The Art of Manliness - #405： The Power of Team Captains

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast what makes a great

00:00:19.540 sports dynasty a great sports dynasty we typically think it's the result of amazing talent or coaching

00:00:24.600 but my guest today argues that it all comes down to the often quiet understated leadership of a

00:00:29.080 team captain his name is sam walker he's the author of the book the captain class the hidden force that

00:00:33.620 creates the world's greatest teams today on the show sam and i discuss his quest to uncover what

00:00:37.740 makes great teams great and the unlikely answer he came up with we then discuss the traits sam found

00:00:42.500 in the great team captains of sports history some of them you'd expect to see on the list of you know

00:00:46.340 great leadership including doggedness and humility but a few of them like the willingness to push the

00:00:51.100 limits of the rules and engage in conflict with the players and the coach might surprise you

00:00:55.240 throughout the conversation sam shares insights and how leaders from all fields can apply these

00:00:58.660 lessons and the teams they play on and work with after the show's over check out the show notes at

00:01:02.580 aom.is slash captain class and sam joins me now via skype

00:01:07.260 sam walker welcome to the show thanks brett great to be here so you got a book out the captain class

00:01:27.100 the hidden forces that creates the world's greatest teams i'm curious what got you looking into what

00:01:33.100 makes great teams great teams we're talking about team sports here and it's all team sports right yeah

00:01:38.820 all team sports yeah it was an old obsession i mean i think it really started when i was a kid and

00:01:44.080 i played on this little league team when i was 11 or something and you know we were

00:01:48.700 kind of a crappy group we won like maybe half our games usually but one year

00:01:53.020 for some reason we just won and we kept winning and winning and winning same kids

00:01:57.860 no palpable difference and i thought this was great you know i loved it and i thought it would

00:02:03.320 happen again you know i figured it was something to happen once in a while but that was the only

00:02:06.980 great team i ever played on and you know i never had that experience again so it was a little bit of

00:02:12.500 an obsession but you know it really started when i was covering sports for the wall street journal

00:02:16.900 and i had this ridiculous job where i just kind of flew around and went to cover championships and

00:02:22.140 big events so i i had a chance to see some of the greatest teams of the century i mean the patriots the

00:02:27.260 chicago bulls the spurs the yankees in the 2000s and you know i really got this this up close look at

00:02:34.540 these teams and something was weird though something was really off i knew how hard it was for teams to

00:02:40.560 be great but what i found was that you know when i asked these players on these teams why just why

00:02:47.200 is your team so much better than every other team you know it was weird they didn't really have much

00:02:52.120 of an answer they kind of shrugged off the question they're just kind of like you know they hadn't

00:02:55.820 really given a lot of thought they didn't really think it was magical or special or really that

00:03:00.320 different and tom brady was the one who put it best when i asked him this question he said

00:03:04.940 what he always says he says you do your job so that everyone else can do their job but there's

00:03:10.240 really no big secret to it and i just was like that seems weird because it's so rare to have a

00:03:15.340 great team now the other side of it was really strange though because if you asked a player

00:03:20.360 you know on a team that had underperformed or was really lousy why the team had wasn't good i mean

00:03:26.640 it's like pull up a chair you know it's 30 minutes of like this and that and i realized it was it was

00:03:33.500 even though they're really rare these dynasties were different in that it seemed natural to

00:03:40.180 people it seemed natural to be part of a great collective effort like it seemed like it was

00:03:44.580 just it working the way it should whereas the difficult the hard thing seemed to be being on a

00:03:50.160 bad team and it just didn't make sense to me so i thought i would try to see if tom brady was right

00:03:56.260 you know is there something simple is there some element is there something that just allows a group

00:04:01.580 of people a collective effort to work seamlessly and if i if if it exists can i identify it all right

00:04:07.460 that's that's a uh that's a bold ambitious uh goal there um so so to do this you did some like

00:04:16.500 data trying like you did some crunching here you had to figure out okay let's take a look at all the

00:04:20.700 greatest teams in sports history and it's not just football basketball baseball you're looking at

00:04:25.200 obscure sports here in america like handball or field hockey so how did you go about complying that

00:04:31.500 list of great teams what were the criteria well there's a there's an easy i mean there are ways

00:04:37.280 to do this there are other ways to do this and i went out and looked at all the other lists of great

00:04:41.160 teams i could find and some of them were based on data and analysis but they just weren't complete and

00:04:46.120 i realized there's no way to compare most sports every sport because they're all so different some of

00:04:51.280 them have playoffs and championships some only really compete every four years i mean it's it's just

00:04:55.860 really hard to do that so i realized two things one i wanted to study i just wanted to find the freaks

00:05:01.580 i just wanted to go to find the the most incredible freakish performances ever and a lot of that was how

00:05:09.200 you define freakish performance and so i had to define it and my definition was that it had to be

00:05:15.920 something that lasted i wanted to see i wanted to find a culture of greatness that sustained itself so

00:05:22.260 i didn't set the bar that high i said four years you know a team had to have dominated for four years

00:05:27.400 so that was the first thing you know and then i said all right this team had to have played at the

00:05:32.220 highest level of competition in the world so you know college sports in the u.s fell out you know of

