Book Review
March 2, 2015
When I looked at the description of this assignment, I saw there was a list of books we could
choose from to read and review. I went online and looked up each book on Amazon and read
what each book was about and read the reviews of people who have purchased the book. After
researching all the books in the list, the one that stood out most to me was Leading with the
Heart by Mike Krzyzewski.
The reason I chose this book is because Coach K was not only a successful sports coach, but
also a successful leader within his family and in business. Since I was trying to become a
successful leader in business, from reviews I read online before buying this book lead me to
believe we had similar styles of leading.
Coach K is best known for being the head basketball coach at Duke University. When I was
researching his book online, I read that he won his 1,000th game and is the first coach to win
1,000 NCAA Division 1 basketball games. Coach K isn’t just a basketball coach. He’s a mentor
and he teaches his team valuable life lessons they can use for the rest of their lives. He gets the
best out of the members of his team both physically and mentally. Not only do they perform well
on the court, they also do the same in the class room. I also read online when reviewing the
book that Coach K has a 98% graduating rate of his players. That’s impressive. Since Coach K
is best known for coaching sports, his book is laid out in sport terms. There are four main
sections of the book. The sections are labeled Preseason, Regular Season, Post Season and
All Season. I will discuss the book based on these sections.
PRESEASON
The main quote in the Pre Season section of the book from Coach K is “My goal in preseason is
to get to know my players and what they can do. My total focus is finding out who we are and
developing a personality on our team.” In the preseason Coach K gets organized, builds his
team and establishes discipline while becoming a dynamic leader.
Coach K gets organized by teaching his team each season is time management. Time
management is a lesson students learn that relates to them individually as well as in a group. It
helps them realize they have responsibilities to themselves as well as with the team. Coach K
also sets rules. His one and only rule is “Don’t do anything detrimental to yourself because if it’s
detrimental to you, it will be detrimental to our program and to Duke University.” Coach K
believes that too many rules get in the way of leadership and will cause you to become rule-
happy. I agree with him. I know too many people are who are “rule-happy” and they are too
focused on enforcing their rules that they lose who they are and what they’re trying to achieve.
Building his team is the next area Coach K focuses on in preseason. Coach K believes
“maintaining a successful program can be harder than building one.” He uses the example of a
new business starting up and that when a business starts there is a lot of personal interaction
between the core employees and it rapidly builds success. When he is hiring his assistant
coaches he wants them to have a vision of becoming a head coach so they want to grow and
