Much of the advice that Brian Kight offers to coaches and players can be applied to anything in their lives. He just happens to focus on football. 

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In the realm of conflict based on principle or style, that statement holds just as true. But what exactly is the difference between the two?

Kight begins his first thought quoting former president Thomas Jefferson. “In matters of style, swim with the current. In matters of principle, stand like a rock,” says Kight, the founder of dailydiscipline.com. “[We have to] recognize that for each one of our principles, there’s dozens of styles that can be used to live out that principle.”

For coaches and anyone in a leadership position, the focus should be on one thing. “We want to look for, ‘Is the principle being fulfilled?’ Even if it’s in a style different than I like or I use or I would prefer,” says Kight. “Is the standard being upheld even if it looks different than me?”

While coaches can struggle with this, Kight does admit that for the most part, coaches do well hammering home principles. “There’s very few professions that do a better job, a more invested job, of trying to drive principles into young people that, frankly, are kind of slowly being eroded, or eradicated or weakened across our society,” adds the former CEO of Focus 3. “The downside of that is that with driving those principles, a lot of coaches are making the mistake of limiting people’s style and confusing it with a principle. So, this is a good topic to discuss, especially when conflict shows up.”

What happens when conflict shows up? “Everybody argues for their principle,” says Kight. “If you watch most arguments in the sports world, most arguments in the sports world revolve around style differences that people are trying to turn into principle differences. But most of the time, it’s a style issue!”

Kight then turns his attention to the principle of toughness versus how different styles can carry out the principle. “There’s a lot of ways to build toughness, there’s a lot of ways to be tough,” begins Kight. “Some people think that not talking about your problems is tough, [and] it could be. I’ll say this. What’s harder? To hide your emotions or to show them and let everybody see exactly what you’re going through? Which is tougher for people to do? The point is, who cares? They’re both tough! It’s a style difference!”

Continuing his thought, Kight addresses another large style difference that bothers him in the football world. “This was a big issue for, basically, my entire athletic career … and it’s still an issue and it drives me up the wall,” says Kight. “Coaches who say, ‘Don’t talk about it, be about it,’ [or] ‘Talk less, do more.’ It’s not the headline that I have a problem with. It’s that somebody believes that somehow anybody who talks is violating a principle … Here’s what I would say. “Can you be a talker and a doer?’ Yup.”