00:05:37.400 that and a lot of other sports and i you know i wanted to make sure they had actually played against

00:05:41.840 the best teams of the time so a lot of teams from you know early soccer teams in europe fell out because

00:05:47.760 they just didn't play each other with any regularity so that eliminated a lot of teams now

00:05:52.500 the last filter was the toughest which was that they had to have done something unique i mean if

00:05:57.620 you're going to say you're the best team of all time you better be the best team in the history of

00:06:00.820 your sport in some tangible way so you either had to win have won like a string of championships or

00:06:07.600 you know a number of consecutive games or have some record for longevity that had never been

00:06:13.120 matched so that was the last criteria now there were 25 000 teams that i looked at and this is

00:06:18.260 every sport in in the world since the 1880s and 37 different categories of sport and after eliminating

00:06:25.780 all the teams that didn't qualify there were only 17 left that was it and it was 16 when the pay when

00:06:33.020 the hardcover came out now it's 17 because the patriots squeaked in this year but that was it and and

00:06:38.860 that was that was it these are the these are not necessarily the greatest teams of all time no one

00:06:43.820 can settle that argument but what i had was what i believe to be a pure sample i mean these are all

00:06:49.980 freak teams they are there's no question about their greatness and that was what i wanted to use that was

00:06:56.300 the sample study i wanted to use to see what they had in common all right so the patriots just squeaked

00:07:00.720 on there what are some of the other teams examples that made the list well there were some that you

00:07:04.720 might suspect i mean if you know basketball of course the boston celtics you know the bill russell celtics

00:07:09.900 from you know from 57 to 69 11 titles in 13 years right they're on there the stealers from the 1970s

00:07:16.960 four super bowls in six years the montreal canadiens who won five straight cups in the 50s they're on

00:07:22.620 there the spurs are on there you know for the comparable 19 year you know playoff straight playoff

00:07:28.480 appearances and five titles so some of them were but then some of them were not that familiar i mean

00:07:33.340 there were some teams i'd never heard of and one of my favorites was the cuban women's volleyball team

00:07:38.420 from the 1990s and i knew nothing about them but they are the greatest olympic team of all time and

00:07:43.660 they won they did not lose a match of consequence in 10 years and they beat up on these huge countries

00:07:48.980 you know coming from a very small you know kind of poor politically repressed country you know that

00:07:54.520 that had no real great tradition of volleyball anyway so it was teams like that there were a combination

00:07:59.240 of greats and uh unknowns it's what made it really appealing to me all right well maybe we'll talk

00:08:04.720 about those gals here in a bit but so you had these teams how did you so how did you figure out like

00:08:10.360 what like how do you decide like what was the determining factor like was it talent was it coaching

00:08:15.760 was it how did you decide you know suss that stuff out yeah that was a rabbit hole i mean i i had the list

00:08:22.460 of teams and and others that were close and i started just breaking them down and what i decided was look i'm just

00:08:28.260 going to go with my own prejudices right i mean the first thing i thought it would be would be talent

00:08:32.960 they just had greater talent than other teams and i looked at it and realized that actually a fair

00:08:38.780 number if not a majority of these teams did not have outstanding talent they had they were talented

00:08:43.880 but they weren't incredible so that could that wasn't the common element and the next thing i thought

00:08:49.280 was you know maybe it was tactics you know some of these teams were really tactically advanced like

00:08:53.880 this hungarian soccer team from the 50s i mean they were geniuses tactically but then some of

00:08:58.880 them weren't you know the steelers in the 70s weren't that remarkable tactically so that wasn't

00:09:03.700 it and then i thought maybe money but no in fact the majority of these teams had you know average money

00:09:09.300 or even came from poor poor countries in international sports and i thought it would be coaching i mean

00:09:14.400 really coaching was the thing i thought we were going to default to but that was one of the biggest

00:09:18.780 surprises which is when you look at these teams when they started their runs all but one of these

00:09:24.940 coaches was either someone with a lousy track record who'd been fired from a previous job or had very

00:09:31.100 little coaching experience or in some cases no experience at all you know and a couple of these teams

00:09:36.580 actually changed coaches during their winning streaks and continued winning so it's not that coaches

00:09:42.160 aren't important but they weren't the one factor so that's weird so that leaves us to captains

00:09:47.920 like the leaders of a team so how did so that if this is basically process elimination but i thought

00:09:53.960 it was interesting like what makes the difference between like say a captain and a coach because

00:09:57.800 coaches i guess a figurehead a leader captains are also leaders so they're both leaders but what

00:10:02.940 makes the difference where it's like a team captain is the one that has more influence than a coach

00:10:07.240 well that's that was that took so much time to really nail down and i started that process when i saw

00:10:15.340 that it was the captains and it was clearly the captains i mean it was a clear pattern you know

00:10:19.980 these teams all the streaks were defined almost precisely in some cases by the by the presence of

00:10:27.300 that captain over and over and over again wherever you looked and what i did originally i wanted to

00:10:34.100 figure this relationship out so i started with vince lombardi who was the best coach that i could think

00:10:38.440 of and i went out and met his former captain defensive captain willie davis who's in his 80s now

00:10:43.700 i was in la you know and and talked to him and and i talked to um alex ferguson the great coach in

