Coach Bobby Knight won 902 college basketball games while Indiana University had the highest rate of graduation of any NCAA team.
Coach Knight accomplished that by measuring the performance of his players on and off the court and using the power of emotion intelligence to energize his teams to victory. When Knight started coaching, one of the worst things that he heard was "It will be O.K." He wondered how the hell is it going to be O.K.? He concluded that the worst word in the English language is "hope."
All the years he coached, he sent a card to every professor for each kid he had on the team and was able to keep track on a daily basis who cut class or who was dropping a grade average. What he did for the player that was missing class (or beginning to slide down in the class) would be to bring the kid in at 5AM and have him run the stairs from the bottom to the top until the coach told him to quit. He did that with a lot of kids, but never twice.
Coach Knight was always focused on team performance and when he said something, the players understood exactly what he meant and what he wanted. Knight believes that a big part of teaching is being emphatic.
Source: The New York Times Magazine, March 3, 2013
Bob Knight: The Power of Negative Thinking: An Unconventional Approach to Achieving Positive Results
"Lead Like Butler" (see comment below) at: http://www.amazon.com/Lead-Like-Butler-Principles-Values-Based/dp/1426749147