Often leaders feel like they’ve tried everything by the book to lead their teams well—held weekly meetings, created paths for communication, hosted team outings, or employed a series of tools and tricks—but their team still seems to experience growth challenges, high turnover, and miscommunication often.

Leadership Lessons from a Team Captain draws on the experience of speaker, marketer and teacher, founder, and self-proclaimed pocket cheerleader, Ciara Ungar, as an athlete and the study of today’s greatest names in sports, such as Kobe Bryant, Alex Morgan and Drew Brees, to identify characteristics and behaviors seen in team captains in sports that are applicable to the business world. Building on a foundation of the psychology of leadership dynamics, Leadership Lessons from a Team Captain explores generational gaps between traditional and new age office environments, the invisible ideal of perfection, intrinsic motivation, one-on-one relationships, trust-building and more. It challenges leaders to rethink how they define a team leader and the characteristics that are inherently required.

Readers learn from the study of successes and mistakes of today’s most beloved athletes with lessons in and examples of motivation, consistency, problem solving and empathy. They also gain access to supplemental tools, including a guide to building motivation as a discipline, trust-building exercises, and empathy as a leader. At the completion of Leadership Lessons from a Team Captain, readers will have an understanding of the two areas of their leadership that need developing: skills and attributes. Although the majority of it aims to address building the attributes of a leader, each chapter speaks to how each serves the other in order for the leader to grow and be effective.