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cnorbury's review
5.0
If there were such a beast as a perfect non-fiction book, The Captain Class: The Hidden Force That Creates the World's Greatest Teams would be a strong contender for that moniker.
Combine a unique way of approaching a popular debate subject--greatest sports team of all time--with well-thought-out ranking criteria and a combination of anecdotal and scientific support, and you get a remarkably insightful perspective of what seems to be the single common denominator for those few teams that truly achieve the rank of "world's greatest."
Not only that, but Walker tells his story beautifully, weaving in anecdotes with facts and citations of clinical research, then ending each chapter with two or three main takeaways that summarize his points.
When a book makes me laugh out loud, drop my jaw in shock and surprise, and stimulate my brain with a different way of looking at a topic (world's greatest sports teams), it deserves my highest recommendation. If you are a serious sports fan, both from the entertainment viewpoint and from the psychological aspect of trying to get inside the minds of those few athletes and teams that truly excel, I guarantee you'll enjoy this book.
Combine a unique way of approaching a popular debate subject--greatest sports team of all time--with well-thought-out ranking criteria and a combination of anecdotal and scientific support, and you get a remarkably insightful perspective of what seems to be the single common denominator for those few teams that truly achieve the rank of "world's greatest."
Not only that, but Walker tells his story beautifully, weaving in anecdotes with facts and citations of clinical research, then ending each chapter with two or three main takeaways that summarize his points.
When a book makes me laugh out loud, drop my jaw in shock and surprise, and stimulate my brain with a different way of looking at a topic (world's greatest sports teams), it deserves my highest recommendation. If you are a serious sports fan, both from the entertainment viewpoint and from the psychological aspect of trying to get inside the minds of those few athletes and teams that truly excel, I guarantee you'll enjoy this book.
queerandweird's review
4.0
Interesting, not too male-focused, truly fabulous audiobook reader who bumped this rating up a whole star for excellent accents and languages. Informative study on what defines the core success of sports teams, solid research, well-organized book.
seanpwcurrie's review
1.0
A series of grandiose statements on leadership, developed from sporting anecdotes with little to nothing in terms of evidence, and occasional historical inaccuracies.
If this is the tosh that drives leadership in capitalist enterprise, then the left may yet win.
If this is the tosh that drives leadership in capitalist enterprise, then the left may yet win.
jaxlynleigh's review
3.0
A very well-thought out and well-researched book. For those sports fanatics, you will enjoy the stories and anecdotes; I’m not a huge sports fan (and not the target audience) so I wasn’t super vested in the sports minutiae. For the sports lover, it would be at least a 4 star read. I did enjoy the concept of leaders working from the back to get their teams to greatness.
*I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review,*
*I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review,*
dunguyen's review
3.0
I heard good things about this book and was quite eager to read it as I was interested in how leadership in sport could translate into the real world. But I was somewhat disappointed.
Walker starts the book by first finding the best teams across all sports. This was done with a bunch of fantasy football like criteria and it felt a bit ad hoc so that he could narrow down the teams. Completely unscientific and just done however he felt like it. After narrowing them down he goes on his central thesis, that these team succeeded to the highest levels thanks to the strength of their captains. This is where it starts getting interesting. He covers the arguments about how club structure, coaches and star players are not the ones who make a team successful but rather the personal qualities that a captain has and which affects teams.
The leadership qualities themselves are quite sensible. Some of them, like "carry the water" corresponds to the principles of servant leadership, emotional control is emotional intelligence, communication - well that's communication. All of these are supported by a wide range of studies to prove effectiveness. But some of the rest of the leadership qualities falter a bit. They include "play to the limit" and "aggression" which are very limited to sports and these don't seem to have too much backing scientific evidence.
My two main issues with this book are the sports-specific qualities that I would argue can't transfer, and the very questionable gathering of the evidence.
The first one is related to the leadership qualities. Play to the limit of the law and aggression which in the book contains examples of the Cuban women's volleyball team riling up their Brazilian opponents to cause them to lose their emotional control. This is technically allowed but is considered not fair play and this is during the Olympics as well! How is this supposed to work in the real world? To work in the legal grey zones, without any semblance of morality or a higher principle? The problem here is that sports is a self-contained universe with clear rules of play and is a predominantly zero-sum game. This would make it hard to transfer all lessons from sports into the real world. Pissing off people in sports is perhaps fine because at the end of the day, you have the trophy. In the real world, those things can have massive ramifications that is unknown.
