Chris Hadfield on Leadership

After a distinguished career as a test pilot, Hadfield became an astronaut in 1992. Over the course of his career, he achieved a series of Canadian firsts: he was the first Canadian to be a space mission specialist, to operate the Canadarm in orbit, to do a spacewalk and to command the International Space Station. He was also the first to record a music video in space — a cover of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” — viewed by 100s of millions of earthlings. Hadfield retired from the Canadian Astronaut Corps in July 2013. Colonel Hadfield is an advisor to SpaceX and Virgin Galactic, Board Chair of the Open Lunar Foundation, and Founding Fellow of the Creative Destruction Lab Space stream. He has flown three space missions, building two space stations, performing two spacewalks, crewing the Shuttle and Soyuz and commanding the International Space Station. Colonel Hadfield is the co-creator/host of the internationally acclaimed BBC series Astronauts, and helped create/host, with actor Will Smith, the National Geographic series One Strange Rock. In addition to his decorated career as an astronaut, Chris is the author of three international bestsellers: An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth, You Are Here, and The Darkest Dark, plus a new thriller novel, The Apollo Murders. We talk to Commander Hadfield about the importance of dreaming big, taking small steps to get there, what it feels like to do a space walk, and of course, music.