Episode 293 Transcript:

[00:00:00] Welcome to episode 293 of The Manager Track Podcast. Today I’m joined by Brady Pile. He’s a leader with a very interesting career in the HR space. Brady spent nearly three decades at NASA where he led major organizational changes.

He built leadership development systems. And shaped how an innovative institution like NASA thinks about talent. He earned multiple leadership awards during his time there, including NASA’s outstanding leadership medal, which tells you a lot about the caliber of his impact.

He’s now the Chief Human Resources and Inclusion Officer at Space Center Houston, and the author of Out of This World Leadership, a book where he distills hard earned lessons from navigating high stakes environments and complex change.

I’m excited to dig into his perspective on leadership, culture, people development, and really what he learned from building systems inside, one of the most scrutinized [00:01:00] technical and mission critical organizations out there. So without further ado, let’s welcome Brady to the Manager Track podcast. Here are the two questions. This podcast answers. One, how do you successfully transition into your first official leadership role? And two, how do you keep climbing that leadership ladder and continuously get promoted, 

although the competition and the expectations get bigger. This show with a manager track podcast will provide the answers. I’m your host, Ramona Shaw. 

I’m on a mission to create workplaces where work is seen as a source of contribution, connection and personal fulfillment. And this transition starts with developing a new generation of leaders who know how to lead. So everyone wins and gross. In the show, you’ll learn how to think, communicate and act as a confident and competent leader. 

 You can be. 

Brady, thanks so much for being on the Manager Track podcast. It’s wonderful to have you on.

It’s a pleasure to be here. Ramona, excited for [00:02:00] our conversation.

I wanna dive right in. So, as you know, in the introduction, I mentioned that you worked at nasa. Uh. We all know that NASA went through a pretty big sort of, I wanna say reorg, not necessarily, but change over the last decade or so. You were right there in the midst of that. And I’d love to start out a conversation talking about your experience going through a pretty big shift in transformation.

tell us a little bit about your role and your experience through all of this.

Yeah, so NASA for 60 years, uh, was very decentralized. We have 10. Field locations around the United States, each of those locations had its own mission support functions, so hr, finance, procurement, all those functions reported to the local field center directors. in 2018, NASA made the decision to move to a functional model. all of HR needed to be managed [00:03:00] centrally as a function. Role at that point shifted from being the local center HR director at the Johnson Space Center in Houston to HR services director responsible for the 10 field centers. and it was a massive change. The, decision was made at the top of nasa, not all of the center. Leadership agreed with the change or was aligned with the change. So that made it extremely difficult to work, through issues and challenges with local customers who didn’t agree with the change to begin with, and try to get alignment of the HR team throughout. So it was very challenging 

Just to clarify, when you say local customers, you’re referring to employees or leadership in the local offices,

Leader

at each of those 10 field locations and the employees as well. So NASA’s workforce and leadership are dispersed across those 10 field locations.

Reflecting on that [00:04:00] time going through such a massive change. are you, maybe one or two key lessons learned 

The, I see one the criticality of alignment if, the top leadership had really aligned the center leadership around the change it would’ve made a lot of our jobs implementing that change a lot easier from the HR function, other functions. We were all struggling because the changes we were trying to make locally to service delivery being resistant by those local leaders.

They weren’t in alignment with the, change and the change strategy, that was one element that a huge. and observation from that change. A another is just the criticality of alignment of the team of the HR team around that change and making sure that we were all pointed in the same direction that frankly was, easier to do than the leadership and customer alignment.

A. Leaders [00:05:00] know, okay, alignment is important. We’re trying to get agreement. But then there’s always this question between. If someone doesn’t agree with the change, it maybe it goes totally against what incentivizes them. They have to do something that actually is not beneficial to them, and they’re not incentivized to do, but they’re supposed to go along with it.

What have you found works when someone truly has to do something for the bigger good? The broader mission, or because headquarter believes it’s better for the bigger organization, but to them personally, it’s actually going. Against what would be good for them.

