A Tale of Two Coaches

A Tale of Two Coaches Coach Bobby Knight and his famous protégé, coach Mike Krzyzewski both share leadership styles and in many ways their styles are vastly different. Leadership is influence: it is getting people to deliver a set of results. Studies by Zaccaro, Kemp and Bader identified traits used by effective leaders such as cognitive abilities, extroversion, conscientiousness, stability, openness, motivation, agreeableness, social intelligence, self monitoring, emotional intelligence and problem solving skills.
Both coaches led. One coach got his students to follow him out of respect and one out of fear. Both coaches motivate. Both are shrewd strategists with cognitive abilities. Coach Krzyzewski seems to exercise social intellect, openness, agreeableness, self monitoring and emotional IQ. One of his strongest traits, motivation for socialized power was pretty unique amongst coaches like Wooden and coach Krzyzewski, while Knight is more of an achievement motivation coach similar to Vince Lombardi. Based on these traits Coach Krzyzewski used a more effective trait leadership style. The five factor personality model (Goldberg, 1990; McCrae & Costa, 1987) focuses on the big five personality traits: neuroticism, extraversion (urgency), openness (intellect), agreeableness, and conscientiousness. Which traits are exercised by which coaches? Coach Knight was coercive (neurotic) as a coach, throwing chairs, punching police officers and choking students (Sperber, 2000). He was an expert in his field with over 800 wins. He was legendary for his preparation and contentiousness. His power was legitimate, even the athletic director at Indiana University would not challenge him (Sperber, 2000). Do what he said as a student athlete and they would be rewarded with playing time and the possibility of a championship. Those that ignore his directives were apt to ride the pine. His coaching demeanor was not very friendly though his friends say he was very friendly away

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