Great Teams

Great Teams
Author: Don Yaeger
Publisher: HarperChristian + ORM
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2016-07-19
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0718080572

What makes a team great? Not just good and not just functional—but great? Over six years, long-time Sports Illustrated editor Don Yaeger was invited by some of the greatest companies in the world to speak about the habits of high-performing individuals. From Microsoft and Starbucks to the New England Patriots and San Antonio Spurs, what do some organizations do seemingly better than most of their opponents? Don took the challenge. He began building into his travel schedule opportunities to interview our generation’s greatest team builders from the sports and business worlds. During this process, he conducted more than 100 interviews with some of the most successful teams and organizations in the country. From those interviews, Don identified 16 habits that drive these high-performing teams. Building on the stories, examples, and first-hand accounts, each chapter in Great Teams comes with applicable examples on how to apply these characteristics in any organization. Great Teams includes: Life lessons from some of the most notable names in sports and business applied to team-making in any situation Interviews from well-known players from Peyton and Eli Manning to Kevin Durant Skills to allow culture to shape who you recruit, manage dysfunction, friction, and strong personalities Advice on how to win in critical situations, embrace change, build a mentoring culture, and see value others miss Great Teams is the ultimate intersection of the sports and business worlds and a powerful companion for thought leaders, teams, managers, and organizations that seek to perform similarly. The insight shared in this book is sure to enhance any team in its pursuit of excellence.

Real Dream Teams

Real Dream Teams
Author: Robert Fisher
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2020-09-06
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1000162133

Want to achieve spectacular success in your personal and business life? Looking for ways to mold and capture superior teamwork, cohesion, and bone-deep dedication? Put Real Dream Teams on your list of must reads. From the headlines used to describe groups such as the 1992 U.S. Olympic basketball team, to Hollywood production moguls, to attorneys clashing in major criminal cases, we have all heard the phrase "dream teams" used and misused. Real Dream Teams is a book that focuses on extraordinary efforts by conditioned winners who have achieved outstanding results through what the authors call "synergistic group dynamics." Let Real Dream Teams point you in the direction of becoming a more effective team leader and team member. Read of team efforts and extraordinary practices and results as demonstrated by recipients of the Nobel Prize, the Medal of Honor, national championships, and best-in-industry awards. Take tips from those who have achieved their membership in Real Dream Teams:

Sport: A Very Short Introduction

Sport: A Very Short Introduction
Author: Mike Cronin
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 144
Release: 2014-11-27
Genre: History
ISBN: 0191512745

Sport is big business; international in nature and the focus of much media and cultural attention. In this Very Short Introduction, Mike Cronin charts the history of sport, from its traditional origins in folk football and cock fighting to its position as a global phenomenon today. Looking at a variety of sports from team games such as rugby, cricket, and football to games for individuals such as golf, tennis, and skiing, he considers how these first emerged and captivated the interest of ordinary people, and how sport has been transformed within our daily lives. Exploring the relationship between sport and class, gender, commerce, identity, and ethics, Cronin considers some of the central issues in sport today, including the high pay of professional footballers and the glamour of sports women, as well as fair play standards. Charting sport through the ages and around the world, this is a short guide to the history, development, and place of sport in contemporary global society. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Team of Teams

Team of Teams
Author: Gen. Stanley McChrystal
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2015-05-12
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0698178513

From the New York Times bestselling author of My Share of the Task and Leaders, a manual for leaders looking to make their teams more adaptable, agile, and unified in the midst of change. When General Stanley McChrystal took command of the Joint Special Operations Task Force in 2004, he quickly realized that conventional military tactics were failing. Al Qaeda in Iraq was a decentralized network that could move quickly, strike ruthlessly, then seemingly vanish into the local population. The allied forces had a huge advantage in numbers, equipment, and training—but none of that seemed to matter. To defeat Al Qaeda, they would have to combine the power of the world’s mightiest military with the agility of the world’s most fearsome terrorist network. They would have to become a "team of teams"—faster, flatter, and more flexible than ever. In Team of Teams, McChrystal and his colleagues show how the challenges they faced in Iraq can be rel­evant to countless businesses, nonprofits, and or­ganizations today. In periods of unprecedented crisis, leaders need practical management practices that can scale to thousands of people—and fast. By giving small groups the freedom to experiment and share what they learn across the entire organiza­tion, teams can respond more quickly, communicate more freely, and make better and faster decisions. Drawing on compelling examples—from NASA to hospital emergency rooms—Team of Teams makes the case for merging the power of a large corporation with the agility of a small team to transform any organization.

