Captain: The Athlete's Guide to Being an Exceptional Team Leader

Being a team captain is about much more than an armband and a coin toss.

Leadership is a skill that is always in demand, and team captains are the foundation of championship teams. Leaders are not born; they are made through hard work, dedication, the development of specific qualities, the acceptance of certain responsibilities, and the courage to face difficult challenges. Coaches are always looking for leaders, the best of whom earn the title of Captain. If you are reading this, you have been asked to lead—maybe even to be a team captain. Now the hard work begins.

In Captain, Jerry Lynch and John O’Sullivan share wisdom accrued from decades of consultation with well over 100 championship teams, dozens of Hall of Fame coaches, and hundreds of interviews with Olympic, world champion, and professional athletes and team leaders. The lessons in this book will help you start leading in a positive and constructive way, stop certain behaviors before they destroy your team culture, and face the many challenges of being a team captain. Through numerous stories of well-known leaders, as well as lessons from Eastern philosophy and Western psychology, this book will help you become a respected leader and a trusted bridge between coaches and teammates, and will instill you with leadership skills to use in every season of life.

PRICE INCLUDES SHIPPING

For bulk order discounts, please email John at at john@changingthegameproject.com.

What People Are Saying:

The intangibles I built a 13-year career on—the glue guy stuff that never made the box score—are exactly what Jerry and John teach in CAPTAIN. Setting standards. Reading the room. Doing the thankless work between the coach and the locker room. Most leadership books treat captaincy like a personality trait. This one treats it like a skill, which is the whole point. Every coach should hand a copy to their captain candidates. Every player who wants to lead should read this book twice.

Shane Battier, 2x NBA Champion

Great leaders on a team help guard the culture. Great leader ship is the key to getting through tough stretches. In the absence of great leadership, a team is vulnerable to ‘ringleaders’ who fuel division. It takes time to develop great leaders and must be done intentionally. Jerry and John’s book will help you develop your current leaders and identify your future ones.

Tara VanDerveer, Stanford Women's Basketball

Often overlooked by coaches and leaders is the development of highly effective captains. For the Warriors, we have been blessed with several great athlete leaders. Jerry and John’s new book Captain will give you all the tools and strategies you need to make sure this stone is not left unturned and that your culture thrives with extraordinary leadership at all levels of performance.

Steve Kerr, Golden State Warriors