Yeah, I think in our case at nasa, part of the reason the top leadership made the decision was NASA was in a flat budget profile. And so the thought was, Hey, we need to save money in our mission support functions and support areas so we can pour more money directly into mission That at the top line argument I think everyone would agree with, and everyone would, [00:06:00] rally around, but there wasn’t enough work done to really kinda rally everyone around that concept.

So previously before the change. Our operations were optimized to support each field center. you’re moving from optimized local operation to optimizing across the whole agency which by definition is gonna suboptimize at each location. Without that buy-in to that larger reason why for the change we all struggled because the, leaders weren’t really rallying to the reasons behind the change. Even though my perspective, my conversations with them it was the obvious thing that we needed to do to pour more money into mission and make sure that we were going further in, in space exploration than we could otherwise.

The, good thing for NASA is that there is a really compelling mission and that’s there that people can rally around. going through something like this, but also having the [00:07:00] responsibility that you had to oversee all of those different field offices, which is pretty significant.

How has your own leadership changed and like how, did you feel like you upleveled and grew and changed your mind on what leadership entails and how to do it Well.

So one, one of the lessons I took from from an early frontline leader when I first stepped into leadership, I felt like. My responsibility was to set the vision for the team and, to really be ahead of the team. What I quickly learned with my team as a frontline leader is. My team had ideas and they wanted to be engaged.

They wanted to shape that vision. so fortunately I’d had that experience early on. And so when I came into this role a lot of what the work that we did as a team was to really shape that vision together. How should we operate as a, single entity? What were the best solutions, the best ideas happening at each field [00:08:00] location, and how do we bring those to bear for the whole organization going forward?

That was one, one thing that, that I learned, I would say a learning throughout the process was, Just receiving constant feedback from my team about frankly, things that I was missing, things that I was messing up on, things that I wasn’t communicating effectively either with them or with the customer. and so having in place good feedback loops that were frequent enough. We were learning together. This is a, again, a massive change for how we were doing business and needed to be in a learning posture as we move forward through the change.

This is so interesting that from what you pointing out as lesson learned, it’s really that feedback and that openness to feedback that makes, it all possible. I was on a call this morning debriefing a 360 program and. These are leaders who were earlier on in their leadership career.

And I [00:09:00] realized like in this moment as we were sitting there, which by the way there were all some senior leaders who were part of the, call that when we received this, feedback that can feel tough, but it opens up this bit of a catalyst to growth those moments while sometimes uncomfortable.

They’re not one-off incidents, right? They keep happening and there’s no way to continue to grow as a leader then without going through these like moments of tough feedback, recovering from them and then being stronger. It’s almost going to the gym or competing or something where you really stretch yourself.

It’s uncomfortable, but then you recover and you’re better off.

Yeah, totally. I, think you’re describing very well my personal experience. When things are going well and, times are good, and, people are patting you on the back and saying, good job. You don’t tend to grow as much as those times where you’re really pushing and stretching and making mistakes. NASA at one point our culture was heavily influenced [00:10:00] by the, failure as a not an option theme.

Was huge for NASA back in the sixties of, the Apollo 13 mission. There’s a, movie that, that Tom Hanks plays and stars in around that. and that unfortunately permeated a lot of our culture.

The failure is not an option and there’s a lot of NASA that we need to press forward in research and development really experiment with things. So we had to do some things very intentionally. To change that culture. We had to recognize when people were leaning forward and failing smart.

We had to provide awards and recognition. We had to show how people were promoted after failure and how that worked in the system. And so that’s another element of the culture that was big for us moving forward as well. I think it having a learning culture where you’re, trying new things experimenting it was a big part of the change for us.

In addition to those cultural components, were there any other personal [00:11:00] like routines or practices you used or integrated to solicit feedback, especially as you move up as a leader, the further up you go, the less feedback you received.

