A new book explores the values that embody success for great athletes—and how they can influence everyday work and life.
Why It’s Important
Good coaches and good athletes are good leaders. Sports is a difficult business that requires expertise, situational awareness, and the ability to guide others to a common goal—learning their strengths and weaknesses and using them to compete at the highest levels.
This is a topic that Washington Post sportswriter, columnist, and New York Times-bestselling author Sally Jenkins discusses in her new book The Right Call: What Sports Teach Us About Work and Life.
As she explores the principles of success that allow athletes to compete—including conditioning, practice, discipline, candor, culture, resilience, and intention—she addresses the exemplary coaches and athletes that she has had the opportunity to work with and writes about how they embody excellence—influencing the way she thinks in the process.
Notable Quote
“Sportswriter Sally Jenkins has spent her entire adult life observing and writing about great coaches and athletes. Now, she presents the astonishing inner qualities in these same people that pushed them to overcome pressure, elevate their performances, and discover champion identities. Based on years of observing, interviewing, and analyzing elite coaches and playmakers, such as Bill Belichick, Peyton Manning, Michael Phelps, and more,” says the publisher.
A Short Excerpt From the Book
“I can’t stress enough that champions are essentially the product of their work. Even the most secluded superstars would like to be better understood in this respect. I’ve never known a winner, not one, who wasn’t irritated by the lame idea that they were God-kissed with fortune gifts. All of them sweat in far greater proportion to anything natural-born in them,” says Jenkins.
The Right Call: What Sports Teach Us About Work and Life was released on June 6, 2023, by Gallery Books.