The second one is the "evidence". The book builds these leadership qualities from the top tier teams, so I would expect these leadership qualities to all persist in the captains of those teams. Unfortunately Walker never reveals a table where there's a comparison of each and every one of those captains and how they fulfill all of those qualities. Even worse, some of the examples are from tier two teams, and then a tier one-and-a-half. So the methodology breaks down completely.
Overall it is still an interesting book and many of the leadership qualities do have scientific backing of being effective. But the case is not made clearly by the captains and the teams. I would trust this more if it could be limited to sports only but the author does allude many times to overall leadership and not just leadership in sports. Interesting read otherwise, just think twice before you adopt the in-your-face aggression of sports in the next team meeting.
Walker starts the book by first finding the best teams across all sports. This was done with a bunch of fantasy football like criteria and it felt a bit ad hoc so that he could narrow down the teams. Completely unscientific and just done however he felt like it. After narrowing them down he goes on his central thesis, that these team succeeded to the highest levels thanks to the strength of their captains. This is where it starts getting interesting. He covers the arguments about how club structure, coaches and star players are not the ones who make a team successful but rather the personal qualities that a captain has and which affects teams.
The leadership qualities themselves are quite sensible. Some of them, like "carry the water" corresponds to the principles of servant leadership, emotional control is emotional intelligence, communication - well that's communication. All of these are supported by a wide range of studies to prove effectiveness. But some of the rest of the leadership qualities falter a bit. They include "play to the limit" and "aggression" which are very limited to sports and these don't seem to have too much backing scientific evidence.
My two main issues with this book are the sports-specific qualities that I would argue can't transfer, and the very questionable gathering of the evidence.
The first one is related to the leadership qualities. Play to the limit of the law and aggression which in the book contains examples of the Cuban women's volleyball team riling up their Brazilian opponents to cause them to lose their emotional control. This is technically allowed but is considered not fair play and this is during the Olympics as well! How is this supposed to work in the real world? To work in the legal grey zones, without any semblance of morality or a higher principle? The problem here is that sports is a self-contained universe with clear rules of play and is a predominantly zero-sum game. This would make it hard to transfer all lessons from sports into the real world. Pissing off people in sports is perhaps fine because at the end of the day, you have the trophy. In the real world, those things can have massive ramifications that is unknown.
The second one is the "evidence". The book builds these leadership qualities from the top tier teams, so I would expect these leadership qualities to all persist in the captains of those teams. Unfortunately Walker never reveals a table where there's a comparison of each and every one of those captains and how they fulfill all of those qualities. Even worse, some of the examples are from tier two teams, and then a tier one-and-a-half. So the methodology breaks down completely.
Overall it is still an interesting book and many of the leadership qualities do have scientific backing of being effective. But the case is not made clearly by the captains and the teams. I would trust this more if it could be limited to sports only but the author does allude many times to overall leadership and not just leadership in sports. Interesting read otherwise, just think twice before you adopt the in-your-face aggression of sports in the next team meeting.
seanius's review
3.0
A book which has one main point that is perhaps over-explained (a valuable captain is no hot-shot, but a 'water carrying' team supporter), the last couple of chapters have a little twist, commenting on the current vogue for leaderless self-managing teams, and minimal hierarchy, aka the agile approach.
Whilst a bit heavy on detail for non-sports fans, some of the incidents and back stories are well told and deserve the odd guffaw.
One questionable point could be the way different systems are used to compare teams from different sports -I'm no statistician but it seemed at times like comparing apples with oranges, and somewhat undermines the selection of the 'tier one' teams that verify the author's hypothesis.
An improvement could have been to seek out the opinion of other sports commentators or of organizational psychologists etc as to the validity of the 'captain class' theory...
Worth a speed read for anyone who works in a team and has wondered about what makes a positive leader...
Whilst a bit heavy on detail for non-sports fans, some of the incidents and back stories are well told and deserve the odd guffaw.
One questionable point could be the way different systems are used to compare teams from different sports -I'm no statistician but it seemed at times like comparing apples with oranges, and somewhat undermines the selection of the 'tier one' teams that verify the author's hypothesis.
An improvement could have been to seek out the opinion of other sports commentators or of organizational psychologists etc as to the validity of the 'captain class' theory...
Worth a speed read for anyone who works in a team and has wondered about what makes a positive leader...