So you talked about 360 degree feedback. One of the observations I’ve had over the years is that as a leader. I always pay close attention to what my boss says, pay close attention to my team, and then a little less attention to my peers. And an important realization in, my leadership journey of the importance of peer observation and feedback. And in this change. I had peers in other functions outside of HR who were doing the same thing, and I would periodically meet with them and get their observations and their ideas as well, which gave me another source of, feedback and information, that was very valuable. The other, practices I did, I would have regular meetings, of course with. HR executives in the [00:12:00] field who reported to me. as part of that, we would talk about how things were going, but also observations or feedback did they have for me about the overall system or if they were, in my shoes or in my position what were some of their priorities be your areas of focus.

So I’ve got a lot of feedback from my team, similar conversations, certainly with my boss, but then also with the peers as well. I think that 360 degree view is critical.

I, can’t even begin to share how much growth personally myself. I’ve gone through it, but also how often I observe this as being the person who facilitates those three sixties. What a catalyst it is. Like truly it opens up so much growth that otherwise we would have missed.

Yeah,

Absolutely.

You mentioned something really interesting. You talked about the cultural aspect there of Yeah, we’re not failing. Having excellence as a value and deeply ingrained in the, culture. [00:13:00] Part of this is also applying then to leadership, but how do we lead and how do we hire people who fulfill these criteria or match the values.

What has been your learning in hiring people that culture fit that you’re just alluded to or match the values? And then what advice would you have for leaders? Who wanna know what makes HR ZA great leader in me? What are those aspects that they’re gonna look at?

From a, value perspective excellence is a huge value at nasa. As you mentioned teamwork is as well. So when, we’re hiring for people, we look for people who only have a strong track record of results, whether they’re coming out of university we look at not only what they did in their, studies and in their grades. How did they balance that with other responsibilities? And what did that look like? How did they show up in volunteer [00:14:00] activities and other things? And then how did they work with others? Because a huge part of NASA is. Teams coming together to solve problems or even the astronauts flying together to new destinations and they’re, they’re together in a tin cans.

So they’ve gotta, they’ve gotta live together and work together very closely. And there’s not an option to get outside, if you will. So that permeates the NASA culture the idea of teamwork. And we look at, in the hiring process and in the interview process, we consider too how the candidates are treating people like the receptionists or if there’s medical evaluation, the nurses who may not be directly involved in an interview, but how are they treating them as members of the team. And so we’re making an assessment there as well. And then looking for that excellence. a leader perspective, one of the big challenges we saw at NASA is that, you do really well at NASA being a technical [00:15:00] organization. If you achieve technical results and you, get things done, Largely because of your technical expertise, you move forward and you may move into a leadership role, then a pivot needs to happen. Instead of you having all the answers, you’ve gotta figure out how to develop those answers and develop your team for technical solutions. So you’ve gotta pivot into more of a coaching mindset where you’re. Asking questions rather than giving answers. So your whole career, you’ve been promoted and moved forward based on having the answers and knowing how to solve problems. And then now you’ve gotta bring that out of your team. So it’s a big pivot and it, we really try to teach coaching skills to our leaders to bring out the best in their teams.

What happens if someone doesn’t? Go along with that shift. They’re not able to make it, or they’re, delaying the process.

So one of the things we found too is that it was important to have a dual career ladder. So have, a ladder where you can be a [00:16:00] chief engineer, a chief scientist and move up in your career without being in a managerial or executive level role leading people. So you could reach an executive level role in a technic. Domain technical expertise. And so that was an important juncture when NASA really pushed that dual career ladder because, prior to that, people had been forced into people leadership really weren’t well suited to it. And it was hurting the, larger organization as a result. So the creation of these senior. Scientists, senior engineers. And that career path really, helped in that regard. And so a lot of cases it’s, figuring out an individual, with the individual’s leader, what is the right career path is. Is the individual more suited to a technical career path or a people leadership career path? and it’s really hard to find that blend of expertise and [00:17:00] good people leadership when you, find that it’s, very valuable.

You speak about the patterns here or a pattern with not making that shift. What are some other patterns that you’ve noticed in leaders where, someone’s career in as a leader in a leadership career, their career path stalls.