00:10:50.260 the uk the soccer coaches that the rest of the world's vince lombardi right and i talked to a lot

00:10:55.640 of people about this and realized that you know it's we have a kind of skewed view not just of what

00:11:01.600 captains do but also what coaches do and what i realized is if you looked at all of these great

00:11:07.040 coaches that we revere whether it's belichick or or popovich or alex ferguson um or even phil

00:11:12.820 jackson if you look at their peak periods of success what you see in every single case was that

00:11:19.180 they had a captain just like this and it was that partnership between them and there's a lot

00:11:24.540 of push and pull if you look at those relationships it's not boss employee it's really an equal

00:11:29.380 partnership yeah i wrote about recently about steve kerr who's doing the same thing sharing power

00:11:34.460 with his players and especially his player leaders it's a partnership and it's like a meeting of

00:11:39.320 the minds and you have to be willing to let your captain be right and and to let his view prevail

00:11:45.120 sometimes so it's not the typical relationship we think of with coaches but they're a huge factor

00:11:50.080 but it's really comes down to how they relate to the leader of the players right so i guess you found

00:11:55.260 after looking at the analysis that whenever these teams had a lot of success like that that player

00:12:01.400 that leader was on the team when that happened and i guess when they left did like the things just

00:12:05.640 sort of crumble and they just fell apart yeah i mean you know in some cases it was two weeks after

00:12:11.200 their departure you know in some cases it was the next season or you know a couple seasons later but

00:12:16.380 you know the decline declines are pretty sudden i mean if you look at the overlay it's really stark

00:12:21.600 but here's the thing this is this is the important point which is you know i'm not saying that all you

00:12:28.420 need is a great captain to be successful the teams need a lot of things you got to have talent you got

00:12:32.920 to have good text you got to have a coach you got to have a combination of things that are already in

00:12:36.040 place the way i like to describe it it's like the captain is the verb in the sentence right i mean

00:12:40.900 the adjectives the nouns everything else might be more colorful and more important to what you remember

00:12:45.960 and to why the sentence works but it doesn't work without a verb you know it got it it's that thing

00:12:51.120 that gives it its forward motion so there are a million combinations to greatness but the only thing

00:12:57.540 that has to be there is the internal player leadership right so it's necessary but not sufficient

00:13:02.200 right exactly so what are some examples of these great captains so you mentioned bill russell the

00:13:07.720 celtics i'm guessing tom brady with the patriots all right sure brady fits right in and you know the

00:13:13.220 patriots also have some great defensive captains too and teddy bruski and rodney harrison and and you

00:13:18.800 know they had a kind of a knack for finding them on both sides of the ball but yeah the captains were

00:13:23.300 funny there were some that you would think of you know jack lambert of the steelers and and maurice

00:13:28.000 richard and but then there were players on great teams even teams i had i had covered like barcelona

00:13:33.960 that i didn't know anything about and carlos puyo was the captain of that team and if you see if you

00:13:39.720 know anything about puyo he doesn't know not he's not the best player on the team he's a strange looking

00:13:43.760 guy the last person you would think of on a team that had messy you know but over and over you saw this

00:13:49.520 pattern and a lot of them were really unheralded people and in fact these captains were nothing like

00:13:55.040 what i would have imagined i mean i had these i didn't really think about leadership much before

00:14:00.080 i wrote this book because i i didn't think it was going to end up there but i had this impression

00:14:04.260 that the leader of the team was almost inherently the best player the person who made the biggest

00:14:09.300 contribution i thought of them as being celebrities you know with with this magnetism and this sort of

00:14:14.680 high emotion they played with i thought i'm in this great just just incredible sportsmanship and very

00:14:20.640 diplomatic good at diffusing conflicts inside the team i i thought of them as these larger than life

00:14:25.660 people with obvious talent but these captains were anything but in fact they were they were not stars

00:14:32.100 most of them they were role players they were not charismatic they stayed in the shadows they did not

00:14:36.600 care about personal accolades and it could be really difficult to manage i mean they pushed back that

00:14:41.660 created conflict inside the teams on a lot of occasions and they just a lot of those things were

00:14:46.920 things i thought would disqualify someone from leadership i started to realize that we've we

00:14:51.500 really just don't have a good grasp of what a leader actually does inside a successful team

00:14:58.260 not just a successful team but a team that sustains that excellence over time right so yeah i mean i think

00:15:03.740 a lot of people think oh michael jordan would have been one of the great captains but because he's you

00:15:09.060 know he has all those sort of stereotypical traits that we think of a great leader charismatic

00:15:12.560 talented etc but like you kind of came to the conclusion like no based on some of the criteria

00:15:18.040 which we'll talk about here in a bit he wasn't he wasn't a great captain he was not in fact he was

00:15:23.660 he was really not a good leader at all and he wasn't the leader of the team so the the bulls blew me away

00:15:30.320 because i had the same impression of jordan and he was a co-captain of that team but if you look back

00:15:37.500 it's just unbelievable look at the day it was in 1990 early in the season and the bulls got off to

00:15:42.960 a rough start you know at that point phil jackson was a second year coach the bulls had never won a

