In 42 seasons as head men’s basketball coach at Duke, Mike “Coach K” Krzyzewski, a Naismith Hall of Fame coach, was a five-time national champion and NCAA record 13-time Final Four participant. No coach in Division I men’s basketball history won more games than Coach K’s 1,202. Coach K served as head coach at both Duke and Army West Point, finishing his amazing career with a 1,202-368 record, including a 1,129-309 mark at Duke.
Coach K also contributed significantly to USA Basketball. Beginning in 1979 he was a member of 21 USA coaching staffs, and teams with Coach K on the coaching staff compiled a 139-7 overall mark for an amazing 95.2 winning percentage. In the 15 international competitions he has been involved in as a USA head or assistant coach, those teams have captured 11 gold medals, two silver medals and two bronze medals.
What can leaders learn from Coach K? Fortunately, we can learn from the books he has written and from books others have written about him. I have read his books Leading with the Heart: Coach K’s Successful Strategies for Basketball, Business, and Life, Beyond Basketball: Coach K’s Keywords for Success, and The Gold Standard: Building a World-Class Team. I’ve also read Ian O’Connor’s biography Coach K: The Rise and Reign of Mike Krzyzewski. From these books here are 20 helpful leadership quotes from Coach K:
- The only way you can possibly lead people is to understand people. And the best way to understand them is to get to know them better.
- Discipline is doing what you are supposed to do in the best possible manner at the time you are supposed to do it.
- Goals are important in leadership. They should be realistic, they should be attainable, and they should be shared among all members of the team.
- In leadership, no word is more important than trust.
- A leader has to have the courage to make a key decision in a split second. And then he has to have the courage to live with it afterward—whether it succeeds or fails. Because if he doesn’t, he’ll be afraid to make the next key decision.
- When a leader makes a mistake and doesn’t admit it, he is seen as arrogant or untrustworthy. And “untrustworthy” is the last thing a leader wants to be.
- A leader must be committed to helping people grow.
- My hunger is not for success; it is for excellence. Because when you attain excellence, success just naturally follows.
- The main job of a leader is to inspire.
- Integrity is nothing more than doing the right thing no matter who’s watching you.
- You have a choice. You can either change with the environment or you will eventually fail. A leader has to find a way to win.
- Effective teamwork begins and ends with communication.
- Dependability is the ability to be relied upon. To always be there trying to do your best.
- Progress is impossible if you only attempt to do the things that you have always done.
- Pride means ensuring that anything that you do, anything that has your name on it, is done right.
- Ambition alone is not enough. That ambition must be coupled with hard work for success to be achieved.
- Work is a necessity if you want to improve. It is the road you have to follow to become better.
- In developing teams, I don’t believe in rules. I believe in standards. Rules don’t promote teamwork, standards do.
- Leaders should remember that not all the good ideas have to come from the top, and they should be secure enough to change plans based on the input of the team.
- Self-assessment is not a thing that you do once in a while; it is something that should be taking place all the time.