Intangibles: Unlocking the Science and Soul of Team Chemistry

(Paperback)

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Award-winning sportswriter Joan Ryan whisks readers from the sports field to the research lab on an ambitious quest to understand the seemingly indefinable phenomenon called team chemistry.
Nearly ten years in the making, Intangibles is packed with stories and characters from the usually hidden subculture of locker rooms worldwide, and threaded with fascinating insights about the human mind and human relationships. Ryan pulls from a range of science disciplines neuroscience, sociology, psychology and more to debunk the notion that team chemistry is just a throwaway explanation for every fun-loving, underdog team that wins. Instead, she makes the case that team chemistry is a biological construct with a single function: to elevate performance.

Ryan introduces us to the seven archetype characters who seem to emerge on almost every team with good chemistry, and two outlier archetypes she describes as Super-Carriers and Super-Disruptors of chemistry. Along the way, the author finds herself having to challenge her assumptions about situations and people, leading, for example, to the surprising discovery that difficult star players are not the Super-Disruptors one often imagines they are. She finds, too, that dysfunctional, contentious teams that still manage to win do have team chemistry, just a different variety.

A ground-breaking examination that promises to transform how sports and business leaders think about high performance, Intangibles finally proves how all of us affect one another, profoundly influencing who we are and how we function within our own teams of colleagues, friends and family.

Reviews

[A]fascinatingmix of reportage and clinical research Ryanscogent,persuasiveeffort will give sports fans much food for thought. Publishers Weekly

NuancedcomplexAll of this makes fora mind-opening studythat extends far beyond the confines of any ballpark. Booklist

The result is a book mixing thedeeply emotionalwith the highly technical, presented with the kind ofsensitive, authoritative touch readers came to expect from Ryan. San Francisco Chronicle

Author Bio

Joan Ryanis an award-winning journalist and the author of four books. Her groundbreaking bookLittle Girls in Pretty Boxeswas named one of the Top 100 Sports Books of All Time bySports Illustratedand one of the Top 50 Sports Books of All Time by theGuardian. Throughout her career, Ryan has been awarded thirteen Associated Press Sports Editors awards, the National Headliner Award, the Women's Sports Foundation's Journalism Award and the Fabulous Feminist Award from the San Francisco chapter of NOW. She is a founding trustee of Coaching Corps in Oakland, CA, and the Association of Women in Sports Media. Since 2008, she has been a media consultant with the San Francisco Giants.