00:15:47.300 title everyone was saying michael jordan is going to be the greatest nba player who never won a

00:15:51.060 championship that was the knock on him and in the after a really rough start phil jackson very quietly

00:15:57.480 announced that bill cartwright was going to be the co-captain of the bulls along with jordan

00:16:02.460 and this was shocking to people because jordan hated cartwright and it openly mocked him because

00:16:07.440 they had traded his friend charles oakley to pick up cartwright cartwright's not charismatic bad

00:16:12.840 knees kind of a brooding guy you know didn't care about being getting any recognition but the minute

00:16:19.920 he did that the problem on the bulls was that no one wanted to buy into michael ball all these kids

00:16:24.460 you know on the team just didn't resented having to just play a game that completely revolved around

00:16:30.260 one player cartwright was the mentor he was the coach they called him teach he was the guy who got

00:16:35.160 everyone on board with this idea of playing this way and the minute they did that they started

00:16:39.820 winning and they went on to win what 65 games and then win their first title they won three

00:16:44.600 with that combination so cartwright was the guy on that team who provided these qualities and provided

00:16:51.060 that kind of leadership and i'd never noticed never noticed him before had any idea that was what was

00:16:56.400 happening all right so let's describe some of these traits and you've mentioned some of them we can go

00:17:00.460 into depth that great team leaders or great team captains have the first one you talk about is

00:17:06.040 doggedness so what's going on there what is it about a player's doggedness not necessarily their talent

00:17:11.220 that helps the whole team be better that was probably the least surprising trait to me i mean i figured

00:17:17.020 yeah if you're going to be a great leader you're going to have that kind of relentless

00:17:20.060 competitive nature but they took it to a level that i had never seen which is that

00:17:25.960 they didn't it didn't matter if they were winning by 10 goals or they're down by 50 points they had

00:17:32.420 one speed in competition and they always played at that speed and carlos puyo i mentioned barcelona was

00:17:37.920 amazing because they'd be beating some terrible team 10 and nothing he's running around like it's the

00:17:42.460 champions league final you know and his teammates were laughing at him but there was that intensity but

00:17:47.520 beyond it it was this ability to continue to play no matter what and to play at that incredible level and

00:17:53.800 the best example the one that really just turned my head to to the power of relentlessness was

00:17:59.520 was this guy buck shelford and he was the captain of the new zealand all blacks which is this incredible

00:18:04.980 rugby team that that was on the list for two and two to for two different units and he was in this game

00:18:12.360 against france and they were the french were out to get them and they were going after shelford i mean they

00:18:17.540 knocked out three of his teeth they punched him in the head they they knocked him cold at one out cold

00:18:23.260 at one point and also kicked him in the groin in the middle of this game and this is pretty gruesome but

00:18:28.660 after the game they lost it was the last match they would lose for for three years under his leadership

00:18:34.380 but after the game he took off his uniform and took off his trunks and and he had just been kicked in

00:18:41.000 the groin during this game he'd been spiked and the spikes of the french players cleats had ripped open

00:18:47.420 his scrotum oh god and like i know it's gruesome but a really important piece of anatomy was hanging

00:18:55.180 out i mean there's blood all over his thighs it was a mess right he'd played through that you know he

00:19:00.920 just kept playing and you know he became this sort of overnight folk hero legend and in rugby but that

00:19:07.800 kind of shows you like there was something almost maniacal about the way that they played and how tough

00:19:13.620 they were and what i discovered looking at a lot of behavioral psychology is that effort is contagious

00:19:19.560 and you know effort is the one the perception that someone is putting in a full 100 effort is the one

00:19:26.800 thing that can make everybody on a team work harder and work harder as a team than they would on the same

00:19:33.620 task individually so there's a contagious effect and i believe all these captains because they were so

00:19:39.640 relentless made everyone around them better right yeah you talk about social loafing typically when

00:19:43.600 we work in groups like if you do a group project in school you you know this firsthand you typically

00:19:49.260 like yeah someone else got it right right yeah that's crazy it's so true it's called social loafing

00:19:55.960 it's been it's this phenomenon they've proven over and over which is if you have people do a task

00:20:00.560 individually and then together as a group they work about you know for 70 is hard you know in the group

00:20:09.040 setting it's just human nature which is why there's not it's so hard to find great teams because

00:20:14.840 you're not teams aren't supposed to be good because by definition when we get together as human beings

00:20:21.240 we're inclined to not work as hard as we would if it was just us doing it so that needs to be

00:20:27.020 counteracted and if you want to sustain success i mean over a long period of time i mean you need someone

00:20:32.580 with that incredible relentlessness to keep uh to keep them from having you know one bad game one bad

00:20:38.180 night and the whole thing can end you know and that's uh i saw that over and over it's a great

00:20:43.600 team captain's lead by example with the doggedness so this is a counterintuitive trait thought that was

00:20:49.860 interesting was that great team captains test the limits of rules so that was interesting since you

00:20:55.360 know as a kid in high school we always thought like oh the the captain of the football team it's like the

00:21:00.000 guys like the paragon of good sports good sportsmanship but you found no like good captains

00:21:05.640 are actually kind of they kind of play dirty so what's going on there this one is tough to explain

