Legacy (Sports)

This book has lots of great lessons to learn in leadership and team building and engagement. Easy read, and insightful as well. Really help me when I was building a new team and had many different personalities that clashed. Helped me to find common grounding and a foundation to build a successful team on.

Phenomenal book. This is a book that everyone can learn from and become better through the principles of the book. The book says states, “Better people make better All Blacks”; so the book calls out to the individual finding in what areas the reader can grow and become and asset to their job, origination, and friends and family. I highly recommend this book.

This is a book about how to build a team that wins consistently, while embodying strong personal values. There are few of the show-offs, egoists, tantrum-throwers, and bullies that populate so much of today's dollar-driven sports world. Instead, there are players who want to play on the greatest rugby team ever and are willing to do whatever it takes. Yes, rugby. Because this book is about a team from New Zealand that has dominated the sport since early in the last century. And, that's what makes the book a good read. Because it's not about the excess and bravado of North American sports. It's about being humble, leaving ego at the door, supporting your teammates, learning what it takes to play on a TEAM instead of as an attention-grabbing star. At its core, this tries to be a business book - using the team's rules, codes and behaviors to inform business practice. And, for me, that's always a bit of a stretch - because in business there are no hard and fast rules, no fixed positions, or time limits. And, there are women, which changes the dynamics. Having said that, this is an enjoyable read that is a refreshing change from the coach or super-player sport/business books that are all too often dotting the airport book stores.

This is such a great book with a lot of business anecdotes and sports references. If you have a goldfish brain that needs different narratives and bites sized digestible, lesson this book is all up your alley. It's a lot like an anthology so you don't even have to go in order.

Great book, it has become one of my favorites. The book tells the story of a group of talented individuals that became an outstanding team. Although talent is the prerequisite for being a high performance team, what makes the difference, I mean the extra inch, is the character of the individuals, knowing they have a mission, the sense of belonging, the challenge of being better every day, Better People make Better All Blacks, the challenge of constantly ask yourself what you could have done better. The All Blacks understood that the team is more important than individuals, and thus created a mechanism for leaving behind disfunctional behaviours. The lessons of this book can be perfectly applied for personal life and business environment. It is about values, integrity and being coherent to what you believe.

I enjoyed the analogies to life. Good rugby requires selflessness and sacrifice. It only makes sense that a sense of purpose is therefore key to performance as a team. I was raised in NZ and played rugby as a boy. I remember it fondly and recall that these values were typical not only on the field but seemingly also ingrained in NZ culture. The ideas in the book are presented in an easy to understand and interesting way. I found them inspiring and will share them with my two sons who are currently navigating their way through competitive basketball in the U.S. , a sport where attention is often showered upon individual performance/ambition rather than the team and selfish players are too often tolerated beyond common sense.

gives you some good perspective on a lot of little things in life.

This is a book that often comes up when coaching book recommendations are discussed. That's where I heard about it. I want to stress up front, though, that this in not a coaching book. Amazon at this writing has it listed in Sports Psychology, but that doesn't fit either, to my mind. I think the book description does a pretty good job of saying what it's really about. "In Legacy, best-selling author James Kerr goes deep into the heart of the world's most successful sporting team, the legendary All Blacks of New Zealand, to reveal 15 powerful and practical lessons for leadership and business." Focus on that last part about lessons for leadership and business. That is most definitely what the author provides. As for the rest of it, I have my issues. The description makes it sound like the story of the All Blacks is the core material. In particular, the team's transformation after a period of uncharacteristic under-performance is meant to be the main focus. While that story provides a framework, that's about all. You can perhaps work out the time line of that transition, but it's presented piecemeal. One of my problems with the book was that at points I didn't know where the author was in the All Blacks history when he shared certain stories. It was rather annoying. Also, the All Blacks are not the only references the author makes. He includes ideas from the likes of Phil Jackson and Bill Walsh as well, in terms of sports. There are a number of non-sports references too. Obviously, I have no problem with references to all-time great coaches. Sometimes the language of the text is a little too stereotypical of leadership books, and there is too much repetition of certain elements for my taste. Overall, though, the "lessons", concepts, and explanations are quite worthwhile. Overall, I'd say this is a book worth reading if you go into it with the right set of expectations.