Leadership Styles - Case Study Example

College Leadership Styles Leadership may take different forms depending on the personality and strategies used by managers. However, the result and their effectiveness depends more on the approaches used in managing an organization or a team for that matter. Though there are different styles of leadership in organizations, some leaders may use a hybrid approach by integrating two or three leadership approaches while others choose to use the extremes in applying a single management method only.

To illustrate the effects of different leadership approaches as used and its success and effectiveness, this report compares Coach K’s A Matter of the Heart and Knight’s The Will to Win, two contrasting leadership styles with different results to the followers and institutions involved. The two cases indicate two different leadership theories as used in management, the effects of each theory to followers and to the institution managed. Knight’s A will to Win is a good case of an autocratic leadership approach.

Autocratic leaders have a tendency of making decisions for others to follow and not to question; these decisions are in most cases imposed on followers. Autocratic leaders have the belief that their decisions are the best to deal with a situation and others have to follow their authority to the latter. Knight’s coaching style is defined, “a passionate and demanding leadership style …and he expected nothing else from his players than the best” (Snook, Perlow & Delacey, 2005). In many cases, Knight was accused of manhandling, beating and even molesting his players, which put him at loggerheads with the schools’ administration in several cases.

For instance, Knight was fired from Indiana University in 2000 after working for six years for manhandling a student and portraying behaviors that IU President, Brand Myles described as unthinkable. This is a good characteristic of autocratic leaders. Such leaders will always demand to be in control of things and have to display their personalities in the context of their duties. Leadership has to impact positively on followers in that the followers have to be motivated by the actions of a leader and follow suit or towards nurturing the best talents.

However, Knight’s autocratic leadership did the opposite. Considering his rhetoric outbursts, physical abuses and failure to control his anger and emotions, some players decided to quit basketball under Knight’s coaching. Knight’s lack of tolerance to followers meant that the players had to be perfect, making no mistakes. However, instead of nurturing them as required to ensure they did not make mistakes, Knight used physical abuses and verbal rhetoric, which instilled fear in his players.

However, Knight’s approach in leadership bore results and made him one of the highest performing coaches in history. Autocratic leadership is the best leadership style in cases where an action is needed in the fastest time possible and where one person has to manage the situation to avoid arguments over different decisions; handling an emergency is a good application of this leadership style. Autocratic leadership is necessary in managing critical circumstances that need orders from a central point.

Consequently, Knight succeeded to in his coaching career by treating every training or game session as an emergency, where everything had to be done promptly and in the most accurate way possible. For instance, in just one year after employment in Texas Tech, the Red Raiders managed to post 23 and 9, a record score for the team; this was followed by three more consecutive season wins (Snook, Perlow & Delacey, 2005). Therefore, though this leadership style was harsh to followers, results were drastic and with a high degree of success.

On the contrary, coach K, A Matter of the Heart involved the use of transformative leadership. Coach K as a transformative leader was not interested in sudden wins and emergency changes in his team, but was more focused on instilling a permanent change in his team by instructing them to follow a particular vision in all games. This was the reason behind the many tips that Coach K read to his team. The players were given opportunities to show their talents, strengths and weaknesses and take responsibility of the game.

This was contrary to Knight’s approach where he controlled everything; making a mistake was not an option. Coach K established effective communication between him and the team where he listened to his players. The team was a collective responsibility and not a one-man show, which motivated Coach K to encourage the spirit of caring and pride in his team (Krzyzewski and Phillips, 2000). In other words, Coach K’s method involved instilling a discipline in his players, impacting knowledge and skills about games through a series of playing tips, which prepared his teams towards a collaborative effort in winning.

The major difference was that while Knight had no time to listen to his player and used commands, Coach K had the patience to give people their freedom to speak out what they thought, and treated the training sessions as learning opportunities for all to gain (Krzyzewski and Phillips, 2000). To his players, he was more a mentor than a coach. Transformative and aristocratic leadership styles detail the use of different and contrasting approaches in leading a team or an organization. While aristocratic leadership is a ‘one man show’ and is based on commands, transformational leadership requires collective participation, freedom to express oneself and a process that leads to a change of attitude, skills and acquisition of knowledge about the best way to achieve the results.

In other words, the latter leadership style facilitates passing of skills from the leader to the followers. Reference Krzyzewski, M & Phillips, D. T. (2000). The Last Season: Leading with the Heart Coach K’s Successful Strategies for Basketball, Business and Life. NY: Warner Books In Snook, A. S, Perlow, A. L. & Delacey, B. J. (2005). Coach Knight: The Will to win. Harvard Business School.