Ceci Craft has worked inside two of the most demanding performance cultures in the world — Army Special Operations and Major League Baseball. She's currently the Philadelphia Phillies' Director of Mental Performance, Life Skills, and Education, leading a staff of seven coaches across their MLB affiliates and the organization's academy in the Dominican Republic.

When she made the move from working with Operators to working in baseball, she thought she had her bearings -- "No one's being shot at, and no one's died, so I'm fine." -- It took her a while to recalibrate her perspective from the special ops world and to recognize that losses in the athletic world are different kinds of losses, but still real ones.

Preston and Ceci dig into the gap between how mental performance practitioners are trained and what the job actually requires — the ethical conundrums no ethics course prepares you for, the difference between a clinical model built on client readiness and a performance context that operates on its own timeline, and why "coach, don't profess" is harder to practice than it sounds.

They use imagery as a case study — exploring habituation, audience fit, and how to teach live skills more effectively. They examine what Ceci calls "healthy versus junk food confidence": the difference between confidence that holds up versus confidence that collapses under real pressure. And they close with one of the more honest conversations about identity and transition: what it actually costs to walk out of a high-performance tribe, and what helps.

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To celebrate NASA’s Artemis II test flight, scheduled for launch on Wednesday, April 1st, we're re-casting Preston's conversation with NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman from May 2023. The Artemis II test flight will be crewed by Commander Reid, Pilot Victor Glover, Astronaut Christina Koch, and Canadian Astronaut Jeremy Hansen for the 10-day lunar flyby mission, which will test the Orion spacecraft's life-support systems for the first time with humans aboard.

In this Teamcast episode, originally aired on May 24, 2023, Preston and Reid discuss the transition from extensive training to real operations and why it is inevitably chaotic in mission critical work. Wiseman describes arriving on the ISS after four years of training and initially feeling “useless,” emphasizing mastery and learning rapidly rather than expecting perfection. They explore selection for “rate of learning,” humility, mentorship, shared situational awareness across small crews, and mission control. They also address human-machine automation, the need for human override, the integration of new team members, and curriculum elements such as small-team work in unpredictable natural environments, repeated rehearsals with failures, and getting comfortable being uncomfortable.

Commander Reid Wiseman is an American astronaut, engineer, and naval aviator. He served as Chief of the Astronaut Office until November 14, 2022. He was a member of the Expedition 40/41 crew, which launched to the International Space Station on May 28, 2014, and returned on November 10, 2014.

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This week’s Recast is from Oct 2021. The episode explores how high-pressure performers can train, maintain, and recover their mental skills, with emphasis on using the right tools in the right way and avoiding unqualified “backyard” approaches. Host Harry Moffitt speaks with performance psychologist and cognitive coach Paddy Steinfort, who has worked with elite sports teams like the Philadelphia Eagles, Blue Jays, and 76ers. Paddy draws on his personal athletic experience and his education in psychology to discuss how people can prepare for demanding environments, remain effective when pressure rises, and build sustainable habits over time.

Paddy and Harry examine how to place attention on the right cues, how to execute the right actions despite discomfort, and how routines can become superstition-driven avoidance. They also discuss how coaches and organizations can better support psychological performance. The two provide practical ways to manage ongoing stress, strengthen individual and group processes, and keep progressing toward long-term goals.

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In this episode of the Teamcast, Dr. Preston Cline and Dr. Art Finch discuss MCTI's most recent paper, “The Fourth Generation of Military Special Operations Selection and Assessment". Thanks to our collaborative inquiry community, we've received feedback and observations from special operations team members across the Five Eyes. Preston and Art reflect on that feedback and contrast the historical “psychological model” with rites-of-passage approaches. They cover the effort to sustain force numbers while still selecting the cognitively diverse candidates teams need. They discuss the balance between tacit knowledge and psychological science, and the need to avoid pendulum swings where either side dominates. You'll also hear what causes programs to erode unless leaders manage change intentionally.

1. Read and download the mentioned paper here: https://missioncti.com/resources/

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This week’s Recast is from April 2020.

Why This Episode Matters Now:

In 2022, the war in Ukraine revealed something our partners had been experiencing but we hadn't fully articulated: the traditional model of intact, homogeneous teams wasn't sufficient for the emerging operational environment. Individuals with diverse expertise, geography, language, and allegiances needed to rapidly converge into what we call Tactical Swarms—heterogeneous cross-functional units that form, solve emergent problems, and disperse.

Our recent white paper, The Fourth Generation of Military Special Operations Selection & Assessment, explores this evolution in depth. But six years ago, Preston laid the foundational concepts in this conversation with Coleman.

What the Research Shows:

Many operators who excelled at teamwork—performing with known, homogeneous teams—struggled with teaming: the ability to rapidly build cohesion within heterogeneous groups. This episode examines why routine versus critical communication and field observations across special operations, emergency medicine, and other high-stakes environments. In this episode, Preston and Coleman describe how tactical swarms and X teams differ from traditional team structures, and they distinguish between routine and critical communication and when teams must shift between them.

Recent Research:

1. Cline, P.B. (2026). The Fourth Generation of Military Special Operations Selection Assessment: A Community of Praxis [White paper]. Mission Critical Team Institute. DOI 10.13140/RG.2.2.28255.73121. https://missioncti.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/The-Fourth-Generation-of-Military-Special-Operations-Selection-Assessment_Final_2-Feb-26.pdf
2. Falk, D., Cline, P., Donegan, D., & Mehta, S. (2023). A Novel Framework for Routine Versus Critical Communication in Surgical Education—Don’t Take It Personally. Journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, 31(3), 115–121. https://doi.org/10.5435/JAAOS-D-22-00912 https://missioncti.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/FINAL-A-Novel-Framework-for-Routine-Versus-Critical.pdf

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This episode contains a term that may be offensive; it is used to describe gendered communication dynamics. We have included it to accurately represent the event, and it is intended for educational purposes only.

When a patient's heart or lungs fail, ECMO (Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation) technology can keep them alive—but only if the team operating it works flawlessly under pressure. In this episode, Thomas Preston draws on over 30 years of experience in cardiopulmonary care to reveal what it takes to manage these life-sustaining systems.

This Teamcast episode covers the specialized roles within ECMO teams, the critical relationship between perfusionists and other medical staff, and strategies for navigating crisis moments when seconds matter. Thomas discusses how trust, constant vigilance, and ongoing training form the foundation of successful outcomes in some of medicine's most intense situations.

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What happens when life-and-death decisions must be made by a team rather than an individual? In this episode, Dr. Mark Ramzy — cardiothoracic intensivist, emergency physician, and Co-Editor-in-Chief of REBEL EM — joins Dan to explore how teams think, decide, and act under pressure inside the ICU.

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In this episode, Preston discusses mission critical teams with Dr. Dawn Kernagis, the Scientific Director at DEEP. DEEP is an extreme environment technology and exploration organization with a mission to "Make Humans Aquatic." They explore the complexities and dynamics of individuals and teams working in undersea habitats and submersible systems. Dawn shares insights from her extensive experience, including participation in NASA's Extreme Environment Mission Operation (NEMO) project as a crew member for mission 21 and research on optimizing human performance under pressure.

Preston and Dawn cover an array of topics, including the importance of team cohesion, situational awareness, and the psychological and physiological challenges these teams face. Dawn also emphasizes the critical role of effective communication and leadership in maintaining team safety and performance. The episode concludes with practical advice for building and managing resilient, high-functioning teams.

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