Sam Walker

One of the highest compliments coaches can pay athletes is to describe them as relentless, to say that they just keep coming. Not every star has this quality. Some have a tendency to take games off; others shrink in critical situations. Among the Tier One captains, however, this trait was displayed over and over.

The greatest misperception about communication is the idea that words need to be involved. Over the past few decades, a wave of scientific breakthroughs has confirmed something that most of us already suspected. Our brains are capable of making deep, powerful, fast-acting, and emotional connections with the brains of people around us. This kind of synergy doesn’t require our participation. It happens automatically, whether we’re aware of it or not.

The captains of the world’s seventeen greatest sports teams were not angels. They sometimes did nasty things to win, especially when the stakes were highest. They didn’t believe that being sportsmanlike all the time was a prerequisite for being great.

At times, when they were flooded with negativity, these captains engaged some kind of regulatory mechanism that shut those emotions off before they could have deleterious effects. In other words, they came equipped with a kill switch.

In every nation that keeps reliable television ratings, the most-watched live broadcast in the past fifty years has been a match between two sports teams. ... The fact is that in the history of human events, nothing draws larger and more diverse audience than two elite groups of athletes competing.

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.

One of the most confounding laws of human nature is that when faced with a task, people will work harder alone than they will when joined in the effort—a phenomenon known as social loafing. There is, however, an antidote. It’s the presence of one person who leaves no doubt that they are giving it everything they’ve got.

Leaders are made, not born,’ as Vince Lombardi famously said. ‘They are made by hard effort, which is the price which all of us must pay to achieve any goal that is worthwhile.

The truth is that leadership is a ceaseless burden. It’s not something people should do for the self-reflected glory, or even because they have oodles of charisma or surpassing talent. It’s something they should do because they have the humility and fortitude to set aside the credit, and their own gratification and well-being, for the team—not just in pressure-packed moments but in every minute of every day.