Essay (600-1200 words): – Essay # 1: Fear or Love as a leader? Read the articles on Coach K and Coach
Please provide a reflection essay that compares their perceived leadership style using Fear or Love. Include in this essay what your personal choice would be, Fear or Love as a leader? Use the articles provided and other research to support your choice. Your response should reflect college level writing and current APA standards.
read “Coach K/Knight articles (3)” and conduct additional research/google both coach Bobby Knight and Mike Krzyzewski specifically focusing on their style of coaching/leadership. There are a lot of short videos out there that would provide you with perspective regarding who they are, what they believe and how they lead.
LESSONS FROM THE CLASSROOM
On Managing with Bobby
Knight and “Coach K”
Published: August 14, 2006
Author: Sean Silverthorne
Executive Summary:
Bobby Knight and Mike Krzyzewski are
arguably the two most successful college
basketball coaches in the country. But their
leadership styles could not be more different.
Professor Scott Snook wonders: Is it better to
be loved or feared? Key concepts include:
• Effective leaders understand their own
assumptions about human nature.
• How you lead (leadership style) is
influenced by who you are (self-awareness)
and the demands of the situation (situational
awareness).
• Expanding your self-awareness, situational
awareness, and ability to adapt your
leadership style increases your overall range
of effectiveness as a leader.
“Is it better to be loved or feared?”
Machiavelli asked.
At Harvard Business School, Professor
Scott Snook uses this classic quote to help
students become more effective leaders. Using
two of the most successful college basketball
coaches in history—coaches with as divergent
leadership practices as can be imagined—Snook
asks students to confront their basic
assumptions about human nature, motivation,
and preferred styles of leading.
Bobby Knight, also known as “The
General,” is the head coach at Texas Tech
University. He’s a fiery, in-your-face taskmaster
who leads through discipline and intimidation,
which some critics say goes too far. Knight was
fired from a long career at Indiana University
for grabbing a student, and prior to that he was
filmed clutching one of his own players by the
neck. And then there was the infamous incident
during a game when Knight tossed a folding
chair across the court to protest a referee’s call.
Mike Krzyzewski, also known as Coach K,
leads the men’s basketball program at Duke
University. Instead of fear, Krzyzewski relies
heavily on positive reinforcement, open and
warm communication, and caring support. For
Coach K, “It’s about the heart, it’s about family,
it’s about seeing the good in people and
bringing the most out of them,” says Snook.
Different styles, yes, but the results are
similar: After long careers, both have similar
win-loss records for their teams and are
acknowledged as top coaches in the collegiate
ranks. So what do Knight and Krzyzewski tell
us about leadership?
Weaving these two tales together is Snook,
who coincidentally experienced Knight
face-to-face in a high school basketball camp
and observed a young Coach “K” lead Army’s
basketball team while he was a cadet at the
United States Military Academy at West Point.
Using case studies (see links below),
Snook’s students are introduced to the coaches
at pivotal moments: Knight has just been fired
from Indiana and is unrepentant about his
behavior. Krzyzewski is mulling a big-bucks
offer to coach the professional Los Angeles
Lakers basketball team. Supporting material
shows film clips of some of the more notorious
Knight moments as well as Coach K’s press
conference after turning down the Lakers job.
Students come away with a deep sense of each
coach’s personal beliefs and values.
The stage is set for students to explore their
own fundamental assumptions about leadership
and human nature. Are people basically lazy or
energetic? What motivates people to do their
best? What is the most effective style of
leading? Is it better to be loved or feared?
Leading from within
What you believe about human nature, says
Snook, influences your leadership style. “If you
believe people are fundamentally good—good
meaning that they’re trying to do their best,
they’re self-motivated, they want to
perform—then your fundamental leadership
style will be one way. It will be empowering
them, getting obstacles out of the way, and
setting high goals while maintaining standards.
“If you believe people are fundamentally
bad—if you believe people are constantly
looking to get over and get by and won’t do
anything unless they’re watched—then you’ll
tend to lead with a very transactional
management style that’s built primarily around
rewards and punishments. Tight supervision, a
controlling type of leadership style
characterized by a great deal of social distance
between leaders and led.”
That’s what you want to do,
to get people to broaden the
stylistic repertoire.
Soon, Snook’s students are reflecting on
their own beliefs about human nature and
leadership.
And they are also contemplating this
question: Knight or Krzyzewski, whom would
you hire? While the deck seems stacked in
favor of Coach K, at least under today’s
standards of behavior, some interesting
perspectives come forth in the classroom. The
class learns that many of Knight’s former
players love the man like a father, and that
students demonstrated en masse at Indiana
when Knight was fired. When asked how
Knight and Krzyzewski are alike, students say
that both are passionate, disciplined, technically
competent, and deeply care for their players
beyond the basketball court.
