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If you are a serious student of organizational excellence, there is a not-to-be-missed pilgrimage site on the piney campus of Duke University. Welcome to the offices of former Duke Basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski, unarguably one of the best coaches in the history of the sport, and—arguably—the best.
A West Point grad from working class Chicago, Krzyzewski served as Duke’s basketball coach from 1980 until 2022, during which he led the Blue Devils to five national titles, 13 Final Fours, 15 ACC tournament championships and 13 ACC regular season titles. Along the way he also famously revitalized the men’s Olympic basketball team, rousing them from the profound hangover of the “Dream Team” era to bring home gold at the 2008, 2012 and 2016 Summer Olympics.
Even his “retirement” has a staggering résumé. He’s a professor of the Practice of Leadership at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business. He’s an in-demand corporate speaker and teaches value-driven leadership for online learning platform MasterClass. He’s board chair of the Emily Krzyzewski Center in Durham, which has helped more than 7,500 students learn the skills needed to succeed academically. Since 1993, he’s been on the board of directors at the V Foundation for Cancer Research, where he and his wife, Mickie, have raised tens of millions of dollars in the fight against cancer. And he’s host to an ongoing string of leadership pilgrims, like me, who show up looking to understand how he does what he does.
In person, he’s nothing like the intense, hyperfocused sideline warrior you grew up watching on television. He’s calm, thoughtful and funny, with a self-deprecating sense of humor that instantly gets you past the idea that you’re talking with Coach K! But ask him about leadership and the passion is right there. He leans in, eager to talk shop about his trade, his life’s work, which isn’t, as you might expect, really about winning games—though winning is certainly something he craved for decades.
Rather, when you get Krzyzewski talking about leadership, he gets right into process. It’s immediately clear that you’re talking with an expert craftsman, someone who has spent his entire adult life thinking deeply about what energizes, motivates, empowers and brings out the best in other people. Not once. Not for a season. But day after day, year after year, for decades. To do that, you need a system. And Krzyzewski has a system.
That’s why Chief Executive is here on a brilliant, clear morning—to sit with one of the best coaches global sports has ever produced, to learn a little bit about what it takes—what really works—in the practice of leading other people. The following interview was edited for length and clarity.
One of the things I’m most curious about is not your wins or your losses. It’s how you kept going for 45 years. How do you keep the energy up for your lieutenants through all those years?
One is for me to be motivated and for them to see it when I’m excited. I love to work. I love to prepare. I’ve been able to do my why my whole life. I wanted to be a coach and a teacher, and I’ve done that my whole life.
With the people who work with me, not for me, my infrastructure—not my players, but my staff, our secretaries, our trainer—they own it with me.
How do you make them feel that?
They’re given autonomy. They’re empowered to do their jobs. I don’t delegate; I empower. Then I want their input. I ask them, “How do you feel about this? What do you think? How can we get better?”
Then we have a certain set of standards where we treat each other well. There’s please and thank you. Everyone’s respected. Celestina, who cleans my office, is respected. William, who cleans the floors and the locker room, you should know him. If you had asked the people who were in my infrastructure when they came to work, they’d [say that they] didn’t come to work, they came to their second family, and they felt like they owned it. They would do anything for their teammates, not just for me, but for each other. I really tried to treat them as family. And I think they would tell you that.
But someone in a position who has autonomy, if they have it for a long period, sometimes it turns out to be “their” thing, not “our” thing. Every once in a while, I had to remind someone, “Look, I want to know what you do. It’s not yours. It’s ours. Don’t forget that. It’s not mine. It’s ours. Right now, you’re doing things like it’s yours. Not ours.” Make sure we stay with the plural pronouns throughout. But, no, we had to hold people accountable. And they had to hold me accountable, too. I want them to be able to say in a meeting what they think, not to walk out of a meeting and say, “I should have said this.”
How do you create that?
You ask questions. I tell organizations, “I might know your family, your birthday, your anniversary. That’s cool. That’s good. And your child, your daughter just graduated, or she’s in a big performance.” All that is good. But if we’re about to do something like make a move in a meeting or in an individual talk, I say, “What do you think about what we’re going to do? How do you feel about what’s going on?” When it really hits a high level is when I don’t have to ask that. You feel comfortable to say it when you feel it or you think it.
This is often a conundrum for CEOs. They get cut off from bad news, from things they really need to know.
That’s wrong, obviously. If I am the only leader of my group, we won’t be a good group. There have to be leaders in the training room, in the weight room, on the team and wherever. The military is like that. I spent nine years in the Army, four at West Point, five as an artillery officer. A squad leader has to take care. That’s a big thing. And there are squads and a platoon; there are three platoons and a company, and there are three companies and a battalion. You have tiered leadership throughout.
