Organizational Behavior: Coach and Coach Knight (Essay Sample)

COACH K AND COACH KNIGHT
Name
Course
Institution
Date
COACH K AND COACH KNIGHT
1. Compare and contrast Coach K and Coach Knight.
Describe Coach K's leadership style.
What are his basic assumptions about motivation, leading, and human nature?
Describe Coach Knight's leadership style
What are his basic assumptions about motivation, leading, and human nature?
Performance gets considered as a measuring scale for any coaching task. To achieve exceptional performance, one that pleases across the board, participants ought to prepare in the best way they know-how. Most of all, the coaching personnel must work on a plan or goal; through motivation, direction, and a transparent implementation approach geared towards the achievement of the set goals. The coaching or leadership style adopted by a coach would determine the results. The leadership styles by coach K and Knight inclines towards their beliefs, preferences, and principles.1 The two experienced success in their various areas of operation. Coach K has adopted a coaching style built on trust, positive motivation, and confidence-building. Coach knight's approach fosters harsh discipline as well as intimidation.
Reflectively, the two coaches have somewhat similar and, at the same time, diverse approaches that allow contrast. The similarity aspect can get depicted in their success and consistent good record in winning. They both have three significant achievements in their buckets; as leaders, this shows similar significant accomplishments. On the other hand, apparent differences can be seen in their coaching styles; K believes in nurturing confidence and trust, accompanied by positive reinforcement, whereas Knight thinks that success is forced through toughness, discipline, and perhaps strictness. Coach K assumes that humans are soft and require positive motivation and caring to achieve success.2 Coach Knight believes that humans are embedded with inferiority in their nature and lack self-drive and, as such, need a hard motivation and pushing to achieve success.3[Scott A. Snook, Leslie A. Perlow and Brian DeLacey “Coach Knight: The Will to Win” Harvard Business School Case 406-043, (2005) 7.]
2. Who is more effective? Why? Under what conditions would you hire Coach K? Coach
Knight?
Effectiveness depends on the expected outcome; as such, the two leaders are effective. However, Coach K has a more active leadership because he deploys a positive motivation approach, as opposed to coach Knight who uses negative motivation approach. In today's setting, coach Knight's path can get termed as old fashioned, unacceptable, and unbefitting for application. The leadership approach of Coach K is more effective compared to Knight's.4 Coach K inculcated trust, maintaining a good relationship with players on and off the field, which led confidence amongst the players and the coach. Coach K would approach each player and would handle explanations to each of them in their way of understanding.
Notwithstanding, Coach Knight believed in a single strategy of working hard and maintaining discipline until the social and personal life of a player is affected. Moreover, Coach K did not have proximity to his players, which failed to develop the element of trust and love. Coach Knight only believed in the willingness to win. Coach K developed an excellent human character of the players, along with playing for the team as he felt in mutual trust and love and made changes according to the situation. Nonetheless, if one requires topping a competition, Knight would pass as the best bet. A will to win can easily pass as more effective; winners never wait for flawless circumstances. They invent, fight, and refuse to lose; that was coach Knight. For instance, Coach K had a ratio of 73-59 at West Point,20, while Coach Knight had 102-50.
If the measure is about the long-term impact that a coach has on his players, then Coach K is more effective than Coach Knight because Coach Knight did not have a good rapport with the players. For instance, transformational leadership is associated with athlete well-being through need satisfaction and experiencing positive emotions, such as optimism and happiness. Coach K's type of leadership is associated with task cohesion through the individual sacrifices that players make in addition to fostering acceptance of goals.
However, Coach Knight can still be considered adequate based on the number of his assistant coaches who are now coaching at the collegiate level. If the measure includes cultural appropriateness metrics, then Coach Knight would be more effective because his leadership style is harmonious with community expectations on how a person in a leadership position ought to behave. If I had a spot in the Army basketball team, Coach Knight would be most appropriate as his toughness and profane language are tolerable in that situation. Additionally, if I am in a position where I want a quick turnaround, as it was at Texas Tech, then Coach Knight is the most appropriate coach since relationships and trust require a long period to build.
However, if I want a long-term coach who will build a philosophy of how to behave in and outside the court, then I would select Coach K. He creates a character as well as uses acceptable intrinsic motivation to drive success. It is more sustainable than inverted extrinsic motivation, where the coach relies on punishment for motivation. Furthermore, Coach K realizes that coaching requires a balance between intrinsic motivation and discipline.
3. Think of a time when someone else (manager/coach/teacher/partner) motivated you to
perform at your best. Why were they effective?
4. Think of a time when you motivated others to perform at their best. Why were you
effective?
I had a powerful motivation from my elder brother that ensured an excellent performance at the forthcoming SAT examination at the high school level. His words are still vividly stuck in my memory, as fresh as ever. "There was a time when I was in high school. I was preparing for my SAT; I looked at my watch. It was 12:30, I looked out of the window, and darkness covered most of my sight. Countless people in the world are the same as me; deep in my heart, I knew they were studying with vast goals to fulfill.
Nonetheless, most of them fall asleep because of their weak will, a small part of them fall asleep confidently. Those whose zeal remains adamantly strong, like me, keep on studying. I would continuously urge myself to push the limits of my tiring body and brain; practicing past exam papers was inevitable; this way, convincingly, I could defeat at least two more students whose dream school was as mine." His oratory speech left me speechless.
I was indeed motivated to invest more time in my studies; my effort doubled. However, I was the fear of the possibility of not achieving the goal of joining my dream school used to thump me. My worries were typically inclined towards meager performance in SAT examinations. The thought of other students working hard and smart to achieve the goal of joining their dream school owing to excellent performance in the exams could inspire my pushing on at aiming for the best results. Rather than regretting later, I forced myself to study and revise past exam papers for the betterment of my performance. Indeed, at that time, I was sure that the best examination results would throw me into an array of self-praise and affirmation.
5. What are your basic assumptions about motivation (most effective way) leading (most
effective style), and human nature (People are basically------)?
As the Vice President of the Korean Student Union, my mission is to make sure everyone quickly blends in with our organization. Usually, newcomers are reserved and bashful to give a perfect display of themselves. I am in the position of having a broadly understood understanding of every newcomer and giving them a moderate environmental introduction. As a leader, I realized there are inconsistent extents of motivational acceptance all around.
For someone who already had well-defined goals or target positions in the Student Union, I will give them a grim situation to stretch themselves. In reverse, introversion companion