Question 1
The two famous basketball coaches are Bob Knight and Mike Kryzewski. They are known for being the most successful coaches in terms of leadership and winning records. Coach Knight was successful while he was the coach of the basketball at Indiana University. Coach K has been successful from the time he became the head coach at Duke University.
Coach K possesses both human skills and conceptual skills from Kratz leadership model. Coach K was once quoted saying that he does not desire to be a dictator, but he desired to be a manager. He embraced flexibility and dynamics in his leadership skills (Sadler, 2003). Coach K had a deficiency in his technical skills in that he had prioritized conceptual and human skills. In other words, he had put his technical skills to a lower level of importance but he was still a genius in his profession.
There are five gears in the capacity model by Mumford and his college. Coach Knight possesses motivational, competence, and problem solving skills from the capacity model. The capacity model possessed by coach Knight has contributed to his success as head coach of his team. The skills from capacity model that are deficient in Coach Knight are judgment skills and skills in relation to environmental influence. He makes decisions without using judgment, and when he is annoyed, he throws seats into the playing court. He is a dictator hence the skills of environmental influence are not in him and thus he does not possess communication skills essential for any manager. What's more, his word is always final.
On the other hand, Coach K has environmental influence skills from Mumford and his colleges. The skills have essentially attributed greatly to his success as the head coach of his team. His upbringing and family influence made him to be a person with good communication qualities that are essential in a leader (Sadler, 2003). Coach K has demonstrated high levels of competence and judgmental skills in his leadership that also contributed greatly to his success. The area that seems to be deficient in the Coach K leadership is that he never demonstrated any motivational skills in that he did not want to be a tyrant leader and thus he did not possess the supremacy skills.
Question 2
Coach Knight and Coach K have differences in their leadership skills. From the managerial grid, the leadership skill demonstrated by Coach Knight is bad since under him a player must produce or perish. In other words, it is preferable losing a player than lose the game if such a player does not perform according to the coach's expectations. In fact, his leadership skills are different from Coach K's leadership skills as he stresses more on the need of players to produce as well as their importance since he views them as being equally important. In coach K leadership, he focuses more on human skills, unlike his colleague who focuses more on technical skills and ignores the human skills. The fact that coach Knight concentrates more on results rather than the player makes him different from coach K, who sees that both the results and the players are important for one to be able to succeed.
References
Sadler, P. (2003). Leadership. London: Kogan Page Ltd.