If your organization is a 10-story building and you are always on the 10th floor, if the other floors aren’t leading and giving you information, get off the 10th floor and go to where the meals are served. Ask what’s going on, have breakfast there. Then while you’re eating, you’re messing around with them in a good way, laughing. You get input, you go get some therapy. They need to have the courage to say what they think but know that they’re respected, that I want to hear from them.
Do you think there’s a difference between leadership and coaching?
There is a difference, but they’re connected. A leader is responsible for creating an environment conducive to success on a day-to-day basis, so when people come in, this environment excites them. In leadership, you’re setting the standards along with your team or your group of how you’ll live every day, to create that environment and to keep that environment going, establish values for the group you’re leading. And then you’re trying to accomplish goals and to do it in a way where the team gets a sense of satisfaction—and wants to do it again. Leadership is not just accomplishing, and then that’s it. It’s wanting to do it again and again and again.
Coaching is trying to make everyone better. “So, you have this position. How can we make you better? How can we teach you? How can we help you learn more?” If it’s a group, “How do we get the four of you to be one? How do I put the team on the court? What plays do we call?” That’s why they’re intertwined. But if I’m doing this and then I’ve set the environment, damn, we’ve got a chance. We have a chance to win.
One of the things that was most striking in reading over your books is this idea that you are trying to keep yourself as flexible as possible, not to get boxed in by your own rules and tactics.
Agile. I call it running motion offense. I’ve been a point guard my whole life, and I’m constantly making reads. I’m in this environment. I am coaching, and then I’m instinctive, making reads—what I see, what I feel. But in order to follow your instincts, you have to be in it—and instinctive not to what I hear but what I see.
What’s the difference?
People talk to you in many ways. If you get to know them, what their faces tell you, their walks, how they stand. I watch body language all the time.
In body language, it’s going to produce something, and then you’re going to say something if you read it. This is one of the things I’ve tried to stress in my talks. A lot of people feel a leader is really good because he or she can solve problems. I’m not against that. But really good leaders anticipate what the problem will be. And they can’t anticipate that without input from their people, whether they say it, show it, whatever. So, the anticipatory response from a leader and from leadership within your group, that squad leader or that person on the floor sees something.
You’re talking about a super-high level of emotional intelligence. How do you develop that in your leadership team and sub-leaders?
By listening to them. Also, when they do something, acknowledge it. “That was a hell of a thing that you brought up; if you didn’t bring that up, we would have had a problem,” or, “By you bringing it up, we won.”
If you didn’t use it, say, “Look, that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate your help… I have to make this with that input that helped me actually make this decision.” You have to be careful then about individual ego, that in doing those types of things, it can lead to someone being more autonomous. I mean, those are the evils. You’re doing something so good, but now, that’s not so good.
You can’t lose the ‘we.’
I call it having a plural-pronoun team. We deal in plural pronouns. That doesn’t mean we don’t individually give credit, but it’s just part of what we are doing. When I coached the U.S. Olympic team, I said, “The only question they’ll ask is if we won. So, don’t get caught up in the BS of how many shots you’re taking or minutes you’re playing. If someone knows that you played in the 2008 Beijing Olympics and they say, ’How did you do?’ If you say, ‘I averaged 15 points a game,’ that means we lost. You should just say, ‘We won the gold medal.’”
Hybrid is still a big thing. Overall, people don’t come into the office as much. What are we losing?
Obviously, Covid brought out a whole new way of accomplishment. I could accomplish my job by never going in, or going once a week, or whatever. It gave a false sense of accomplishment. Maybe we accomplished it, but we did it at a lower level because we weren’t able to get everybody’s input. We can Zoom, email and whatever, but there’s nothing like people being together and feeling one another and in an instant being able to say something that will change the whole course of action to make it better.
The Covid year was the worst year ever for me. Covid hit at the end of the season. We had a really good team. We had a chance, and then the season ended. There was no tournament. There was a part of me that might have retired then. My wife and I talked and said, “Well, we can’t do that now.” But I didn’t realize how difficult it would be.
It obliterated two things; one was preparation. I’m a big preparer. We couldn’t even prepare them in the summer. We weren’t even sure when the season would start. I couldn’t be with them because of my age. I had to stand behind a glass door. That went to the second thing: relationships. I did not have the relationship with the individuals. I did a horrible job that year. Covid defeated me. I could not overcome the obstacles of Covid to the point where I could have the same level of preparation and relationships. That was on me. It was a failure of leadership during that time.
Did it teach you what was really valuable to you?
It was like a sledgehammer hitting you right in the head. I know my formula. It’s preparation, relationships with really good people and talent. Preparation and relationships take time. See, all those cabinets [behind you] are 47 years of lesson plans, even when I coached at West Point.
