Ebury Press The Captain Class: The Hidden Force Behind the World's Greatest Teams

The Captain Class is many different genres trying to fit into one book. On the one hand it is a serious and sober examination of sports dynasties and how they come to be. This is of course an impossible task undertake, but Sam Walker takes a very logical and serious look at the topic. It is also a primer for what makes something like a sports dynasty come alive and breathe and succeed. It is also a book on leadership and what makes a leader in the sports context.Truth be told, I feel like he succeeded in all of his missions but the important part is that he did not go down some well-trod paths. For that I am eternally grateful.Part I of the book describes the process by which he takes all the successful sports teams, from many time periods, from almost all sports, and he applies various sieves to disqualify candidates so that he has a manageable number of candidates to analyze. This alone is a large job, and a contentious one that would involve just about every denizen of every sports bar and pub the world over. I won’t get into his process, needless to say it will be the start of many a conversation, and his reasoning and explanation should be read and thought over by the reader.The author comes up with sixteen teams. Sixteen iconic teams that the author labeled as his Tier One teams; by the way, he helpfully lists the Tier One teams and the Tier two teams in the appendix of the book, i.e. those teams that barely missed being tier one. This appendix will be well thumbed in the future by this reader.The next daunting task is to examine at all the teams and to come to a conclusion as what made these teams Tier one, what drove them to being so salient amongst the many, which factor defined the success of that team. This is yet another impossible task, one that will also be debated ad infinitum. Once again, the author does an admirable and thoughtful job of considering a large number of factors and then writing an erudite defense of his analysis. Again, this is argument fodder amongst the denizens of the bars and pubs as well as the denizens of board rooms, think tanks, B schools, and consulting firms.His conclusion is that what drives the bus for these teams, are the captains of these teams, a throwback position in our entitlement society, a society that disdains hierarchy and a position that serves the greater good of the team. He explains why he moved past the mythical and iconoclastic belief in the coach, or the idolatry of the superstar athlete and settled on the water carrying captain. Again, I won’t repeat his arguments from the book because he does a much better job than I ever will, since he carried the water for the book and I think his argument, the way he phrased it, is important for the reader to absorb and consider.Part II of the book lists seven qualities that the author feel are unique and defining for a Tier one captain. He describes in depth, using anecdotes and extensive interviews with those captains, the unique and critical qualities that make these men and women so very successful and so very unique. Each chapter is a cogent explanation of each quality that the author feels is crucial for the success of each of these captains.Part III is the counterexample. The story of the Tier 2 captains, who had all the necessary qualities, except for that one critical quality which doomed them to Tier 2 rather than Tier 1, a cautionary tale.The well-trod path that the author did not go down is the path of the ubiquitous and trite path of the vast majority of business books. This book could very easily have become a mish mash retelling of the same points and sold as a formulaic recipe for success. The bane of the modern day business world is this formulaic grinding out of uninteresting and useless tomes detailing simplistic recitations of some Powerpoint bullets.Sam Walker has too much respect for the subject; more importantly, he appreciates the complexity and coupled nature of the successful captaincy. He has lain out what he feels is super salient about these captains and he is smart enough to not lead the reader to believe that the results of the great captain can be duplicated simplistically. He leaves it to us to try to put the facts together, to think about the ramifications of what we can do to develop those seven qualities, either for ourselves or as a coach or teacher for a student.As I finished the book, I was actually hoping for some pithy summation for my convenience, but in the end, I was grateful that he avoided the clichéd business school content. Now I can think deeply and critically on his arguments.To be fair, the author does reiterate the major points that he wanted to make at the end of each chapter, but it is a re-statement of the argument and not a how-to guide.Whether you are a sports fan, a coach, a consultant, or anyone having to do with developing people into leaders, this is an excellent and challenging addition to your library.

This is one of the best books I've read. I've worked as a teacher and coach for about a decade and have transitioned into the field of sport psychology over the last five years or so. With that, I do a lot of reading on different concepts within sports, coaching, sport psych, pop psych, etc. The concepts of culture and leadership have become big buzz topics in the sports world, and there is a lot of fluff out there. What I loved about this book is it fights through the fluff with years of intensive research on the world's greatest athletic teams of all time to provide a fantastic read incorporating stories, well-explained research, and substantive takeaways. It's outstanding and will be a great read for you if you're a coach, athlete, parent, or just a fan of sports. This will be one of those books that stands the test of time in the field of sports and coaching. Hope you give it a shot and enjoy!

Best book I've read this year (& maybe last year!). I read a LOT and this book was a paradigm shift for me. The idea of a "team captain" seems to be as relevant today as a "letterman jacket": everyone has one so it doesn't really carry any significance (& who would wear it now anyway?).After reading this book, the idea of a team captain seems CRITICAL in the development of a great team. Great teams are led by elite team captains and knowing what to look for isn't always what you might think. Most team captains are picked based on popularity or seniority, but after reading this book the selection of our team captain will change dramatically.As a coach, I learned a lot from this book but as a fan of the game, I found the stories and research fascinating. Very enjoyable read.

What is most surprising about this excellent book is not so much that our assumptions about what makes a great leader are all wrong. The thing that surprised me is that, at least when it comes to some of the best sports teams in history, the public can't even identify the actual leaders. We assume the people leading these great teams are the highest point scorers or the players with the most polished public personas. But those people are not the real leaders. It makes me wonder whether many of the world's overcompensated CEOs, who take all the credit for a company's success (and sometimes even its failures) are actually less consequential than everybody thinks. Anyone who cares about organizations, whether they are sports teams or public companies, should read this book. Everyone else should also read it, simply because it's highly entertaining.

Interesting stories and surprising insights supported by impressive research!As a team building speaker, I read over a dozen books this summer, and actually put this book on the bottom of the stack – much like saving a delicious dessert as something to look forward to – and I was not disappointed! Sam Walker does an incredible job of laying our his case that the most impactful “Tier One” captains and performers are often those we might not at first have assumed. From a Fordham University Study on shouting to a MIT study of corporate communications, the fact is that ONE person can have a tremendous influence on a team’s success… and that person is not always the most talented or famous in the group.If you are a team leader – in athletics or in business – you will benefit from the take-aways and surprising conclusions that The Captain Class offers. Not every Winning Teammate is a "Tier One Captain"... but every "Tier One Captain" will help to inspire the development of winning teammates!