A Tale of Two Coaches

When it comes to leadership and management, Coach K and Coach Knight are undeniably the two most respected and committed college basketball coaches in the United States. But the one thing that sets the two apart is their leadership styles. Coach Knight chooses to lead by intimidation and Coach K choice is to use positive reinforcement.

Both leadership styles have produced great results with a win-win record at both colleges. Leadership is a process in which the leader has to influence their follower’s in order to achieve a set of common goals, and in these two cases it’s to win basketball games.To become a great leader one must possess the traits needed to create the desire for the followers to take directions from the leader to meet the ultimate goal. Both coaches displayed a high level of drive, motivation, integrity, confidence, and task knowledge to which in return produced a high level of achievement. When correlating the power bases to each coach, Coach K would have to be classified as having referent power in which he was a coach that was admired by his students, expert power whereas the students perceived their coach as competent and knowledgeable and reward power.With Coach K using reward power he simply used love, kindness and positive reinforcement saying things such as, “job well done”, or you can do this.

Reward power is having the capacity to provide a reward to the students and for them encouraging words were their reward. Coach Knight tends to use legitimate and coercive power using intimidation to get his students to provide results of winning. He demands discipline on his court and if and when it’s not present the coach chooses to use punishment such as benching the student.Coach Knight was also known for dismissing the students from practice or threatening to revoke scholarships if they didn’t perform at his level. Coercion reduces employees' satisfaction with their jobs, leading to lack of commitment and general employee withdrawal (www.

referenceforbusiness. com). Coach Knight is more aligned to that of a managerial role being that his actions are in line with that of a person working at keeping the discipline and staying on schedule regardless of the situation. He is a planner of strategic moves, an organizer, and very controlling with his team.With his win-win personality he seems to take big unnecessary risk and communicates his feelings to the team in a negative way but he means well.

Whereas, Coach K is more aligned to that of a great leader minimizing risk and control the environment such as: not tolerating any form of animosity between his students. According to some researchers, management is concerned with creating order and stability, whereas leadership is about adaptation and constructive change. (Northouse, 2010, p. 13) With comparing the two coach respective traits, Coach K exhibited traits of having openness, being agreeable, conscientiousness, and a extraverted person.

His ability to see problems between team members and his nurturing personality created a positive atmosphere making him an acceptable coach with positive energy. On the other hand Coach Knight did not see the benefit of showing feelings or to be sociable with students. He spent time in the military and his role was to be organized, controlling, dependable and decisive. He did not feel the need to conform to what is perceived as normal to most, but to be organized and strict to meeting his goal.

In my opinion, Coach K effectiveness with students using the leadership skills that he has chosen seemed to be effective. The students can relate to him because he communicates in a positive manner and he also posses the human skills that are needed to produce team work with positive outcomes. Coach Knight is great with getting the job done but I feel it could be accomplished in a more positive manner. Katz believed that certain skills had to be present for managers in order for them to be effective which are: technical, human, and conceptual and also that leaders can evelop and be trained to acquire these needed skills.

With both Coach K and Knight they both displayed technical and conceptual skills but Coach Knight lacked human behavior and the skills of managing himself not to have uncontrollable outburst and use of profane with his students. Coach Knight is production oriented and only concerned with accomplishing the goal in a timely manner and within a disciplined structure. On the other hand Coach K is a leader that is employee oriented showing care and concern for the students and a nurturing figure with the same goal as Coach Knight but a different capacity.The skill-based model of Mumford’s group has five components: competencies, individual attributes, leadership outcomes, career experiences, and environmental influences (Northouse, 2010, p. 44) Coach K thoughts as he stated in the case study was that if you do anything you should always make sure it will be for the good of all involved.

When offered upward mobility and increase in pay with other employment Coach K declined. This showed great integrity and he carefully analyzed the needs of school and students verses the needs of himself financially, morally and career experiences.Coach Knight expected his students to get the job done and showed no regards for how this was accomplished. Creating a positive and agreeable practice or work climate was not his forte but his heart was in the right place. He was what is called having authority-compliance which represents a leader who places high emphasis on job but has less emphasis on his students. Also communication with the students was only for the sole purpose of getting the job done.

Coach K was just the opposite; he chose to place more emphasis on personal and social needs of his students meeting his goals of the college and his students.He worked at providing an uncontroversial environment having contact and personal relationships with his students. If that meant inviting them to his home for family gatherings and dinner, than he did it. He found the balance between concern for his students and he had same concern to accomplish his goal of winning. This in return promoted team motivation, morale and high participation with less discontented students.

Being a disciplinary figure instead of a good leader with skills tends to have flaws. Coach K leadership skills stimulated participation and motivation decreased team issues and met the goals at hand.Coach Knight’s method of leading produced the same outcome with the exception of having communication with his students and keeping team morale and motivation high along with keeping issues resolved or at a minimal. The contingency model developed by Fiedler is based on the foundation that a meticulous leadership style is most effective in opposed situations.

The key element would be to outline which leadership style needs to be used in what situations. Fiedler suggested that a leader's style is basically going to be task-oriented or relationship-oriented.He spoke on leader-member relations, task structure and leader position power. Coach K and Coach Knight were matched to their situation but they both implemented their skills in different ways but both received the needed effectiveness, which was to win on the court. Coach K earned a degree of mutual trust and respect with his team on and off the court and he provided clear and concise structure but still maintained his leader position power.

Coach Knight accomplished just what he wanted, leader position power and task structure.There are four leadership styles and they are as follows: Directing: leader directs and defines roles of the team members. • Coaching : a highly directive and supportive role. • Supporting: leader and follower both share in decision making. • Delegating : leader involvement in controlling and planning decreased and followers take much responsibility for getting the job done.

Coach Knight is unwilling to accept responsibility for his actions of flying off the handle and losing control when things don’t go as planned. These traits are what led to his dismissal after coaching for over twenty-nine years.He is a very competent leader but has failed to acquire the skills of having a positive attitude and human and relationships behavior with his students or any other person for that matter. Three of the leadership styles came easy to him but he refused to give responsibility to his students other than to do what he demands. Coach K gained all the skills of being a great leader in which he defined roles, directed, supported and delegated involving his students in every aspect of the game.

The challenge for both leaders would be to utilize the best skills to motivate and encourage their followers.Leaders should be supportive, directive, participative and achievement oriented. These skills were present in both Coach K and Coach Knight with the exception of Coach Knight not providing support to his students and forming a relationship to share information and decrease team issues to ultimately increase motivation. The path-goal-theory states that a leader’s style can be flexible and may fluctuate depending on the situation.

But with the coaches each of them had their own style of leading the team but only Coach K knew how to conform to his environmental situation.Referencehttp://www.referenceforbusiness.com/management/Int-Loc/Leadership-Styles-and-Bases-of-Power.html