Every day for practice I write a practice plan, how to use my time, what we’re doing. Then it serves as a guide during the practice. In a year, I probably have 100 practices. Then, with 11 years with the U.S. team, I’ve probably written 5,000 practice plans. That’s 5,000 nights. I’m not complaining. I needed to do that to feel prepared—that I can coach you today. That’s my responsibility. That year, that wasn’t the same preparation. We lost time. The preparation to win is much more important than the will to win.
You’re controlling for everything you can control for.
“I’m going to go into a fight.” That’s how I looked at a game. “I’m going to fight you. My team’s going to fight you.” You have to get in that character. I had what I call an in-game character. And I got in it. It’s like someone on Broadway.
I’ve got to say, you’re different here than when I’ve watched you on TV.
Yeah, but I’m different with my team also. I’m different with this team. I have a great sense of humor. I like to goof around. I like to improvise.
Is humor an undervalued part of leadership?
Humor is huge. The people you’re leading, they feel that you’re sharing that with them.
CEOs are being called on to be more vulnerable, more authentic, more open with their teams. That can make some people uncomfortable.
You need to always be somewhat vulnerable. It helps a team immensely. Let them in or say, you know, “It’s a good thing we took that suggestion because I would have gone this way and it would have been a mistake.”
That allows someone else not to feel like they have to be mistake-free because in order to do what you need to do, you have to go for it. And when you go for it, there’ll be times where it doesn’t work out. You’re not going to win all the time. As a CEO, you’re not going to be perfect. But laugh about it or admit it; show humility.
In the military, we talk about being a humble servant. That goes a long way because you’re not just pontificating. Everyone’s stuff stinks. So does yours, you know? At the end of the day, we’re allowed to make some mistakes. We’re allowed to be human. I don’t want to create an environment where you feel you can’t be human.
The most important resource you have are people, by far. So, how do you communicate with them? How do you get them to be on your team? How do you motivate them? How do you allow them to get better? How do you allow them to advance? How do you take care of your people? If you recruit talent, put them in different positions and take care of them; they’ll take care of you. The human relationship thing, it’s paramount. Covid hurt that because being in person not only gives the CEO a chance to interact, it gives your veterans a chance to interact with new people, that type of mentoring. It also gives the reverse mentoring of the young and the old. It’s tough to do that if you’re not in person, at least some of the time.
Work gets done, but something is lost.
There’s no question about it. And when something is getting lost, then the work you’re putting out is less in some way, and it erodes. It can erode a culture, a brand, whatever. You don’t see it quickly. Not like your stock has dropped, but it’s happening. So much of it has to do with the relationships.
One of your strengths is your ability to recruit exceptional people—to create a place where people want to be and be a leader people want to follow. How do you do that?
We look for three things, but they’re all equal. First, talent. They have to be good. You don’t win without talent. Second, they have to fit into your environment. We can help them fit into my team environment, but the environment here at Duke, they have to be a pretty good student. And the third thing is character.
We take time to study character. They’re the best player on the team, the state and the city. How do they treat their teammates? Did they react to the success of the teammate? If a teammate made a mistake, is there empathy at a timeout? Are they listening to the coach? You watch them in a practice, not just a game. Do they work hard? Can a coach get on them?
We watch how they are with their parents. All of them have mothers; not all of them have fathers. I look at the relationship of a kid with his mother. If he’s a dirtbag, an insensitive punk, we’re not going to recruit him. We’ve recruited talent with character. They had a good foundation. Talent with character, not talented characters. Huge.
It comes from advice my mom with an eighth-grade education told me my first day of high school: “Get on the right bus.” I grew up in the city. I said, “I know the city. I can go Damon to Armitage, Armitage to Laramie. I can go Division to Grand.” She said, “That’s not the bus.” I said, “What bus are you talking about?” I’m impetuous. I’m 14. She said, “Tomorrow, you start driving your own bus.” I get chills thinking about it. She says, “Only put good people on your bus. And if you get on someone else’s bus, only with good people. Those buses will take you to places you would never be able to go alone.” The best advice ever.
In business, it can be difficult. But I’ll tell you what I would do: I would ask value questions. “We are these values. And you’re going to be a part of our team. How do you feel about these?” It’d be really interesting. People would have to show you a little bit more. I would hit the value button and see if I could get inside of you. “Tell me something. Not just what you know, tell me what you feel about these things.” Then you would have a better sense if they will fit into your environment. You try to recruit to your culture.
You spent your life teaching young people. What do you make of the younger generations?
I don’t like to put people in categories, whether they be Millennials, Gen Z, whatever, but also by race or gender or whatever. People are people. For the most part, people are good people. The thing that is consistent is that good people want to get better, and they want to hang with other good people. They want to achieve. They want to be successful. And hopefully, they want to be a part of something bigger than themselves and have a positive impact on where they live and who they associate with. I don’t think those things change.
