Coach Knigh and Coach K

EMBA – Coach Cases                                                        

Coach Robert Knight and coach Mike Krzyzewski had a lot of connections between them. The first and biggest one is their passion for Basketball and their desire to win always demonstrating excellence. They were both recognized as leaders and reached the status of legendary Division 1 college basketball head coaches. Both had experiences at West Point, where Krzyzewski was recruited as a player by Knight and later on hired as an assistant coach. When Knight left to coach at Indiana University a position opened for the assistant coach at that time Krzyzewski and the opportunity was given to him to be the head coach at West Point. Later on Knight recommended Krzyzewski to the head coach position at Duke University. Their styles, the way they had to motivate their teams and even their leadership approach to achieve all the success they’ve achieved were very different.

Coach Krzyzewski had his focus more related for mutual respect, in the relationship between him and the players, within the players and of course for the institution where the program existed. Coach Knight had a different approach insisting that his players should follow his instructions, his directions and his guidance to achieve the wins they were looking for.

Either way, both coach Knight and coach Krzyzewski were recognized for building successful teams with hard work and discipline. This kind of focus drove them to achieve the same objective, which was winning at basketball. Coach Knight motivating the players towards success using his passionate and demanding leadership style and relentless drive and passion for excellence. Showing this passion to make the kids understand the game and to apply every single aspect of the commitment and discipline in their personal lives would also make them successful in this aspect. Coach Krzyzewski expressed his role in leading players in providing the opportunity for the players to “show the heart they possess” through development of strong relationships and responsibility to each other and the team -  similar to relationships they would have in a close family. Coach Knight approach was clearly task oriented while Coach Krzyzewski was more about the emotions, passion and relationships. In his mind focus and discipline were the way to drive people to high achievement removing the need of relationships and emotions to connect to the game and to the team. Coach Krzyzewski in the other hand viewed human nature as needing enrichment through relationships to empower people to realize achievement. Coach Knight and coach Krzyzewski set goals in their own way, where both used to set goals that were specific and with high requirements and expectations, diverging in terms of feedback. Coach Knight adopted a more intense and external feedback while coach Krzyzewski was more inclined to the self-generated feedback.

One of their biggest differences was the type of players each one of them were looking for when hiring. They both needed high performance players but with characteristics that they knew they would be able to extract the best of them according to each coach leading style.

Coach Krzyzewski had a preference with players that had a strong sense of collectivity and he had successful records through the use of supportive encouragement, warm and sincere communication, and reinforcement. His leadership style is related to a sense of family, trust, and more about caring. On the other hand, coach Knight looked for more individualistic players because he had a more coercive leadership style, and sometimes authoritative to motivate his team towards the victory. Follow the rules, do what I say and you will be successful. Therefore, considering both styles and trying to transport that to a business environment nowadays, I believe Coach Krzyzewski would be more effective due to his style that motivates people in a positive manner and easily build the trust required to successful organizations. Coach Knight would be a very good asset for the army, where this kind of style is required, practice is mandatory and should be as hard as the “real life” and where he could help developing a team that does not have a lot of experience.