Sam Walker: Exploring the Leadership of Successful Dynasties and Why Great Team Captains are Rarely the Stars

Sam Walker
Exploring the Leadership of Successful Dynasties and Why Great Team Captains are Rarely the Stars

Sam Walker is the author of The Captain Class, a critically acclaimed portrait of the men and women who led the most successful dynasties in sports history. He works as a team building consultant and leadership coach for professional, national and collegiate sports teams; elite military units; national law-enforcement agencies; global NGOs and large companies across many industries. Walker spent two decades at The Wall Street Journal, where he served as a leadership columnist, chief sports columnist, global sports editor and deputy page one editor. He attended the University of Michigan and lives with his wife and two children in Los Angeles.

Sam spent 11 years researching the most successful teams to determine the winning formula and the results were unexpected yet actionable. If you want to understand leadership, team culture, and what makes great teams great, this episode is a must listen.

For more information on Sam, check out his website and definitely pick up his book The Captain Class.

Points of interest in the episode: 

06:50  The Starretts met Sam through Tyler Hawkins who was assigned The Captain Class in a business class
08:25  Sam spent 11 years researching this book Sam’s background
09:25  Sam’s background as a reporter and writer
13:20  No one understood why certain teams are so much better than others
16:30  Objective criteria to define the greatest teams
19:20  Surprising findings
21:00  The one thing all 17 teams share, a captain
24:15  Leadership is better and best done in the shadows
26:45  A ‘water carrier’
28:00  It’s really hard to be a superstar and a great leader; Andre Igudala, Steph Curry
33:00  Successful leadership is actually a pretty simple model
36:55  It’s ok to have a captain group, but there still needs to be one main leader
40:04  How to identify the leader
47:40  Reluctance
51:58  A great leader’s communication is nuanced and varied
53:15  Carles Puyol, team captain in Barcelona (never gave any speeches or addressed the team all together)
54:10  Tim Duncan, charismatic connector
60:14  The captains have a partnership with the leaders
64:00  Sam is consulting with a variety of teams since the book came out
64:59  The Rams
72:44  What’s next
74:50  Sam’s socials

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