The Making of Les Bleus

The Making of Les Bleus
Author: Lindsay Sarah Krasnoff
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2012-12-16
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 0739175092

The Making of Les Bleus traces the Fifth Republic’s quest to create elite athletes in two global team sports, football and basketball, primarily at the youth level. While the objective of this mission was to improve performances at international competitions, such programs were quickly seized upon to help ease domestic issues and tensions. The onset of the Cold War forced countries of all sizes to rethink their relevancy. A country’s ability to exert “soft power,” or influence others through the cultural sphere, became more important. Sport was but one way through which to do so. The extent to which France harnessed the athletic domain was unprecedented among other West European nations. In France, sport, particularly at the youth level, was used to cultivate soft power internationally, to transmit republican ideals of democracy and fair play to the youth, and to examine and create a modern, post-colonial French identity in a globalizing world. The French sought to find a “third way” in sports, much in the way that it sought to create an alternative between the diplomatic policies of Washington and Moscow. Fifth Republic sports systems placed the training of elite athletes under the state. At the same time, private clubs also played an important role in developing players to serve the republic in elite competition. Examination of the republic’s quest to create elite athletes provides perspective on how France coped with and adapted to the post-1945 world. In what ways did the country reconfigure its global role? How did domestic changes impact society? In a globalizing, post-colonial world, how has France come to terms with the past? In what ways has France sought to create a new “French” identity? This story helps answer such questions. The history of the state’s cooption of youth sports forms a compelling tale and serves as a prism through which to investigate the larger history of France, the evolution of society, the impacts of the media revolution, and the government’s mission of public health. It underscores just how much things have changed—yet still remained the same. You can find a podcast interview with the author about this book at: http://newbooksinsports.com/2013/11/14/lindsay-krasnoff-the-making-of-les-bleus-sport-in-france-1958-2010-lexington-books-2012/

American Sports [4 volumes]

American Sports [4 volumes]
Author: Murry R. Nelson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 1678
Release: 2013-05-23
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 0313397538

America loves sports. This book examines and details the proof of this fascination seen throughout American society—in our literature, film, and music; our clothing and food; and the iconography of the nation. This momentous four-volume work examines and details the cultural aspects of sport and how sport pervasively reflects—and affects—myriad aspects of American society from the early 1900s to the present day. Written in a straightforward, readable manner, the entries cover both historical and contemporary aspects of sport and American culture. Unlike purely historical encyclopedias on sports, the contributions within these volumes cover related subject matter such as poetry, novels, music, films, plays, television shows, art and artists, mythologies, artifacts, and people. While this encyclopedia set is ideal for general readers who need information on the diverse aspects of sport in American culture for research purposes or are merely reading for enjoyment, the detailed nature of the entries will also prove useful as an initial source for scholars of sport and American culture. Each entry provides a number of both print and online resources for further investigation of the topic.

LeBron's Dream Team

LeBron's Dream Team
Author: LeBron James
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 156
Release: 2010-04-27
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1101427337

The inspiration for the Peacock Original Movie "Shooting Stars" "A book that will incredibly move and inspire you.” —Jay-Z "An entertaining, well-written reminder that even if he seems to have been around forever, James didn’t go directly from the nursery to the NBA.” —Sports Illustrated The "dream team" was a bunch of kids from Akron, Ohio - LeBron James and his best friends - who first met on a youth basketball team of the same name when they were ten and eleven years old. United by their love of the game and their yearning for companionship, they quickly forged a bond which would carry them through thick and thin (a lot of thin) and, at last, to the brink of a national championship. They were a motley group who faced challenges all too typical of inner-city America. LeBron grew up without a father and had moved with his mother more than a dozen times by the age of 10. Willie McGee, the quiet one, had left both his parents behind in Chicago to be raised by his older brother in Akron. Dru Joyce was outspoken, and his dad, who was ever-present, would end up coaching all five of the boys in high school. Sian Cotton, who also played football, was the happy-go-lucky enforcer, while Romeo Travis was unhappy, bitter, even surly, until he finally opened himself up to the bond his team mates offered. In the summer after seventh grade, the "dream team" tasted glory when they qualified for a national championship tournament in Memphis. But they lost their focus, and had to go home early. They promised each other they would stay together and do whatever it took to win a national title. They had no idea how hard it would be to pursue that promise. In the years that followed, they would endure jealousy, hostility, exploitation, resentment from the black community (because they went to a "white" high school), and the consequence of their own over-confidence. Not least, they would all have to wrestle with LeBron's outsize success, which brought too much attention and even a whiff of scandal their way. But together these five boys became men as they sought a national championship.

