Looking for the best Sports Leadership books? Browse our list to find excellent book recommendations on the subject.
- The Team Captain’s Leadership Manual (2017)
- The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership (2010)
- HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Leadership Lessons from Sports (featuring interviews with Sir Alex Ferguson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Andre Agassi) (2018)
- The Teammate’s Accountability Manual (2018)
- The Leadership Playbook: Become Your Team’s Most Valuable Leader (2017)
- Leadership and Management in Athletic Training: An Integrated Approach (2018)
- Leadership in Sport (Foundations of Sport Management) (2015)
- The Athlete’s Responsibility Manual (2016)
- Sport, Ethics and Leadership (2017)
- The Athlete’s Commitment Manual (2016)
- Jeff Janssen’s Peak Performance Playbook (2000)
- How to Hold People Accountable Manual (2018)
- Think Like a Warrior: The Five Inner Beliefs That Make You Unstoppable (Sports for the Soul) (Volume 1) (2016)
- Bring Your “A” Game: A Young Athlete’s Guide to Mental Toughness (2009)
- The Team Captain’s Culture Manual (2016)
The Team Captain’s Leadership Manual (2017)
Designed for both athletes and coaches of all sports, this one of a kind Team Captains Manual details a proven 10 week leadership development program to build effective team leaders. Create team captains who: set the tone for your team, hold their teammates accountable to a higher standard, constructively confront their less disciplined teammates, know how to refocus their teammates when they are down or distracted, and take care of a lot of team problems so you dont have to.
The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership (2010)
Bill Walsh is a towering figure in the history of the NFL. His advanced leadership transformed the San Francisco 49ers from the worst franchise in sports to a legendary dynasty. In the process, he changed the way football is played. Prior to his death, Walsh granted a series of exclusive interviews to bestselling author Steve Jamison. These became his ultimate lecture on leadership. Additional insights and perspective are provided by Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Montana and others.
HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Leadership Lessons from Sports (featuring interviews with Sir Alex Ferguson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Andre Agassi) (2018)
The world’s elite athletes and coaches achieve high performance through inspiring leadership, mental toughness, and direction-setting strategic choices. has talked to many of these high performers throughout the years to learn how their success translates to the world of business.If you read nothing else on management lessons from the world of sports, read these 10 articles by athletes, coaches, and leadership experts.
The Teammate’s Accountability Manual (2018)
Need your athletes to be more accountable? Want your athletes to produce results rather than excuses? As Level 2 in our popular Sports Leadership Development Series, The Teammate’s Accountability Manual provides a practical, six-week Accountability Training System to teach and train your athletes how to be fully accountable for themselves and to each other. While everyone else is preaching accountability, you will teach it through this effective and easy-to-implement program!
The Leadership Playbook: Become Your Team’s Most Valuable Leader (2017)
Packed full of practical insights and stories to help student-athletes become better teammates and more positive leaders, this is a must-read for all teams. The coach might set the vision for the team, but the players carry it out. The coach may define the culture, but the players make it happen. The true culture of a team is made up of the standards and habits that the players buy into.
Leadership and Management in Athletic Training: An Integrated Approach (2018)
Leadership and Management in Athletic Training, Second Edition is designed to help athletic trainers effectively integrate the art of leadership with the science of management. This text discusses the aspects of management and leadership identified in the Board of Certification (BOC) Role Delineation Study and the National Athletic Trainers’ Association (NATA) educational competencies.
Leadership in Sport (Foundations of Sport Management) (2015)
Effective leadership is essential in any sports organisation, both in the boardroom and on the training pitch. Leadership in Sport is the first textbook to examine sports leadership in the round, across both management and coaching environments.
The Athlete’s Responsibility Manual (2016)
Develop Responsible Athletes who own their choices, decisions, and actions. Need your athletes to take more responsibility for themselves? Wish your athletes would do what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, and how it needs to be done without much prodding and oversight from you? Want your athletes to reliably produce more results rather than a litany of excuses? Numerous coaches are frustrated with today s athletes’ inability to effectively handle their responsibilities.
