The Captain Class Quotes

“People often attain and hold power within an organization by downplaying their qualifications. “We gain status more readily, and more reliably, by acting just a little less deserving than we actually are.”
― Sam Walker, The Captain Class: The Hidden Force that Creates the World's Greatest Teams

“THE SEVEN TRAITS OF ELITE CAPTAINS 1. Extreme doggedness and focus in competition. 2. Aggressive play that tests the limits of the rules. 3. A willingness to do thankless jobs in the shadows. 4. A low-key, practical, and democratic communication style. 5. Motivates others with passionate nonverbal displays. 6. Strong convictions and the courage to stand apart. 7. Ironclad emotional control.”
― Sam Walker, The Captain Class: A New Theory of Leadership

“The easiest way to lead, it turns out, is to serve.”
― Sam Walker, The Captain Class: A New Theory of Leadership

“They are democratic with their time—communicating with everyone equally and making sure all team members get a chance to contribute.”
― Sam Walker, The Captain Class: The Hidden Force that Creates the World's Greatest Teams

“A leader is best when people barely know he exists, not so good when people obey and acclaim him, worst when they despise him,” he wrote. “Fail to honor others and they will fail to honor you.”
― Sam Walker, The Captain Class: A New Theory of Leadership

“If there is a pathway into the minds of human beings that bypasses consciousness and absorbs the emotions of others; and if this pathway can be activated by the sight of a bloody uniform, a hair-raising tribal dance, or just a deep stare; and if these displays can propel a team to run faster, jump higher, hit
harder, and push through pain and exhaustion, then these captains must have been masters of the art.”
― Sam Walker, The Captain Class: The Hidden Force that Creates the World's Greatest Teams

“The captains in Tier One were not poseurs. They didn’t make speeches, didn’t seek attention or acclaim, and were not comfortable wearing the cloak of power. Most of them took subservient roles and carried water for their teammates. In other words, they behaved precisely the way Gruenfeld describes. They won status by doing everything in their power to suggest they didn’t deserve it.”
― Sam Walker, The Captain Class: The Hidden Force that Creates the World's Greatest Teams

“I thought, out of respect to her, she should have been captain. We all saw her as our leader.”
― Sam Walker, The Captain Class: The Hidden Force that Creates the World's Greatest Teams

“Most of us carry a faded old picture in our heads of what a great captain looks like. It’s usually an attractive person who possesses an abundance of strength, skill, wisdom, charisma, diplomacy, and unflappable calm. These people are not supposed to be difficult to spot. In our imaginations they’re talkative and articulate, charismatic but firm, tough but gracious, and respectful of authority. We expect leaders, especially in sports, to pursue their goals with gusto but to never wander from the principles of sportsmanship and fair play. We believe, as the Stanford social psychologist Deborah Gruenfeld put it, that power is reserved for the kind of person “who possesses some combination of superior charm and ruthless ambition that the rest of us don’t.”
― Sam Walker, The Captain Class: The Hidden Force that Creates the World's Greatest Teams

“On the Tier One Teams I studied, the typical pecking order put the coach at the top, the talent on the bottom, and a water-carrying captain in the middle who served as an independent mediator between them. In this new order, where power and popularity went hand in hand, the middle manager’s role had been squeezed out. Unless the captain was the superstar, the captain was a bystander.”
― Sam Walker, The Captain Class: The Hidden Force that Creates the World's Greatest Teams

“Davidson had become a strong believer in the concept of neuroplasticity, the idea that people’s brains will physically change over time and that those changes can depend on their life experiences.”
― Sam Walker, The Captain Class: The Hidden Force that Creates the World's Greatest Teams

“Studies have shown that a team leader who is in a positive mood can increase a group’s enthusiasm, help it to channel anger more constructively, and even coax it to perform better on specific tasks.”
― Sam Walker, The Captain Class: The Hidden Force that Creates the World's Greatest Teams

“The captain is the figure who holds sway over the dressing room by speaking to teammates as a peer, counseling them on and off the field, motivating them, challenging them, protecting them, resolving disputes, enforcing standards, inspiring fear when necessary, and above all setting a tone with words and deeds.”
― Sam Walker, The Captain Class: The Hidden Force that Creates the World's Greatest Teams

“group of individuals who were unremarkable alone, but together— potent, magical.”
― Sam Walker, The Captain Class: A New Theory of Leadership

“Beyond this, most of the Tier One captains had zero interest in the trappings of fame. They didn’t pursue the captaincy for the prestige it conveyed—if they pursued it at all. In 2004, when Carles Puyol’s teammates unanimously elected him captain, his was the only dissenting vote. “I thought it was more ethical to vote for others,” he told me.”
― Sam Walker, The Captain Class: A New Theory of Leadership