Dream Team

Dream Team
Author: Jack McCallum
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Total Pages: 409
Release: 2013-04-09
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 0345520491

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Acclaimed sports journalist Jack McCallum delivers the untold story of the greatest team ever assembled: the 1992 U.S. Olympic Men’s Basketball Team. As a writer for Sports Illustrated, McCallum enjoyed a courtside seat for the most exciting basketball spectacle on earth, covering the Dream Team from its inception to the gold medal ceremony in Barcelona. Drawing on fresh interviews with the players, McCallum provides the definitive account of the Dream Team phenomenon. He offers a behind-the-scenes look at the controversial selection process. He takes us inside the team’s Olympic suites for late-night card games and bull sessions where superstars like Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, and Larry Bird debated the finer points of basketball. And he narrates a riveting account of the legendary intrasquad scrimmage that pitted the Dream Teamers against one another in what may have been the greatest pickup game in history. In the twenty years since the Dream Team first captivated the world, its mystique has only grown. Dream Team vividly re-creates the moment when a once-in-a-millennium group of athletes came together and changed the future of sports—one perfectly executed fast break at a time. With a new Afterword by the author “The absolute definitive work on the subject, a perfectly wonderful once-you-pick-it-up-you-won’t-be-able-to-put-it-down book.”—The Boston Globe “An Olympic hoops dream.”—Newsday “What makes this volume a must-read for nostalgic hoopsters are the robust portraits of the outsize personalities of the participants, all of whom were remarkably open with McCallum, both then and now.”—Booklist (starred review)

Dream Teams

Dream Teams
Author: Shane Snow
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2018-06-05
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0735217793

Award-winning entrepreneur and journalist Shane Snow reveals the counterintuitive reasons why so many partnerships and groups break down--and why some break through. The best teams are more than the sum of their parts, but why does collaboration so often fail to fulfill this promise? In Dream Teams, Snow takes us on an adventure through history, neuroscience, psychology, and business, exploring what separates groups that simply get by together from those that get better together. You'll learn: * How ragtag teams--from soccer clubs to startups to gangs of pirates--beat the odds throughout history. * Why DaimlerChrysler flopped while the Wu-Tang Clan succeeded, and the surprising factor behind most failed mergers, marriages, and partnerships. * What the Wright Brothers' daily arguments can teach us about group problem solving. * Pioneering women in law enforcement, unlikely civil rights collaborators, and underdog armies that did the incredible together. * The team players behind great social movements in history, and the science of becoming open-minded. Provocative and entertaining, Dream Teams is a landmark work that will change the way we think about people, progress, and collaboration.

Offside

Offside
Author: Andrei S. Markovits
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 381
Release: 2014-04-24
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1400824184

Soccer is the world's favorite pastime, a passion for billions around the globe. In the United States, however, the sport is a distant also-ran behind football, baseball, basketball, and hockey. Why is America an exception? And why, despite America's leading role in popular culture, does most of the world ignore American sports in return? Offside is the first book to explain these peculiarities, taking us on a thoughtful and engaging tour of America's sports culture and connecting it with other fundamental American exceptionalisms. In so doing, it offers a comparative analysis of sports cultures in the industrial societies of North America and Europe. The authors argue that when sports culture developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, nativism and nationalism were shaping a distinctly American self-image that clashed with the non-American sport of soccer. Baseball and football crowded out the game. Then poor leadership, among other factors, prevented soccer from competing with basketball and hockey as they grew. By the 1920s, the United States was contentedly isolated from what was fast becoming an international obsession. The book compares soccer's American history to that of the major sports that did catch on. It covers recent developments, including the hoopla surrounding the 1994 soccer World Cup in America, the creation of yet another professional soccer league, and American women's global preeminence in the sport. It concludes by considering the impact of soccer's growing popularity as a recreation, and what the future of sports culture in the country might say about U.S. exceptionalism in general.