A podcast episode by Brian Johnson reflecting on leadership lessons from Sam Walker’s book The Captain Class. Johnson frames the discussion with a personal anecdote at a soccer game and summarizes Walker’s finding that the defining feature of historic sports dynasties is an uncommon, character-driven captain. The episode encourages listeners to act as heroic captains in their own teams.
Chapters
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another Heroic one. The last several plus Ones We've been having fun mining some wisdom from our recent Johnson family trip to Houston to watch the Dynamo FC play Toronto fc. Today I want to spend another moment in Shell Stadium. The game's over. We're under the stands outside the locker room right at the end of the tunnel where the players and refs come in from the field. Now, shortly before we had that micro moment of red and yellow card awesome with the refs, Jonathan Osorio, the Canadian national soccer star and captain of tfc, came cruising up the tunnel. I said hi and congratulated him on a great game and I told him that Emerson was one of his biggest fans. He smiled and asked if he'd like a picture. We said, let's go. Then he looked more closely at me, I was wearing the hat and the glasses and said, oh, I just realized who you are. I love your book. To which I said, awesome. Thanks. Let's go. Then we chatted for another moment before he went into the locker room to clean himself up. But that's not quite the point of today's plus one. Today I want to chat about some wisdom from the Captain Class by Sam Walker. We've talked about a couple ideas from his great book and our Plus 1s on social loafing and the heroic Haka. Check them out, but I want to go a little deeper, so let's get to work. Now, I got the Captain Class on the recommendation of a US Navy admiral I was blessed to meet while attending the change of Command ceremony on the USS George H.W. bush from my friend Captain Dave Pollard. I read it as part of my recent binge on all things mental, toughness and peak performance as part of our work with more and more elite sports teams and coaches. It's fantastic. Sam Walker works with sports teams, companies and military units to help them identify and cultivate potential leaders. He's also the founding editor of the Wall Street Journal's daily sports coverage and their former leadership columnist. As I visited his website, you can check it out@buysamwalker.com to learn more about him and his background. I learned that he's worked with the super bowl champion, the LA Rams, and NCAA Championship football team University of Michigan. And I also saw that we both had the opportunity to serve the Sailors on the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and the US Men's National Soccer team. Awesome. Now, as per the subtitle, this book presents a truly fascinating new theory of leadership. After studying over 1,000 teams, Sam found 17 teams that passed all of the eight tests he designed to determine the greatest sports dynasties of all time. The teams that made the cut? Well, they included the New York Yankees from 1949 to 1953, the Hungary national soccer team from the 50s, the Montreal Canadiens, the Boston Celtics, the Brazil national team from 58 to 62, the Pittsburgh Steelers, the Soviet Union hockey team, the New Zealand All Blacks, the Cuba women's volleyball team, the Australia women's field hockey team, the San Antonio spurs, the New England Patriots, Barcelona soccer, the the France national men's handball team just watched them in the Olympics. And another New Zealand all blacks team from 2011-15. Now the question is, what do all of those truly historically great teams have in common? He says an uncommon captain, as he puts it. The most critical ingredient in a team that achieves and sustains and historic greatness is the character of the player who leads it. And that's today's plus one. Let's go be the heroic captains of all the teams we're blessed to be on when all day, every day, especially today.