Yeah, I’ve seen it happen when either back to what I was just talking about, either they’re at the place where they feel like they have all the answers and so they’re not growing the team. They’re also not out looking for, new solutions. I know there was one point at the Johnson Space Center, we had a leader who came in and said, that the organization was known as a having a not invented here attitude. If, the idea didn’t come from the Johnson Space Center, it wasn’t a good one. leader actually forced his leaders to do at least two external benchmarking visits with other similar organizations or companies. from [00:18:00] them and then, come back and report to him how you were going to leverage the findings or the ideas.

So he wanted to promote that, environment of learning and of external benchmarking as well. So that’s one notion. I think when leaders stop, learning stop seeking new ideas. They, stall as well. So either they have the attitude of, I have all the answers I know everything I need to know. And or yeah, I’m not really willing to seek new ideas or new perspectives. that’s frankly when it’s time for that leader’s leader to have a hard conversation around it’s time to move on. You, need a different leader to come in.

This is such an interesting one, and I see this so often. It’s exactly the thing that we think we’re already good at. That we then stop to challenge or to study or try to get better at. And then before we know it, we actually don’t stay [00:19:00] great. If we think we’re great, we’re actually over time starting to decline because we ignore it, we pay more attention to everything else.

And that thing comes last ’cause we feel so comfortable with it. And it could be around the technical aspect. It oftentimes is around presenting or speaking or communicating strategy. And leaders find no, this is, I’m doing great at that. I don’t need to look at it. It’s whoa, wait a second.

Is that true? And just because you’re great at it, does that really mean you need to stop learning and stop looking at it or preparing for it or doing all of that and the people who are actually great and continue to be great over time when I speak to them and I look like behind the curtains, they’re all super committed to learning all the time.

Yeah. And I, think that’s because reality is if you’re great today, it’s at today’s level. tomorrow, two years from now, three years from now, that level is going to continue to rise. So if you’re not learning and growing, you’re not meeting the [00:20:00] level. That greatness has evolved to. A couple of things we did at NASA to, really hit at the, points that you’re talking about. One is as, an HR leader I would actually seek out reverse mentoring relationships. So I would go for very junior folks in the organization maybe who had just started or, I’ve been here a few years and I would have conversations with them in a, formal mentoring relationship about, how were our workforce communications, getting to them, how are they hearing the priorities that we had as our organization about the values and the culture. And, it was. impactful to kinda hear their perspectives and their advice on what they would do to communicate to themselves and their peers. so that was, one technique I think that we used very well. One of the things we pushed here at Space Center Houston, we pushed at NASA as well, is to get out there [00:21:00] to conferences and understand. What’s going on with the state of the art, whether it’s an HR conference, a whatever your field or your discipline. We have a lot of, conferences that apply to the museum field or the, attractions field that apply to our folks here at Space Center Houston. So get out there, make sure you’re staying in tune with the state of the art so you can continue to elevate your game.

I wanna emphasize your, the importance here of what you said with the practices and those routines that you built in to make sure that this actually happens. And how important it is to incentivize on a bigger level, right? That this type of environment and mindset starts to trickle through the entire organization is, does not just sporadic because some leader naturally tends to be this way, but to actually cultivate it and align in incentives.

Yeah let me add Ramona to bring it to mind. An interesting story from nasa. At one point, we had a team of employees who came together to kinda refresh our formal [00:22:00] mentoring program they actually developed the, brand called Yoda. After the Star Wars character opportunity to develop another, and we actually, at nasa, we worked with Lucas Films.

We got a special Yoda pen Kind of market our mentoring program. Through a cycle or two of that, and then we were seeing that the research was pointing to the importance of two-way mentoring and reverse mentoring, and our Yoda branding was getting in the way of that. So we actually had to. Scrap the Yoda branding and go with a a more boring, the NASA formal mentoring program to make sure we were emphasizing two-way and reverse mentoring and we really started emphasizing more this notion of reverse mentoring and, some of those things that the research were pointing to. Anyway, it’s just a kind of a fun example of how things evolved there for us and how we were trying to pay attention to what was going on out there in the field.