00:21:11.680 to people and it took me so long to get to bottom of it because you're right these captains would do

00:21:16.100 things that were really not cool you know they were either kind of aggressive or even violent or they

00:21:22.340 would you know really break the rules or push them to the limit and you know tom brady is a great

00:21:28.460 example with deflate gate right i mean that alleged behavior right but when i saw that i was like that

00:21:34.320 fit the pattern perfectly so here's the thing about sports we look at the rules of sports and we hold

00:21:44.140 them in the same regard that we do the rules of society you know but they're not like the rules of

00:21:49.940 society i mean the rules say you don't break under any circumstances but in sports the rules are kind

00:21:55.720 of subjective and you know they're it's not about whether or not you're breaking the rule it's what

00:22:01.160 the referee says you know it's what happens in the moment whether you can get away with it so

00:22:05.380 these captains because here's the thing they didn't care if people thought they were dirty players they

00:22:11.320 didn't care what people genuinely didn't care what people thought of them all they cared about was the

00:22:15.760 collective outcome for the whole team and it's hard to to realize that but when you feel that way

00:22:21.920 and you don't care about the public view your attitude on the field is what can i get away with

00:22:27.600 what's the ultimate edge of what i can actually get away with in this situation and these captains

00:22:33.520 were incredibly good at finding that line and playing right up to it sometimes they crossed it

00:22:38.740 but most of the time they they were intelligent enough to know like where the line was and they

00:22:44.780 would they would use that kind of subjectivity that's built into the rules and sports to the advantage of

00:22:50.300 the team so that's where the uh the cuban team really or like the captain of the cuban team showed

00:22:55.820 this trait yeah i mean in spades and it was really amazing to watch so the cubans as i said were this

00:23:03.980 dominant team and in in uh the atlanta olympics in 96 they were six years into this run but they were

00:23:10.260 really struggling i mean they were just down and defeated and tired and they lost a couple matches

00:23:16.560 early in the uh in the tournament in the olympics and it looked like they were done right

00:23:20.240 so the captain of this team was this woman maria luis who's incredible she's only five foot nine

00:23:26.100 and she was a striker and most olympic strikers are six two six three but she just had this incredible

00:23:31.060 vertical leap and she was terrific but anyway she was the captain of this team and they had to play

00:23:36.340 brazil they made it to the semi-finals they had to play brazil probably the the other best team in the

00:23:40.940 world kind of their heir apparent for for the best team in the world and they knew that brazil could beat

00:23:45.560 them even if they were playing at their best so she came up with a strategy it was a strategy of

00:23:49.920 desperation but she knew she had to do something and the strategy was this look volleyball there's

00:23:55.440 always a little bit of trash talk going on but there's no specific rule about what you can and

00:24:00.480 can't do so she decided all right well we're going to see how far we can push this and she told her

00:24:05.500 teammates that when they got on the court they had to start shouting insults at the brazilians and

00:24:11.220 they're like well what kind of insults she's like the worst thing you could say to another woman

00:24:15.880 like whatever just empty the tank right so they start shouting these awful things at the brazilians

00:24:21.920 the brazilians you know complain they got a yellow card the for doing it but you know over time it

00:24:28.060 didn't really have an effect at first but by the match got really close and by the fifth set you could

00:24:32.980 just see the brazilians that were they're in their heads they were mad they were overplaying they were

00:24:37.900 getting too unhappy when they made mistakes you just see the psychology working on them and finally the

00:24:44.060 the cubans beat them and right after the match i mean the tempers were flaring and a couple of

00:24:50.480 players in the tunnel bumped into each other and they just started throwing punches and this turned

00:24:55.200 into a all-on brawl like for for you know 30 minutes they had to call the atlanta police to break it up

00:25:01.180 and it was a huge embarrassment for the olympics and for volleyball so i was like wait a minute you know

00:25:06.480 this doesn't work like how could this how's that leadership right that's not leadership that sounds

00:25:11.520 like thuggish you know i went to havana and talked to maria elise about this and she was fascinating

00:25:16.340 she's like you know she she said it's it's a show it's a tool it's something you have to pull out

00:25:22.080 sometimes you have to do aggressive things in order to pull your team through and it's not done out of

00:25:27.620 spite it's done with a purpose it's not because you want to hurt someone it's because you're trying

00:25:32.400 to accomplish a larger purpose and i talked to her teammates and this is when it really dawned on me

00:25:37.080 that this was a tool it was a tactic because they said that during the fight there was only one

00:25:42.240 player who was trying to break it up and it was maria luis so she went from that aggression in the

00:25:48.560 name of winning but as soon as they'd won it was off she switched it off and she was actively trying

00:25:53.460 to stop this fight from happening and that's that's the difference i mean they don't carry it off the

00:25:59.960 court they might be aggressive and uh test test the rules in competition but off the field all of them

00:26:06.020 were incredibly quiet that none of them ever got in any trouble they were incredibly law-abiding

00:26:11.000 people um and it's a hard distinction to make and i don't i'm not advocating this kind of play but i

00:26:17.800 think it's important for people who are managing teams and for coaches to understand where it's coming

00:26:22.580 from what's the motivation for doing it is it to win or is it done out of hatred or animosity and

