA Playbook to improve team performance exponentially. The ‘team’ can be a leadership group, or leaders working with their own direct reports. Contact us about internalising a program by completing the form.

Upcoming Virtual Public Course

13 Jan – 3 Mar 2026

8 x online 2-hour sessions over 8 weeks on consecutive Tuesdays. All sessions are recorded (for program participants only) so you will not miss any content.

Pricing

$1,999 Per Participant

If you have a discount code, you will be able to enter it on the registration page.

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    What Clients Say About the NASA 
4-Dimensional Leadership Course

    “

    Lots of take home messages to apply in the workplace.

    ParticipantHETI
    “

    The facilitators were very engaging and clearly were well versed in the NASA 4-D Leadership Course. The program was very relevant for understanding how to achieve a high performing teams and the tools discussed provided good ways to achieve this outcome for our team.

    ParticipantHETI
    “

    Access the NASA playbook on how to innovate and create an open culture of learning - and have some fun. This workshop is one of the best I've done, period. Deeply insightful, regenerative and providing tools that deliver the leadership narrative necessary for managing a new era of digital talent.

    Senior Sales DirectorVMware
    “

    The NASA 4D program helped to articulate and present what many of us know intuitively to be important to help performing teams. Bringing these to the surface and providing a framework for building high performance teams purposefully will be a practice I will take into the future.

    Executive LeaderListed Property Group
    “

    The NASA 4-D Leadership Program is truly unique as it helps leaders understand and then shape their context through the application of 8 key behaviours. The upfront leadership benchmarking provided the important baseline from which to build, whilst the exercises were engaging and unique. Who doesn’t want to pretend they’re an astronaut for a day or so? 4-D was an investment in self-development and inspiration, and one that I would recommend to other leaders wishing to build high performing teams.

    Chief Technology OfficerListed Property Group
    “

    Having studied Leadership for many years, the NASA 4-D Leadership Program was an amazing life changing journey, helping me to build better teams and navigate the most hostile environments I could imagine. The program brought together a group of intelligent professionals and challenged them to see the world differently. The logical pathway from building people to developing them into a team and designing strong systems to create the ideas to drive progress makes sense and I have been applying it to my everyday life. I can’t highly recommend this excellent program enough. Now I just need my own rocket!

    Former CommanderRaptor Squad (Australian Organised Crime Unit)
    “

    Thank you to the team at Crazy Might Work for the last 2 months of fantastic insights into NASA's 4-Dimensional Leadership Course, which equips leaders and high-performing teams with the ability to create the social conditions for high performance. Lots of learnings and practical examples and such a fun and different way of facilitating professional learning. Excellent course!

    Head of Corporate StrategyLeading Private Health Insurer
    “

    If you seriously want to learn new ways of working and are willing to think outside the inherent norms most teams operate under, you will definitely learn a lot from the course.

    ParticipantHETI
    “

    The NASA 4-D leadership course came at a perfect time for me as I’m building a new team and I was able to immediately use the lessons and tools. I felt we were already on track to become a high performing team, but this course gave ownership to our individual team members and I think that will make us a high performing team for a very long time. The course materials were relevant, professional, and engaging and I enjoyed learning about my incredible classmates’ challenges. Though the class was virtual, I really felt connected through the discussion and exercises.

    MajorUS Military
    “

    We didn’t just talk about leadership; we lived it. Astronaut selection drills, mission simulations, the kind of immersive exercises that make you forget you’re learning until you feel the shift in how you lead. Six hours that felt like weeks of growth.The premise was simple but powerful: that high-performing teams aren’t born from brilliance, but from behaviour. From how we listen, include, and show up for each other when things get uncomfortable. It’s rare to see a leadership model so deeply human, one that values psychological safety and accountability as much as technical skill.

    Space EngineerLuxembourg

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