Yeah. And, that is, that’s a really good story. An [00:23:00] example. The Yoda acronym would, actually counter right. People keep that in mind and they realize oh, this is what the organization wants to see and that’s what they want to cultivate. It would actually go against what you’re looking for.

And then I love to shift today. It’s a boring title. The, I feel that reverse the reverse mentoring, especially in a time like this where a, we have technology that just keeps changing so fast and there are younger generations who definitely keep up with these things, not maybe faster, but. Maybe also just differently ’cause they’re exposed to different channels, different teaching, different tools than other generations are.

But also just the generational difference in how we see work. You know how I see work, how you see work, how someone in their twenties sees work. And the only way to ensure. We are addressing sort of the bridging the gaps and we are learning how to communicate with each other and what values we have and what we need is through that [00:24:00] mutual dialogue that goes in both directions.

Yeah.

It’s so, important to have those relationships.

you are working on another book. Tell us a little bit about what’s the main message that you wanna communicate and why do you think this book matters?

Yeah, so I’m actually put together a manuscript and having folks review it and then planning to have it published in early 2026. the title of it is Building Culture, the NASA Way. It’s not rocket science. Really the intent there is to share. NASA is a big organization. We had 18,000 employees. and I’ve been speaking over the years from a NASA perspective of how we built culture and how those lessons can be translated to other environments. for the last three years I’ve worked at Space Center Houston. We’re the nonprofit visitor center of the Johnson Space Center here in Houston. We have 200 full-time employees and another 250 part-time and seasonal. [00:25:00] So the scale is completely different, but the techniques and the tips of how we built culture at NASA are definitely translatable here. So we’re, doing things like measuring the culture. we are looking at. What are the critical few improvements that we can make based on engagement surveys and data from, employees? We are strengthening our leadership, so we focus a lot on coaching and mentoring of leaders on leadership development experiences as well. And then we, speak of a culture strategy around inclusion and innovation. So we believe that if, we can get everyone’s. Voice at the table and everyone heard that we can create, come up with more creative, innovative solutions.

So that inclusion and innovation strategy definitely worked at NASA and is working here at Space Center Houston as well. So the book will share practical tips and techniques that worked for nasa and then how they’re working in this very different environment at Space Center Houston.

Very compelling. I will [00:26:00] definitely get a copy. We will also include the link to your website and your LinkedIn in the show notes. Anyone who’s interested, please reach out to Brady and connect with them to be notified when the book gets published.

Now, before we wrap Brady, is there anything that you feel we should have talked about that we didn’t yet?

I, can’t think of anything. Ramona. I feel what you’re putting out there for, leaders is a lot of great content, a lot of great resources. Hopefully folks continue to engage with you and with this podcast.

Thank you so much. Thank you for being on the Manage Track podcast and sharing your stories. I think NASA is such a fascinating organization and hearing from you and how some of these things unfolded, but also how thoughtful and intentional. You were in creating the right culture and paying attention to what actually gets rewarded and what works and what doesn’t.

I think this is one of those things that as we’re in an organization, maybe a small one who’s just not quite there yet to have these elaborate initiatives, or we’re in an [00:27:00] organization, we don’t see what actually happens behind the scenes. This is so insightful. So Thank you for coming on and sharing your stories.

Thank you, Roman. Appreciate it.

If you enjoy this episode, then check out two other awesome resources to help you become a leader. People love to work with. This includes a free master class on how to successfully lead as a new manager. Check it out@ourcova.org forward slash masterclass. 

The second resource is my best-selling book, the confident and competent new manager, how to quickly rise to success in your first leadership role. Check it out at our cova.org/books or head on over to Amazon and grab your copy there. 

You can find all those links

In the show notes down below.

Reflection & Discussion Questions:

1. Why is it important for leaders to invest in their leadership growth?
2. How does investing in leadership development contribute to job advancement and salary increases?
3. What are some potential consequences of neglecting your leadership development?
4. How can you recognize and address your blind spots?
5. What role does ongoing leadership development play in creating fulfilling work environments?