“It should come as no surprise that Berra, or any athlete who makes it to the highest levels of sports, was unusually determined. But the brand of perseverance Berra, Shelford, Puyol, and the other Tier One captains showed is peculiar, even among the elite. The main point of difference is that their natural ability seemed to bear no relation to the size of their accomplishments. Something enabled them to set aside their limitations and tune out the skepticism from their critics. But what was it? What allows some people to press on until they achieve mastery? —”
― Sam Walker, The Captain Class: A New Theory of Leadership

“His resistance to basketball awards was a rejection of the universal instinct to separate individuals from the collective. His brand of leadership had nothing to do with the outside world or how he was perceived. It was entirely focused on the internal dynamics of his team. So long as the Celtics won titles, he didn’t mind if nobody noticed his contributions.”
― Sam Walker, The Captain Class: A New Theory of Leadership

“the most crucial ingredient in a team that achieves and sustains historic greatness is the character of the player who leads it.”
― Sam Walker, The Captain Class: A New Theory of Leadership

“I started to suspect that the real reason we can't agree on a formula for elite team leadership is that we've overcomplicated things. We've been so busy scanning the horizon for transformational knights in shining armor that we've ignored the likelier truth: there are hundreds upon thousands of potentially transformative leaders right in our midst. We just lack the ability to recognize them.”
― Sam Walker, The Captain Class: The Hidden Force that Creates the World's Greatest Teams

“One of the great paradoxes of management is that the people who pursue leadership positions most ardently are often the wrong people for the job. They're motivated by the prestige the role conveys rather than a desire to promote the goals and values of the organization.”
― Sam Walker, The Captain Class: The Hidden Force that Creates the World's Greatest Teams

“On a team, he said, “you can’t only have architects. You also need bricklayers.”
― Sam Walker, The Captain Class: The Hidden Force Behind the World’s Greatest Teams

“The same unceasing drive was something displayed by Russell, Puyol, Berra, Richard, and every other captain in Tier One. Early struggles culminated in a defining moment, a
breakthrough that left no doubt about their desire to win at any cost. And in each case, after they had established this fact, their teams began to turn the corner. The pattern was so consistent that it suggested their doggedness might, in fact, have been contagious.”
― Sam Walker, The Captain Class: The Hidden Force that Creates the World's Greatest Teams

“The antidote is the knowledge that someone else in the group is leaving nothing in reserve.”
― Sam Walker, The Captain Class: A New Theory of Leadership

“The less identifiable one person’s effort is, the less effort they put in.”
― Sam Walker, The Captain Class: A New Theory of Leadership

“To see if “cluster theory” explained the success of the teams in Tier One, I turned to baseball. In this sport, as I noted earlier, teammate interaction plays a limited role while the performance of individual players has a larger impact.”
― Sam Walker, The Captain Class: The Hidden Force that Creates the World's Greatest Teams

“What I realized about this glorious experience, years later, is that it had forever modified my expectations. The Bombers gave me a taste of what it was like to play on an excellent team.”
― Sam Walker, The Captain Class: The Hidden Force that Creates the World's Greatest Teams

“What I realized about this glorious experience, years later, is that it had forever modified my expectations. The Bombers gave me a taste of what it was like to play on an excellent team, and this had rewired my brain to believe it was my God-given right to experience the same sensation many times over.”
― Sam Walker, The Captain Class: The Hidden Force that Creates the World's Greatest Teams

“There was no question that the captains who made a habit of testing the boundaries of the rules would never be revered by the public the way Derek Jeter was. But this theory suggested that calling their behavior thuggish was an oversimplification. These were aggressive acts that pushed the limits of what’s acceptable, but they were also instrumental.”
― Sam Walker, The Captain Class: The Hidden Force that Creates the World's Greatest Teams

“A leader is best when people barely know he exists, not so good when people obey and acclaim him, worst when they despise him,” he wrote. “Fail to honor others and they will fail to honor you. But of a good leader, who talks little, when his
work is done, his aims fulfilled, they will all say, ‘we did this ourselves.’ ”
― Sam Walker, The Captain Class: The Hidden Force that Creates the World's Greatest Teams

“The key, Deschamps said, is to maintain self-control and to know when it’s okay to foul and when you are “too far up the referee’s nose” to get away with it. “It’s something you feel. It’s a feeling. It’s a form of intelligence.”
― Sam Walker, The Captain Class: The Hidden Force Behind the World’s Greatest Teams