Quotes from Sam Walker

I thought, out of respect to her, she should have been captain. We all saw her as our leader.

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.

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.

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.

the most crucial ingredient in a team that achieves and sustains historic greatness is the character of the player who leads it.

The easiest way to lead, it turns out, is to serve.

group of individuals who were unremarkable alone, but together— potent, magical.

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.

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.

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.

On a team, he said, "you can't only have architects. You also need bricklayers.

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.

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.

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.'

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.

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.

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.

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.

It's the notion that the most crucial ingredient in a team that achieves and sustains historic greatness is the character of the player who leads it.

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.

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.

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.

The less identifiable one person's effort is, the less effort they put in.

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.