Leadership: a Tale of Two Coaches - Essay Example

LEADERSHIP A TALE OF TWO COACHES A Tale of Two Coaches Leadership is about influence. It is about influencing a group of people to accomplish a goal. Leaders use their own energies to help accomplish a common purpose. Leadership can be defined as a trait or as a process. Marquis and Huston (2000) would define leadership as "a point of polarization for group cooperation." It is certain that every leader gets to that point of polarization differently. Leadership takes on many roles which include decision maker, critical thinker, buffer, advocate, visionary, forecaster, teacher, communicator, evaluator, facilitator, risk taker, and mentor to name a few. There are many types of leadership theory and there are many types of leaders, some more successful than others. Bobbi Knight and Coach K are two famous basketball coaches that achieved great success and whose leadership styles were completely different. This paper will discuss those two coaches and their leadership styles. Contingency Theory Fielder's contingency theory is made up of leaders who are task oriented and those that are relationship oriented. It is based on the orientation of the leader, the elements of a particular situation and the leaders' orientation. Task oriented leaders do best in low to moderate control situations while relationship oriented leaders do best in moderately controlled situations. In the case of our two coaches, we would have to place Bobbi Knight in the task oriented leadership and Coach K in the relationship type. Furthermore each leader has a different kind of leadership power. That power is referent, expert, legitimate, reward and coercive. Power is part of the leadership influence. Coach Knight used coercive power, though many people liked him, he was able to accomplish what he did through coercion. On the other hand Coach K had referent power. His team sincerely liked him and played well because of it. He also used some coercion but his primary power was referent. In determining which of the coaches was a leader and which a manager, it appears that Coach Knight was the manager and Coach K the leader. The reason for that is that Coach Knight wielded the big stick. Do it my way or not at all which is more a management style, although not a great one. On the other hand, Coach K allowed some critical thinking from his players and brought them through the processes together, this is really leadership style. Five Factor Model The Five Factor Model supported in the text by McCrae & Costa (1987), is a model that describes human personality disorders and gives a basis for the general understanding personality. There are five factors that are considered and they are called the "big 5" (Bradshaw, 1997). These big 5 factors are neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness (Northouse, 2010). The OCEAN concept combines. Each of these traits has characteristics. These characteristics are noted in the table. Characteristics High Scorers Factor Characteristics Low Scorers Creative, original, curious, imaginative Openness-Toleration for exploration of the unfamiliar Unartistic, conventional Organized, reliable, neat, ambitions Conscientiousness-Individual has degree of organization, persistence, and motivation in goal directed behavior. Unreliable, lazy, careless, negligent Talkative, optimistic, sociable, affectionate Extraversion-Capacity for joy, need for stimulation Unartistic, conventional Good-natured, trusting, helpful Agreeableness-Ones orientation along a continuum from compassion to antagonism in thoughts, feelings, and actions Rude, uncooperative, irritable Calm, content, secure, unemotional, relaxed Neurotism-proneness to psychological distress, excessive cravings or urges, unrealistic ideas Self-pitying, worrying, insecure, emotional, nervous According to the text, most managers have an extroverted personality. Certainly in the case of both of these coaches there are extroversion traits in their personalities. They are both talkative and optimistic while Coach K is also sociable and affectionate. They both have some traits of openness which includes imagination. As far as agreeableness goes, Coach Knight is rude, irritable and uncooperative which is the low side of agreeableness and Coach K is more good natured. Neither coach is neurotic. Katz and Mumford Model Not only personality is important, of course, but also skills. Katz suggested that there were three skills that were important for success (Northouse, 2010).Those three skills are technical skills, human skills, and conceptual skills. Technical skills are those skills that knowledge about makes one skillful at. For example both Coach Knight and Coach K have good technical skills in basketball; in fact Coach K would actually have an advantage here based on the fact that he played basketball on Coach Knight's team. The human skill is the ability to work with others due to knowledge about humans. Coach K and Coach Knight obviously saw this differently though there were good overall results from both. Coach Knight used coercion to essentially force his players to play well and they responded to that. Coach K also used some coercion but he also used a lot of gentle human kindness and was even known to hug his players. He also got good results. Finally, there is the conceptual skill which is the ability to work well with ideas and concepts. Both of these coaches had good conceptual skills or they could not have led the game so well. This is the ability to make an idea work and good game play essentially depends on this and both coaches were certainly successful here. Coach Knight could use to have added better human skills to his inventory while Coach K seemed to have all three skills in place. Leadership Grid The Blake and Mouton leadership grid has been being used by management groups for years and for organizations to evaluate the traits of their management. It is meant to evaluate how a manager functions when it comes to production and people. The concern for people according to Northouse (2010) is related to organization commitment and trust, promoting the personal worth of employees, providing good working conditions, maintaining a fair salary structure, and promoting good social relations. There are five major leadership styles noted on the grid. Those are authority-compliance, country club management, impoverished management, middle of the road management, and team management. It seems that Coach Knight would fall into the (9, 1) grid as authority-compliance which Coach K seems to be in the (9, 9) gird for team management. Team management has a strong emphasis on both tasks and interpersonal skills. It allows the team players to be committed to the team, not driven to duty but wanting to be a part of their duty. Some of the traits that are important here are the ability to make priorities clear, follow through, behave open-minded, and enjoy their job which in the case is play. In contrast, the authority-compliance style leans on emphasis of the task at hand and the use of people to get the task done. Communication with the team is not important except to get the job done and win the game and that may take coercion to make happen (Northouse, 2010). Situation Match In either case, the two coaches could be considered matched to their positions. They both have approached the job differently with different personality and leadership styles but they both have accomplished winning successful teams. Coach K has not been very controversial to the public in how he approaches the players or public while Coach Knight has been very controversial and since part of their job does relate to public relations, Coach Knight might now be seen as totally matched. In fact Coach Knight was at one time fired due to his inability to handle people better though he was soon invited back because of decreased results after his being gone. In each case, the players under each circumstance seem to thrive under the two opposing types of leadership. Situational Leadership There are two parts to situational leadership; those include leadership style and development level of subordinates. Directive behaviors are used to clarify in a one-way communication method what has to be done and how as well as who is responsible for getting it done. Supportive behaviors, on the other hand, are two way communications that show social and emotional support. In this particular case, Coach Knight would be a leader with directive behaviors in the S1 style which is high directive and low supportive style, also known as the directive style. Coach K on the other hand would exhibit supportive behaviors in a S2 style which is High Directive and High Supportive style. Both coaches are effective in their completely different styles. They both led their teams differently but both achieved great success. Coach Knight's style sometimes got him in trouble but otherwise he was quite successful. Path Goal Theory The Path Goal theory tells us that subordinates will do what they need to do to succeed and get the job done and the leader only has to motivate them toward that goal. Northouse tells us that leadership is able to generate this motivation by increasing the payoff. The payoff for these teams is to win. The leader also does what he needs to do to remove roadblocks and obstacles that are in the way of achieving the goal. In the case of our two coaches, they were certainly able to motivate their players toward the goal. You have to wonder though, if in Bobbi Knight's case whether that had more to do with the goal of not being in the position to disappoint him or have him criticize you. That very much could be the goal as well as winning. In Coach K's case, the players were motivated to two things, to win the game and to please their coach. Either way, again, both coaches achieved success and we may not agree with one or the other but they were able to do what was needed to be done to achieve the goal. LMX Theory In LMX, it is determined that the leader considers the different needs of those that he leads while in the other theories, the led are considered as a group. In LMX, one would assume that different members of the team are treated different based on their needs as a team member. This might work well in an office situation but this writer does not believe it would work well in a team atmosphere such as that the two coaches had. There is not good evidence in the case study descriptions that this may have been a process that was used. The only place that might have shown some of this difference was the fact that Bobbi Knight was willing to sit his best players on the bench longer to teach them a lesson about importance on a team. Summary In conclusion, all leaders have a trait that is most likely to affect their style. This dominant trait affects the rest of the characteristics that we take on as leaders and manager. Added to that trait is the power base that is used. Each of us uses a power base that works best for us as Bobbi Knight used coercive power and Coach K used referent power. Power is the circumstance that convinces the employees or in this case team members that they have something to gain by accomplishing what is needed. In coercive power such as that the Bobbi Knight used, the player might end up on the bench in a very important game or be yelled at in the presence of someone important. This writer believes that both coaches were effective but the more effective of the two was Coach K. Bobbi Knight won a lot of games and became quite famous for the work that he did. He drove his team to win over and over again. Was the success for them the win This writer believes that the answer is no. This team won to prevent being yelled at and abused. When Coach Knight was fired, they lost. Is that because he was effective or because they were no longer afraid It really does not matter. You and I do not have to win this game. Coach Knight's style, power and ability helped him make this team successful and in the long run, it does not matter if you and I agree, they were successful. Coach K, on the other hand, led his team in almost the opposite manner, yet they two were successful. Coach K was respected by his team for his ability to play the game and for his way of leading them to success. They would have played for him anywhere. They probably would have played just as well without him because of what they learned from him. Does that make him more successful than Coach Knight I agree with his methods more but no, it does not make him more successful. He just uses a different style to get the same thing. References Bradshaw SD (1997). Impression management and the NEO five factor inventory: cause for concern Psychological Reports. 80. 832-834. Marquis B, Huston C.(2000). Leadership roles and Management Functions in Nursing. 3rd ed. Lippincott:Philadelphia. Northouse PG (2010). Leadership theory and practice. 5th ed. Thousand Oaks California. Snook S., Perlow L., Delacey B. (2005). Coach K: A matter of heart. Harvard Business School. Snook S., Perlow L., Delacey B. (2005). Coach Knight: the will to win. Harvard Business School. Read More