Sport, Ethics and Leadership (2017)
Everybody involved in sport, from the bleachers to the boardroom, should develop an understanding of ethics. Sport ethics prompt discussion of the central principles and ideals by which we all live our lives, and effective leadership in sport is invariably ethical leadership. This fascinating new introduction to sport ethics outlines key ethical theories in the context of sport as well as the fundamentals of moral reasoning.
The Athlete’s Commitment Manual (2016)
Need more committed athletes on your team? As part of Jeff Janssen’s Sports Leadership Development Series, The Athlete’s Commitment Manual teaches and trains your athletes on exactly what it means to fully commit to their task, training, and team. Originally published as the Commitment Continuum System, this practical manual provides a proven 6-week Commitment Training Program to help you create more Committed and Compelled athletes.
Jeff Janssen’s Peak Performance Playbook (2000)
Jeff Janssen’s Peak Performance Playbook details 50 fun mental game and team building drills you can use to build your team’s Mental Toughness and Team Chemistry. The Playbook comes complete with drill objectives, setup instructions, step by step directions, a list of follow up questions, plus master handout sheets for you to simply copy for your team.
How to Hold People Accountable Manual (2018)
Hands down, the #1 struggle for today’s leaders is holding their teammates accountable. The How to Hold People Accountable Manual provides athletes with a practical seven-step program to hold their teammates accountable. Leaders will learn how to effectively establish, exemplify, endorse, and enforce a high-performance culture both on and off the playing fields.
Think Like a Warrior: The Five Inner Beliefs That Make You Unstoppable (Sports for the Soul) (Volume 1) (2016)
If you want to take control of your life and achieve your biggest dreams, you must develop a “warrior mindset.” This book will show you how to stop thinking like a victim and start thinking like a warrior. In this inspirational fable, Chris McNeely is a college football coach who is at the end of his rope after a hard-and-fast fall from the top of his profession.
Bring Your “A” Game: A Young Athlete’s Guide to Mental Toughness (2009)
Mental training is just as important as physical training when it comes to success in sport. And like physical fitness, mental toughness is something that can be taught and learned. Yet many young athletes have not learned the psychological skills needed to develop their best game.
The Team Captain’s Culture Manual (2016)
The Team Captain’s Culture Manual provides advanced leadership training for your team leaders. It truly is the next level of leadership training for your captains and the perfect follow up resource to use after your leaders complete the original Team Captain’s Leadership Manual.
Best Sports Leadership Books You Should Enjoy
We highly recommend you to buy all paper or e-books in a legal way, for example, on Amazon. But sometimes it might be a need to dig deeper beyond the shiny book cover. Before making a purchase, you can visit resources like Library Genesis and download some sports leadership books mentioned below at your own risk. Once again, we do not host any illegal or copyrighted files, but simply give our visitors a choice and hope they will make a wise decision.
The Competitive Buddha: How to Up Your Game in Sports, Leadership and Life (Book on Buddhism, Sports Book, Guide for Self-Improvement)
Author(s): Dr. Jerry Lynch
ID: 3468065, Publisher: Mango Media, Year: 2021, Size: 3 Mb, Format: epub
The NBA Story: How the Sports League Slam-Dunked Its Way into a Global Business Powerhouse (The Business Storybook)
Author(s): Rich Mintzer; eric Mintzer
ID: 2530033, Publisher: Harpercollins Leadership, Year: 2020, Size: 2 Mb, Format: epub
Sports Business Unplugged: Leadership Challenges from the World of Sports
Author(s): Rick Burton; Norm O'Reilly
ID: 3566626, Publisher: Syracuse University Press, Year: 2016, Size: 3 Mb, Format: epub
Please note that this booklist is not errorless. Some books are truly chart-busters according to The Wall Street Journal, others are drafted by unknown authors. On top of that, you can always find additional tutorials and courses on Coursera, Udemy or edX, for example. Are there any other relevant books you could recommend? Drop a comment if you have any feedback on the list.