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This book comes highly recommended from the whole team at Athlete Assessments. Whereas some other books on leadership and culture can be dense reads you feel forced to slug through, Legacy is compelling reading. It is very easy to read in a day or over the weekend, highlighting the exceptional culture and legacy of the New Zealand All Blacks, which has resulted in their tremendous success.
Looking for a short activity on resiliency you can do with your athletes? Then we highly recommend getting them to read ‘Oh, The Places You’ll Go’ by Dr. Seuss. The blurb on the back of the book reads: “From bang-ups to hang-ups to lurches and slumps. Dr. Seuss takes a hilarious look at the mishaps and misadventures that life may have in store for us”.
An interesting book with many fascinating coaching stories, well worth the read for those who love getting an insight into other sports programs. Read our book review for a more detail. Upfront, you should know that this is a business book that looks at the sporting world for ways that the business world can improve individual and team performance.
GOLF The Ultimate Mind Game is not only for golfers. What we love about this book is that it takes sport psychology principles, explains them in plain English and gives relevant examples of the application. Few sport psychology books can claim this. While obviously all of the examples are golf examples, it is very easy for you to extend the content to your own sport. If you’ve been hesitant to learn more about sport psychology or previously put it in the ‘too hard basket’, this book will very simply and effectively teach you more than enough to make a step change in your program.
An unlikely book for our recommended list but a client recommended it to us and when we read the Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande, we all really enjoyed it. Very little about sport directly but some great gems within that you’ll be interested to know and keen to implement. (Click here to read the article that we refer to The Checklist Manifesto book.) More for the avid reader than someone looking to build their knowledge on sport and coaching, but if you have any family or friends in the medical industry – it is a must-read for them.
To bring some lightness and fun to our book recommendations, it wouldn’t be complete without this one. Not only a cheerful children’s book, we can all benefit from the great insights this book shares on the highs and lows of life. Along the theme of teaching our athletes to be resilient, use it as an activity or case study on how to bounce back from a poor performance.
As one of the leading management and leadership writers of all time, Covey’s books are outstanding and this book is one of his best and most popular. We regard it as a ‘must read’ and while written over 25 years ago, it is more relevant than ever.
Why we recommend it: All of Gladwell’s books are exceptional reads, but Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell is our all-time favorite. If you only read one book, this is it. His specific gift is in taking complex research and concepts and explaining them in an easy to understand way. Most importantly, when you read his work, you can start applying the lessons in your own situations.
Overall Strengths Based Leadership is an excellent book about the benefits of focusing on and working on people’s strengths. It shares an enormous body of research on leadership and real life examples. There is an excellent chapter about why people follow, which is a must read for everyone. (Click here to read our article on the book’s chapter about Why People Follow)
One of the striking aspects of How Full is Your Bucket by Tom Rath and Donald Clifton, is that Rath and Clifton come from the side of psychology that looks at what is ‘right’ with people, rather than what often seems the traditional approach of psychology, of looking at what is ‘wrong’ with people.
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One of the benefits of working with many different sporting teams each year is the insight we gain in what really makes the difference for sustained success.
We share our fundamental performance philosophies and some of the key models we use to achieve success – think of it as the how-to on performance.
Bo Hanson’s career within the sport and the business sector spans over 25 years, delivering leadership, management, and coach development. In addition to his own athletic career comprising of four Olympic appearances and including three Olympic medals, Bo has worked for many years with coaches and athletes from over 40 different sports across the globe. Bo was also the winner of the Australian Institute of Training and Development (AITD) 2023 Award for L&D Professional of the Year, for his dedication to L&D and transformational work across various industries.
After a successful career in sport including four Olympics and three Olympic Medals, Bo co-founded and developed Athlete Assessments in 2007. Bo now focuses on working with clients to achieve their own success on and off ‘the field’, and has attained an unmatched track-record in doing exactly this.