00:26:28.680 you know i think the more that we understand that behavior and where it's coming from like the more

00:26:33.960 likely you are to make good decisions about leadership right and i mean even for people

00:26:38.280 who aren't involved in sports like i think what this over aggressiveness like testing pushing the

00:26:43.500 limits of the rules it's i mean what that trait they're displaying is like disagreeableness right

00:26:48.820 but disagreeableness and the purpose of a greater cause um so i think oftentimes there's a lot of leaders

00:26:54.420 who think they're leaders and they want everything to be kind of kumbaya but because everything's all

00:26:59.460 everyone's trying to be so calm and nice like you can't you don't push yourself like you everything's

00:27:04.280 just everything everything kind of stays the same because you're not willing to engage in conflict

00:27:08.600 and confront boundaries and that's where all that like that's where the growth happens yeah

00:27:12.900 absolutely and conflict is another thing that they kept displaying you know and it was really

00:27:17.880 important and there's the thing is there's two kinds of conflict too i mean there's a conflict

00:27:22.680 that's really personal where you just don't like someone and the conflict is driven out of

00:27:27.840 personal animosity right but there's a kind of conflict that's called task conflict and

00:27:32.460 researchers have done a lot of studies that show that on teams that perform together in real time

00:27:37.620 you know with a real outcome like a sports team on those teams task conflict is essential you have to

00:27:44.260 argue about the process the team is undergoing in order to win it's how you play and arguments like

00:27:49.760 that can often be mistaken for personal conflict and the toxic kind of conflict but they're not

00:27:56.620 they're they're fundamental to uh keeping a team together and keeping them winning and you see

00:28:01.780 them on all these great teams i mean you see it on the patriots where brady and belichick argue

00:28:05.640 popovich and duncan used to argue like crazy and now the warriors i mean that the warriors and steve

00:28:11.520 kerr constantly arguing about tactics and approach and that's absolutely crucial for a team to sustain

00:28:17.640 excellence all right so another kind of counterintuitive trait of great captains is we typically think of

00:28:23.980 great captains very being you know leading from the front being charismatics or like a michael jordan

00:28:28.080 type but you found the great captains didn't do that well how did they lead that was a puzzling

00:28:33.860 question for me because i i didn't understand it and it all started with brazil because you know brazil

00:28:39.420 was this great soccer dynasty from 58 to 70 they won three of four world cups and you know i went to uh

00:28:46.780 i was like pelet right of course they had pelet and i interviewed pelet and to my great surprise that

00:28:52.920 he was never the captain and he said it was never even a question i didn't want to be no one thought

00:28:57.980 it would be a good idea and the captain of that team the primary captain was this guy hilderado

00:29:03.120 bellini have you never heard of this guy never scored a goal in his entire career in brazil he was

00:29:08.640 not even close to the best player he's a central defender a guy who you know did all the grunt work on the

00:29:15.000 field and that was really curious you know there were other examples like that there was carla

00:29:19.860 overbeck from the u.s women's uh soccer team in 99 you think of mia ham and brandy chastain you know

00:29:27.300 and these great stars but no one's ever heard of her because she was a i like like bellini she's a central

00:29:32.700 defender so the question is how do these people lead and i found there were two ways one was that

00:29:40.340 they actually you can command from the back especially in soccer but in a lot of sports

00:29:45.680 because you know by by distributing the ball to your teammates and and being very unselfish you

00:29:52.580 create dependency you know your star teammates needs you to get them the ball and to and to set up

00:29:58.740 plays right so so that creates this dependency on that person but beyond that what i found that was

00:30:04.960 fascinating is because they were self-effacing that didn't care about how they were perceived they

00:30:10.740 didn't care about getting attention they didn't care individual accolades really genuinely did not

00:30:15.060 care that people understood that everything they did was for the common collective good of the team

00:30:20.840 so it gave them this credibility and carla overbeck was a great example of this because she was like

00:30:26.940 very vocal on the field i mean she would get right on somebody if they weren't performing well

00:30:31.860 weren't focused and she would also be there to congratulate them when they did something well but

00:30:35.240 they all understood where it was coming from and when it's coming from someone like that

00:30:39.400 who's not interested in themselves has no ego at all about about their performance it's genuine and it

00:30:45.700 actually has an impact it resonates with everyone so they were able to command in that way too and

00:30:51.160 it's counterintuitive but that's what leadership really is you know and and the star of the team

00:30:57.240 in this system is liberated it's liberated from the idea that they have to contribute to leadership

00:31:04.020 and they're liberate they can do it as they want to but they're they're relieved of that burden and

00:31:08.620 they love everyone loves this player because that's the person who's ultimately going to run into the burning

00:31:13.220 building you know when no one else will and knowing that person is there creates this comfort and that's

00:31:19.380 what brady was talking about it's not that difficult you do your job so everyone else can do their job that

00:31:25.420 was what i think he was saying which is on a team that's functioning right everyone knows what their

00:31:30.960 responsibilities are but they also know that someone's got their back and that in all these

00:31:35.520 cases was the captain so kind of you kind of mentioned that but the way captains or the great captains

00:31:40.820 communicate it's not they're not given rah rah locker room speeches like it's very subtle and it happens

