Leading Teams

Leading Teams

Paolo Guenzi and Dino Ruta, business professors at Bocconi University have written a fascinating book on leadership skills and techniques in the sports world that can be easily transferred into business.

The book combines theoretical tools and techniques with real world insight. The first few chapters provide some general guidelines on transferring ideas, methods and practices from sports to management, an overview of what leadership is, the different types of leadership that exist and the authors overview of a new team leadership model that illustrates the capacity of team leaders to impact team performance in a positive way.

Although the first few chapters of the book were interesting and helped shape the overall context, I found the application of real world insight more useful. The various quotes and interviews from leading coaches and managers in football, tennis, basketball and rugby provided a unique perspective on how they set goals and visions for a club or national team and the challenges they experience on a daily basis. The tips that they provide in how to motivate players, ensuring that all stakeholders are fully behind the vision are all very useful and certainly made me think about how I could apply some of the motivational techniques to my job.

The penultimate chapter of the book in particular explores the concept of motivating players in further detail. The motivational toolkit is presented in this chapter and it describes all of the interdependent decisions that a team leader needs to make to ensure that team members' motivational state is at an optimal level.

In summary, I would recommend this book as it provides insightful leadership tips and techniques and is written with great clarity and structure.


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