7 Keys to Being a Good Athletic Director

High school athletic directors run a job with no fixed job description. One hour it’s hiring a coach, the next it’s a budget spreadsheet, and by the afternoon it’s a parent upset about playing time. Across high school athletic departments, the role rewards people who are equal parts communicator, planner, and calm presence in the room when something goes wrong.

The seven qualities below come up again and again in conversations with ADs who’ve figured out how to do the job well without burning out doing it.

Contents

• Effective Communication
• Building Relationships
• Time Management
• Empathy and a Servant Mindset
• Not Taking It Personally
• Showing Vulnerability
• Promoting Success
• FAQs

Effective Communication

Clear, consistent communication isn’t optional in this role. An AD is constantly relaying information to coaches, students, parents, and staff, often about the same change through four different channels in the same day. When a message is vague or arrives late, confusion fills the gap, and confusion during a schedule change or a facility issue turns into complaints fast.

The ADs who handle this well don’t just react to problems as they come up. They build a habit of over-communicating during anything unpredictable, a facility repair, a weather delay, a last-minute coaching change, so nobody’s left guessing what happens next.

Building Relationships

Communication gets people the information they need. Relationships get people to trust it. Being visible matters here more than most ADs expect: showing up to a varsity football game builds goodwill, but showing up to a middle school volleyball practice on a random Tuesday tells every coach and athlete in the building that they matter just as much as the program getting the headlines.

That kind of consistency is what turns a title into actual credibility. It’s slower to build than a good email, and it’s worth more once you have it.

Effective Time Management

Few roles pack in as many competing demands as this one does. Rutgers Prep cut its scheduling time by 80% after moving off manual coordination, freeing up hours that used to disappear into calendar juggling and back-and-forth emails.

A simple habit worth borrowing: block 30 minutes at the end of each month to map out the one ahead. Walking into a stretch of back-to-back events without a plan is how administrative tasks pile up and start eating into time that should go toward athletes and coaches instead. For the game-day side of that planning, our athletic director checklist covers what needs to happen before, during, and after an event.

Empathy and a Servant Mindset

Empathy is harder to teach than almost any other skill on this list, but it’s what separates an AD who manages people from one who leads them. Listening without already composing your response, staying present in a hard conversation instead of rushing to fix it, these habits build the kind of trust that makes a program function under pressure.

During a stressful stretch like playoffs, opening a conversation with coaches instead of handing down a decision changes how people respond to that decision later, even when the outcome is the same either way.

Not Taking It Personally

Sports run on emotion, wins, losses, and everything in between, and it’s easy to absorb that emotion personally when you’re the one making the calls. The best ADs learn to separate a tough loss or a heated parent conversation from their own sense of how the job is going.

That separation isn’t detachment. It’s what makes it possible to think clearly and make a fair call five minutes after a game everyone in the gym is still upset about.

Showing Vulnerability

Being the athletic director doesn’t mean having every answer on hand. AD Brennan, from The British International School of Chicago, put it plainly when asked about a stretch of unexpected budget cuts: “ADs should seek advice from each other. Often, a colleague has already faced a similar challenge and can offer valuable insights.” Reaching out to peers instead of guessing alone got Brennan through a situation that could’ve easily meant cutting corners on program quality.

That willingness to ask for help does two things at once. It solves the immediate problem, and it strengthens the professional relationships that make the next problem easier too.

Promoting Success

If a program doesn’t tell its own story, someone else will end up telling it instead, and it might not be flattering. Chris Hobbs made this point directly: “Interscholastic athletics are often scrutinized. If we don’t shape our own narrative, others will, and it might not reflect us positively.”

Regular highlight reels, social media updates, and newsletter features covering wins, academic achievements, and community involvement keep a program’s public image accurate instead of leaving it to rumor or a single bad headline. It also gives coaches and athletes visible recognition for work that often goes unnoticed outside the gym or the field.

Communication, relationships, time management, empathy, resilience, humility, and visibility. None of these show up on a job posting, but they’re what separates an AD who’s constantly behind from one who’s actually leading. If scheduling and facility coordination are eating into the time you’d rather spend on the parts of the job that matter most, book a demo and see how much of that administrative load can move off your plate.

FAQs

What makes an athletic director successful? Success comes down to a handful of habits: making informed and fair decisions, hiring and keeping good staff, supporting the people in the program, leading by example, and setting up systems that keep things running without requiring constant oversight.

Is being an athletic director stressful? It can be. The role involves handling many responsibilities at once and dealing with situations that come up without warning. Strong time management and communication skills make that stress manageable rather than constant.

What personality traits help an athletic director succeed? Good judgment of character, clear communication, genuine enthusiasm for athletics, resilience under pressure, and the ability to make tough calls on limited resources all matter. A long-term view of the program, beyond just the current season, helps too.

What are the core responsibilities of an athletic director? An athletic director manages sports programs, oversees budgets and resources, leads and develops coaching staff, and builds relationships with the surrounding community on behalf of the athletic department.

Do athletic directors need athletic scheduling software? Not always, but ADs coordinating multiple teams, facilities, and staff across a full athletic department typically find that manual scheduling eats into time that should go toward the parts of the job only a person can do, like the seven qualities covered above.