00:31:46.920 oftentimes like when no one's even paying attention or or no one else the eyeballs aren't on them

00:31:52.040 yeah i didn't i didn't believe this when i when i found it but i started because you know you think

00:31:57.360 of how do you motivate a team and there's the hollywood version which is you give a big speech

00:32:01.900 and you know we know about great coaches speeches and you know captains who were are supposed to have

00:32:09.840 a silver tongue right and that's how you motivate people and i was shocked because not a single one of

00:32:15.800 these captains not one of them liked giving speeches some of them never did it i mean they just

00:32:21.480 did not do it or they said they tried it once and it was such a joke they never did it again and

00:32:25.720 you know i i didn't understand how you could possibly motivate a team that way and the person i really

00:32:32.060 decided to focus on was tim duncan because tim duncan and the spurs the san antonio spurs and this is a

00:32:38.340 you know an incredible dynasty that won for so long i mean no one will ever match that the length of

00:32:44.880 their of their winning streak so duncan you see duncan give interviews right i mean he's just like

00:32:51.120 a blob i mean he's he's no emotion or charisma or anything and i didn't understand how someone like

00:32:58.180 that could motivate teammates so i spent a lot of time watching them play and watching them practice

00:33:03.580 and what i noticed about duncan was he actually communicates a lot but not in the way you would

00:33:08.700 think he he was always working the perimeter of the of the floor he was always talking to somebody

00:33:13.880 one-on-one very intensely and he listened as much as he would talk he would use gestures and body

00:33:19.780 language and and his eyes to really communicate what he was saying and it was it was this constant

00:33:25.860 communication and the spurs are famous for how much they talk and you see this you see them on the

00:33:31.540 bench you see them on the floor they're constantly talking it's like an open monologue and more than any

00:33:37.380 other nba team at the time and that is what happens when you have someone like that who's the leader who

00:33:44.840 is circulating because it gets everyone talking everyone feels you know like they can be heard but

00:33:51.260 also more accountable and all the problems that come up over the course of the game are addressed in

00:33:56.920 the moment nothing festers everything is open for a conversation and that kind of communication

00:34:03.300 is the the same kind that has been proven to be really effective in business teams there's always

00:34:09.020 someone in there who circulates and they call it the charismatic connector it's the person who

00:34:14.560 brings everyone together by talking individually not not giving big speeches but you know one-on-one

00:34:20.700 communication about the task at hand and that's that's the same leadership style that duncan used it's

00:34:25.760 all the same leadership style that yogi bera used and yogi bera think about yogi bera was famous for

00:34:31.540 being inarticulate right i mean i can't imagine him giving a locker room speech right but that's

00:34:37.140 what he did he worked he worked with everyone it's how he communicated constantly democratically and

00:34:43.340 intensely one-on-one with people in the moment and that's the key you just need someone who's willing

00:34:48.600 to put that kind of time in and it's not the perception of motivation that we that we lean to

00:34:54.580 so yeah that's not your stereotypical leader stuff displaying here how do these captains get selected

00:35:01.040 like do people do these guys like actively seek after the captainship or like do their teams just

00:35:05.820 naturally decide no you are the leader and gravitate towards them it's funny so many of these teams i

00:35:12.060 think they wound up with getting these people as leaders almost accidentally because a lot of them

00:35:18.080 were obscure and they came from places where there wasn't a great tradition of winning and there there

00:35:24.400 weren't great talents and and so the person who assumed the leadership accidentally was actually the

00:35:30.720 right person for the job but no in most cases that these people were chosen by by the coaches or by

00:35:38.600 upper management and given that that designation there were cases there was one case barcelona where

00:35:44.200 the captain was elected and it's very funny you asked if they sought the job and it was very funny

00:35:50.620 because carlos puyol was elected the captain unanimously by his teammates except for except for one vote which

00:35:57.920 was carlos puyol he's like didn't think he should vote for himself he didn't think it was appropriate

00:36:02.320 and most of them didn't they didn't pursue the captaincy for prestige they didn't believe they

00:36:08.620 were entitled to it a lot of them didn't believe they were worthy of the job but the reason that they

00:36:14.760 wanted it was in the end because they felt responsible for the collective effort and for the for the common

00:36:21.900 goal it wasn't about their own advancement or or appreciation for their ability it was it was a

00:36:29.300 because they knew that they were the one who was gonna as i said run into the burning building they

00:36:33.760 were gonna do that awful job that bit of grunt work that no one else wanted to do and they were you

00:36:40.340 know they saw it as a burden they didn't see it as a as a honor i mean they didn't care if they had the

00:36:45.440 designation or not honestly they they really wanted to to serve the the common purpose and and they knew

00:36:52.120 how hard that was and that's not glamorous and it's not fun and that they wouldn't get credit but all

00:36:57.300 they really cared about in the end was winning and that was enough for them right i think i mean i've

00:37:00.880 even seen that in my own life oftentimes the leader that everyone looks to isn't the guy with the title

00:37:06.380 right yes yeah no you see that in sports too i mean you see you know roy keen who was a great

00:37:14.640 captain at manchester united said this about captaincy he said you know there's the guy who

00:37:20.400 the public sees as the face of the team and the leader of the team but you know inside the clubhouse