Feelings about Knight also follow
generational lines. While younger students
often see Knight as little more than a bully,
older participants tell stories of doing their best
work under a mentor with Coach Knight’s
tough-love approach. Some also recall their
experiences as managers when a stern approach
helped set an employee on a more productive
course.
Soon, many students are rethinking their
position. “The ones that say they couldn’t
imagine learning from someone like a Coach
Knight, they hear these stories and start
questioning, ‘Well, maybe there is another way
of thinking about leading,'” Snook says. “And
that’s what you want to do, to get people to
broaden the stylistic repertoire not only of
themselves, but to consider that there are
alternative ways of influencing people, and that
different people respond to different styles.”
Sure, Knight’s older-generation,
throw-the-chair leadership style has gone out of
favor, but a disciplined, top-down approach can
still be effective in particular situations. Some
employees work better when structure is
imposed on them, Snook observes. “It’s the
understanding that ‘I work better, I will perform
better, I’ll make more money if somebody gives
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me a pay-per-perform'” work environment, says
Snook. Others crave autonomy or teamwork.
“The ultimate lesson is, what kind of person
am I, and then what are the implications of my
underlying assumptions for how I lead, and the
kind of organizations and the type of situations
I’m more effective in? It’s not like one’s better,
one’s worse.”
Knight teaches a lesson
Snook got an early lesson in management
style face-to-face with Bobby Knight.
“I was in high school, and what I remember
was he’d throw all the balls out [of the gym] and
lock the doors. He’d only do defensive
positioning drills. As a young kid all you want
to do is shoot the ball and play games. But for a
half day, he would just have us doing defensive
positioning drills, never touching a basketball,
and he’d run around and cuss us out and keep us
in the right defensive position. It was all about
drills, it was all about discipline. In retrospect,
he got us to work on the fundamentals of
basketball, the things we didn’t want to do. We
dreaded the day that he would come to camp. In
the end he made us all better defensive players
because of it.”
The story also illustrates the importance of
matching management style with the task (or
employee) at hand.
“There are skills in the workplace that you
only get through repetition, drill, habit, and
discipline. A lot of times we’re not real good at
those,” Snook continues. “So having an external
force, whether it’s a leader or a compensation
system, forces you to do something you
wouldn’t ordinarily do, the mundane things that
make you a better person, a better leader, or a
better basketball player. Coach Knight was
good at it. There was no question that his
approach to teaching defensive positioning
drills was probably more effective than if Coach
K had come in for half a day and tried to inspire
us to keep our butts down and our palms out.”
On the classroom board, Snook draws three
ovals. “The first oval is who you are. The
middle oval, which overlaps a little bit, is how
you lead, your style. The third overlapping oval
is the situation.”
Leaders who can recognize and call upon all
three areas can expand their range of
management styles to meet the needs of the
situation, Snook says. “That could be an
individual subordinate who needs more
structure, or less structure, or more love, more
challenge, or more support. Increasing your
ability to accurately read relevant situational
demands, understand more clearly your own
assumptions about human nature, and then
appropriately adapt ‘how you lead,’ your style,
is a life-long process.”
In the end he made us all
better defensive players
because of it.
For hiring managers, one lesson is to
understand the dominant type of motivation
supported by your corporate culture and hire
people who thrive in those situations. Be clear
in hiring interviews what the situation is, says
Snook. “Don’t come here if you’re not into
teamwork. Don’t come here if you don’t like
working and collaborating. Whatever it is. Be
clear in the interview and you’ll attract those
kinds of people. It’s back to the model about
being more self-aware and, at the organizational
level, more aware of what your predominant
culture is. Then you translate that into who you
attract, select, hire, socialize, promote, and
fire.”
There is another interesting intersection of
the dramatis personae in this tale of two
coaches.
In the late 1960s, Coach Knight was the
basketball coach at the U.S. Military Academy
at West Point, where he recruited a young
player named Mike Krzyzewski. “Coach K was
a young, scrappy kid. He wasn’t the best athlete
on the team, but he had a lot of leadership
potential,” Snook says. After Krzyzewski left
the Army, he joined Knight as a graduate
assistant at Indiana, and the older coach became
his mentor.
“They’ve been great friends,” Snook says.
“How could these two people who are so
different in their approach to the same game be
in each other’s corner the whole time?”
About the author
Sean Silverthorne is editor of HBS
Working Knowledge.
HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL | WORKING KNOWLEDGE | HBSWK.HBS.EDU
COPYRIGHT 2007 PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE 2
- On Managing with Bobby Knight and “Coach K”
Executive Summary:
Leading from within
Knight teaches a lesson
About the author
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