Coach, Champion, Legend, Professor: Meet Duke Fuqua’s New Faculty Member, Mike Krzyzewski

When you talk to MBA students, what are some of the things you talk about? You talk about leadership, of course, but what are some of the things you tell them?

Well, I want to hear what they have to say, too. I think part of teaching is you’re not just telling people things, but you are listening to them, the questions that they have. They can put out new ideas for you, for the teacher. I basically talk about the experiences I’ve had as a leader and what I’ve learned about leadership and forming teams, and a lot about communication and being adaptive in how you communicate — because that’s the single biggest thing that changes with our culture, is how you communicate, especially with the young.

I’m 75. I keep getting older. The kids, the young people, I coach stay the same age. Last year, it was my youngest team, and two of my guys were 18, and so how does a 75-year-old person develop a relationship, get an 18 year old to not just listen, but believe and things like that.

The one thing about teaching leadership, it’s ever-changing. It really is not a course. There’s not a major in leadership. It’s part of something that you’re doing, but leadership really transcends every part of our society and in business. I do a lot of speaking for the Washington Speakers Bureau, and look at what companies need, what companies are doing, how they change year to year. It’s fascinating to spend as much time as I’ve been able to do.

You have 10 former players who became Division I coaches, and many more who went on to leadership positions in other fields. As a successful leader, can you share some strategies for building future leaders?

One, you have to help people. It helps people that you’re working with to give them the opportunity to lead. It’s like speaking. Who are you speaking to? What are their goals? Where you get to know a group, depending on the size of the group, individually you build these relationships. You build it on core values.

What we’ve tried to do is, we have a culture, not just a routine, but we have a culture that lasts, and the culture’s based on values. That’s the common ground. To be a good leader, if you can get the people you’re leading to own what they’re doing, in other words not just work at a place, but they are that place, and to do that you have to create common ground.

We do it primarily through our values of integrity, respect, courage, selflessness, loyalty, duty to your work, and trust, and those type of basic tenets of our culture and our program. And so how you teach varies depending on the group, but what you are teaching never varies. Again, we’re not talking about offense and defense. That really varies depending on the personnel and what kind of talent and experience you have.

You’ve seen so many stories of athletes and others overcoming failure before they achieve success. What’s your message to students about overcoming hardship, difficulties, challenges?

Part of the journey to be successful is that you’re going to fail at times, because it’s new. Basically, you’re creating a new path — you have a challenge or an obstacle and you’re getting past the one to get to another one. You fail many times because you are put in those positions.

Being on a team will take you further than you would go individually, so that’s why we’re about teamwork. When something tough happens to you, you have the right to have whatever attitude you want, but if you could choose, you would have a great attitude, so it starts there: that whenever something goes wrong, “I’m going to have a great attitude.” The thing is, I believe in me and I believe in my group. To reaffirm that belief, the next thing is to figure out why it happened, and so it’s about preparation. What do I have to change? What do I have to do differently? And the last thing is the execution, and when you overcome whatever bad happened, you feel pretty good about it. Then it gives you confidence, that if you’re knocked back again you have the habit of doing what I just said. It’s just part of a journey. It’s not the end of a journey.

You go to campus every day?

Yeah. I have my same office. I have my same office, and I do pretty much what I did before except I don’t coach. Whatever that is for 42 years, we’re an integral part of our university. I’m out of town at least one day, sometimes two days, a week speaking. I’m going to be in Austin, Texas, then Orlando speaking to 5,000 people at a big convention. Then Boston, I’m speaking to 200, so no slowing down.

I’ve learned a lot from doing it and I’m learning a lot. I’ve been thinking at 75, that’s a good thing. People think that they know everything they need to know by that time, but no, I’m learning a lot, so it’s invigorating and very exciting.

Is there any chance down the road that you might get in front of a class to teach?

I can’t be part of the MBA class, but I might make visits to classes. My goal is not to do a class. My goal is to study leadership and talk about it, not to just a specific class. The other thing, if you have a class, you need to be there, and it would inhibit my travel. We have a great arrangement, and Bill Boulding I think is very happy about it. I’m happy about it. The conferences are really good things, the summit for two days, a two day event, and we had it in August and that worked out really well.

You mentioned that you have already met with some of the MBAs. What’s your impression?

All those men and women, those young men and women, are motivated. They’ve got great ideas. We have a great school because they don’t only take courses. We have a great school where students not only learn in classrooms, they learn outside the classroom from one another, and hopefully they develop relationships, learn best practices on how to prepare for things, and those lessons and the friendships and relationships they have will become even deeper after they leave here and they find friends that they can count on and friends that really traveled the same road they did. They’re very, very talented and upbeat.

DON’T MISS ALL THE NEW FACULTY AT THE TOP U.S. BUSINESS SCHOOLS and DUKE FUQUA’s MBA CLASS OF 2024: DOMESTIC APPS DECLINE BUT INTERNATIONALS FILL THE GAP