00:37:25.300 it can be radically different i mean the the actual hierarchy of the team can be completely different

00:37:31.380 and that person can be really a marginal figure inside the team and yeah you see that i've seen it

00:37:36.960 too i mean i started reassessing all the teams i've been on you know and and and finding these people

00:37:42.860 that i hadn't noticed before you know who were playing that role very quietly and were content

00:37:47.660 just that the group succeeded and didn't expect or you know yearn for any kind of acknowledgement

00:37:53.740 and and those are hard people to find that's the problem right that's why we don't have a lot of them

00:37:59.000 because they're not obvious and you wouldn't notice them if you're not looking for them right

00:38:02.780 because the people who end up in leadership positions usually are the ones seeking after them

00:38:06.500 and but the irony is usually they're not the one the good ones for the job the best ones for the job

00:38:11.240 yeah it's true you know it's usually especially these days i mean it's it's really most teams are

00:38:17.460 either de-emphasizing captaincy or else they're you know just they're just giving it to their best

00:38:22.000 player or it's become something that gets wrapped up in contract negotiations you know like it's a

00:38:26.620 perk that they throw in and it's not really based on how they actually behave in the team setting and

00:38:31.920 yeah i mean it's it's it's weird i mean it's so easy to make a mistake and it's so easy to

00:38:37.580 it's such an easy thing to to ignore and such an easy thing to mess up and you know if you mess it up

00:38:45.760 it's really hard to undo it so why why are captaincies on the decline i thought that was

00:38:50.140 interesting i didn't know that that fewer teams that more and more teams are using team captains

00:38:54.780 what's going on there what's the the thinking behind that yeah it's you know there were a lot

00:38:58.660 there are a few different things but it really comes down to economics and you know the main

00:39:02.900 difference now is if you think about the last 20 years i mean the amount of money that's poured into

00:39:07.560 organized sports you know at the professional level everywhere i mean it's astounding and

00:39:12.420 the real beneficiary is as it becomes more of a commercial enterprise i mean it used to be

00:39:17.380 you just had to win that's how you made money you won you had to win but now you know the economics

00:39:23.820 are different you really need to put on a good show you know because most of the money is coming

00:39:27.060 from tv and there's an element of like making sure that you're putting on a good show and as a result

00:39:32.900 you know it's the sports business is more like the entertainment business you know it's the marquee

00:39:37.160 names and on most teams the marquee names are the coach and the star player and that has become

00:39:43.060 a different model so there's this like there's two power centers inside the team there's the big

00:39:48.020 star and the coach and you know those people are you know way kind of battling for control of the

00:39:53.220 team that's kind of become a competition what's happened is like you squeezed out the middleman

00:39:58.360 and all these great captains because most of them weren't stars they were those middle managers they

00:40:05.640 were the people who stood between the players and management and they had minds of their own and

00:40:11.440 independence and some autonomy and they could take the best of whatever the players were doing

00:40:15.860 and thinking and and the best of what management wanted and they could fuse them together and

00:40:20.120 actually act out and find a strategy that worked they were also the people who held the team

00:40:25.360 together when things were bad and that's that's the lesson not just for sports but for management

00:40:30.960 because you know middle management's kind of not cool in business right now i mean you have founder

00:40:35.560 culture you have this idea that you want the founders and ceos of a company to talk more

00:40:40.320 directly to the star talent but when things go bad that's when it falls apart because you know

00:40:46.720 managers over function they're not on the field they can't actually do anything so they start to

00:40:51.060 come up with bad ideas and over function and the stars you know they start looking at their resume

00:40:56.420 and thinking maybe you know maybe i should skip this place maybe it's falling apart it's those middle

00:41:01.680 managers who care about the team's outcome and not their own and those are the people who in those

00:41:06.700 moments will hold the team together and they use these traits that i've described in order to do that and i see it

00:41:12.800 over and over again it's when everything's about to fall apart that's when leadership matters it

00:41:18.040 doesn't matter when everything's going great you know or your stock charts you know straight up or

00:41:23.680 your team's won 25 games in a row it's when things start to go bad and that's when you need these people

00:41:29.240 i love it well sam this has been a great conversation where can people go to learn more about the book

00:41:33.480 well i have a website by sam walker.com which has more information and i'm also on twitter

00:41:39.200 sam walker's and linkedin and facebook and you can read my columns on leadership in the wall street

00:41:45.780 journal which which just started a few weeks ago on the journal site that's awesome well sam walker

00:41:51.120 thank you so much for time it's been a pleasure thanks brett my guest name is sam walker he's the

00:41:54.980 author of the book the captain class it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere find more

00:41:59.520 information about his work at bysamwalker.com also check out our show notes at aom.is

00:42:04.020 slash captain class where you find links to resources where you delve deeper into this topic

00:42:07.540 well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice

00:42:23.680 make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com and if you enjoy

00:42:26.960 the podcast i've gotten something out of it i appreciate if you take one minute to give us

00:42:29.860 a review on itunes or stitcher it helps out a lot as always thank you for your continued support

00:42:33.420 until next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay manly

00:42:36.240 you

The Art of Manliness - July 31, 2025

#405： The Power of Team Captains

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