I do think that attention spans, tastes, vocabulary, styles and all that but especially attention [change]. Getting a message across 30, 40 years ago, you could do it in more of a harsh, in-your-face-type manner of holding someone accountable.
You still have to hold people accountable, but that’s changed. The last few years I coached, I couldn’t talk to a team long. They would lose their attention. I used different voices. Instead of me talking for 10 minutes, I might ask one of my captains. We showed tape, but you couldn’t show it too long.
Between social media and what we’re seeing on campuses, does it seem that there’s been a social erosion?
Definitely. It starts from our political climate, where the single biggest thing about our country is our values, how we treat one another, the race to be equal that we’re still running—but at least we’re running it. To me, that’s been the biggest erosion, that public display of it. Then, social media does it because you’re not held accountable.
The word “opinion” is an interesting word. It used to mean more. Because for your opinion to be known, you had to have some level of validity, of accomplishment, or whatever. Now, there’s so many opinions that you say, “Don’t listen to any of them,” which is wrong. So, you have to seek people or follow people. “What is that person’s opinion?” Because it has substance, validity. So, yeah, people aren’t treating people well.
Do you think business leaders have a role to play in restoring that?
Yeah, because you can do it. That’s the environment. I mean, we have it here. People are kind to one another. They’re sensitive; they’re caring. They’ll still express their opinions. But that’s not alive and well. A word that is becoming an endangered species is “accountability.” A lot of leaders are afraid to hold people accountable. There are so many anonymous opinions.
When you were pulling together the so-called Olympic Redeem Team, you made them feel like they were doing something for a reason bigger than themselves. What would you tell CEOs about helping people feel like they are doing something bigger than themselves?
It’s really important. We’re so into how and what that we forget why. You know, “Why are we doing it?” When I teach, I go by “you hear, you forget, you see, you remember, but you do and you understand.” With a group, I want them to hear, see and feel. And the “why” is how you feel.
I’m wearing the ring from that team. We were in Vegas. I said, “When you guys go up to your suites, I want you to be 16 [years old] for one minute and look on your beds.” We had laid their Olympic uniforms out on their beds. Later that night, I’m playing some video poker in the casino. Kobe Bryant taps me. He said, “Coach, I did what you asked me to do.” I said, “What happened?” He said, “I cried.” And I said, “Oh, shit, we’re getting someplace.”
A couple days later, I wanted our guys to feel selfless service. So I had Bob Brown, who played for me at West Point—he retired as a four-star general, but he was a colonel at that time, head of a Stryker unit in Iraq—bring in three wounded warriors. One of them, Scotty Smiley, is a good friend. He’s an officer. He saved his unit from a car bomb but got blinded. And they had two non-commissioned officers who had lost limbs. All three spoke to our team. None of them made an excuse. All three wanted to serve again. Scotty became the first blind officer in the Army. Actually came to Fuqua [Duke’s business school], got an MBA, taught at West Point and now speaks all over the country. During their talk, my guys were crying.
Everyone’s important. How can you do your job to the level that you’re capable of doing it without feeling? Otherwise, we should have a robot in there. We should use the human element. And feeling is the thing that does that.
What else would you advise leaders based on what you’re seeing and how you’ve led over the years?
One of our standards is: no excuses. LeBron James came up with that. We can say, “What the hell is wrong?” or whatever. But if something’s wrong, if we solve it, it’s an opportunity to do something good and also to erase wrong. Instead of saying, “Well, this crap happens,” we can say: “All this crap doesn’t need to happen. Let’s eliminate a little bit of it. And if we eliminate a little bit of it, maybe that’s the process of eliminating more of it.”
I’m big on attitude. We control that. No one forces you to have a bad fricking attitude. Every one of us has a chance to say, “Look, I have a great attitude. No matter what happens.” It took me a while. When I became a much better coach, I handled adversity better. Instead of staying in that moment, being pissed about it, making excuses, throwing stuff, yelling or whatever. Maybe it’s maturity.
Leadership is fascinating. It’s exciting because it’s not a math equation. It’s not a recipe. It comes from attitude, belief, preparation, creating an environment, going after it and then not making an excuse when something happens. That’s where a leader can be vulnerable. “We didn’t achieve our goal. That’s not all of us, but it’s on me specifically. I made a decision here that should have been another thing. And we need to become better as a group so that doesn’t happen again. But now, we’ve learned from it. We’re going to be really good.”
Present a positive picture, a picture where you can win. If you’re gloom and doom, bitching and moaning and yelling about everything all the time, why would you want to work there? But if you’re in a very transparent environment, an environment that cares, an environment that wants your abilities to grow and to be used together, that’s exciting. People want to be part of something good—and bigger than themselves.
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