Tale of Two Coaches

When a passion dies, it is the most heartbreaking thing there is. A coach who has killed my passion has their favorites, makes me feel worthless, and only cares about the girls who she thinks are the best. No matter how hard I worked in practice, it would never be good enough for them.

The Trait approach in leadership focuses exclusively on the leader, not on the followers or the situation (Northouse 2016, p 29). There are five major traits (intelligence, self-confidence,

When I think of coaching I think of practice planning, game planning, scouting strategizing of offense and defense, choosing my starters, little things like that. All of those ideas are valid, but that’s not the whole picture. There is a lot more to coaching than planning for a practice or a game. Many times a person who would like to coach an interschool athletic team has little or no preparation to teach sports skills and techniques. The only qualifications is often the person’s participation on his or her high school, college, or university’s team, coach of a community youth team or even perhaps as a professional player. While all that experience is valuable in one way or another, it does not constitute an adequate preparation for

Based on our learning from week one of our class, the purpose of this paper is to discuss the leadership perspectives manifested in both Bobby Knight and Mike Krzyzewski, coaches who have made significant marks in their field in college basketball. I hope to be able to identify the power bases both coaches rely upon, as well as whether their actions are more aligned with either a managerial role or leadership role. In addition, I hope to identify how significant the leadership traits have influenced their leadership, based on the five-factor

In Coach K’s book Leading with the Heart Grant Hill is allowed to write the forward and talk about his coach from the perspective of a new college recruit, and later he speaks as a friend and confidant. What Coach K teaches is about life and leadership. He sets the bar high so you can 1) strive to be the best you can be; 2) appreciate the value and rewards of a hard work ethic; 3) build close relationships based on trust; 4) set shared goals; 5) sacrifice and give of yourself; 6) win with humility; 7) lose with dignity; 8) turn a negative into appositive; 9) be a part of something bigger than yourself; and, 10) enjoy the journey (Krzyzewski, pg x).

In comparison to Knight, Watts feels that Dennis Rodman and Mike Tyson are in similar categories. “Mike Tyson bites off an opponent’s ear…and we call him a “manic-depressive”. “Dennis Rodman acts like Dennis Rodman and we call him “a nut” (Watts 1). These comparisons may have similar references in a way, but we need to look at Bobby Knight with the positives that he has brought to the game of college basketball. Sure he may be the “King of the rude and crude” as said in the comical comment by Watts (Watts 1). Or maybe he will continue to create off court problems. But before anyone wants to look to oust a coaching icon, people should look to the positives. Although Watts and other various critics feel Bobby Knight should be released of his duties in college

Coach K has been a leader stemming from his days at West Point where his was the basketball coach, he instills his values into each one of his players, values such as commitment, toughness, pride, love, honesty, integrity, friendship and collective responsibility, all values that make up an effect leader. Coach Krzyzewski has been coaching for nearly three decades, he has high expectations for himself and for his player, and he states to all recruits “I’m going to give you my best. I’m going to give you 100 percent. In return, I expect you to graduate. You’ll be coming to Duke for more than basketball. If you don’t understand that, then don’t come to Duke. I want you to be passionate about basketball, but I also want you to obtain a great education” (Krzyzewski, 2000). An effective leader does not simply lead their colleagues, they inspire them to go forth and do great things. Those leaders also enquire a great sense of preparation and that could be the difference between thriving and dying, “we knew without preparation, we had a good chance of losing that game” (Krzyzewski, 2008). In a leadership position the relationship between everyone involved is detrimental to how the overall moral is. The ways that leaders handle those relationships greatly effect the path of success. Coach Krzyzewski instills a lot of trust in his players, treating them with a great respect and infuses a family like atmosphere in his locker-room, “family makes individuals part of

Coach Gary Gaines, Permian high football coach, showed a key role in leadership. Once Boobie Miles was injured, he knew in his head that he had lost one of his best players just looking at him in pain from the sidelines. Once the team got in the locker rooms he checked on Miles and the doctor said his knee was not in shape to continue playing; Gaines took it upon himself to, instead of telling his team that Miles was in critical condition, told them that he was going to be alright and instead of worrying just keep playing the best they have been and that they can get through it as a team. Whether the team knew he was lying or not, he was still positive about losing a player and continued to coach as he did (page number here). In addition, Coach

Coach Mike Krzyzewski was a phenomenal coach and leader. He had the most career wins in NCAA Division I history. His is a prime example of exceptional leadership. Throughout the book Leading with the Heart I have seen prime examples of the following leadership theories: transformational leadership, trait theory, behavioral theory, and power and influence theory.

Basketball teams need a coach that believes in them. The team needs a coach that will work hard to help them achieve the goal of winning. They need a coach that communicates and shows interest in each of the players. On the other hand, they need a coach that can be directive, but also supportive. In the case study this week, Shirley was quite the opposite. Conflicting enough, by all appearances she did not have a total grasp of the concept of leadership in coaching basketball. Factors that could cause the lack of leadership could be confidence or even lack of knowledge (Cohen, 2000). In this paper, Shirley’s leadership style and behavior will be discussed, along with looking at situational factors and other leadership styles that

The trait leadership theory focuses on the individual leader’s personal characteristics as the basis of its investigations. It is one of the earliest leadership theories upon whose tenets many researches on leadership have been done. Although it is not very coherent, its heuristic nature has contributed to its significance in leadership research. Zaccaro and Klimoski (2002) define traits of reference to leadership as the stable personality characteristics, which result in a consistent leadership performance pattern, given different scenarios and groups. They include individual personalities, temperament, rationale, prowess, as well as cognitive abilities. Initially, the theory explored both physical and psychological characteristics that tell apart leaders from non-leaders.

The Trait Approach was the 1st systematic attempt to study leadership. In the 20th century it was known as the “great man” theory. This approach takes a look at the leaders personal attributes such as but not limited to: motivation, energy, intuition, creativity, persuasiveness and foresight. Some of the traits that are essential to this list include: intelligence, self-confidence, determination, integrity and sociability. Thus it focuses mainly on the leader and not on the followers or situations. The strengths of the Trait Approach includes: 1) it is intuitively appealing, 2) it has research to back it’s theory, 3) it highlights the leader, 4) it identifies what the traits of a leader should have and whether the traits we do

Moreover, the trait approach gives a deeper understanding of the leader element in the leadership process by emphasising exclusively on the leader, (Gore et al, 2011). The trait theory does not offer hypotheses about the role of situational variance or characteristic of the followers. Instead, this approach provide information about leaders, and about which traits cause which behaviours and that certain set of traits are central to the leadership process and play an indispensible part of effective leadership.

In viewing Bill Knight, I found Coach K to struggle in his leadership skills with his team. He did not establish a good rapport with his teacher and always put his

This theory is based on the premise that there are certain personality characteristics that are essential for a person to possess in order to be a leader. The main emphasis is on what the person is in terms of a constellation of personality traits. This theory searches for that set of universal leadership traits that will assure success. Numerous traits have been suggested: courage, integrity, loyalty, charisma, ambition, intelligence, honesty, clairvoyance, persistence, arrogance, health, political skill, confidence and vision.