The Coaching Traits Athletic Directors Struggle to Uncover

SPECIAL GUEST POST FROM DAN CHRISTENSEN 

Hiring a college coach is one of the most important decisions an athletic director makes.

It is also one of the easiest decisions to misread.

Not because athletic directors are careless. Most are not. They work hard, ask thoughtful questions, involve key people, and carry the weight of knowing how much the hire matters.

But coaching searches are difficult because the most visible parts of a candidate are not always the most predictive.

A strong resume can impress.

A polished interview can reassure.

A winning record can create confidence.

A charismatic personality can make a room lean forward.

None of those things are bad. They all matter. But they can also create a false sense of certainty. The best interview performance is not always the best leadership performance. The strongest resume is not always attached to the healthiest builder of people. And a coach who has won somewhere else may not necessarily be the right person to lead your program, within your department, at your institution, in this season.

That is where coaching searches get complicated.

The hardest traits to uncover are often the ones that matter most after the press conference.

Charisma Can Hide a Lot

Some candidates are naturally gifted in interviews. They know how to connect. They tell compelling stories. They understand timing, tone, humor, and presence. Within thirty minutes, they can make a committee feel like they are the obvious choice.

That may be real. It may reflect strong emotional intelligence, communication skill, and leadership presence.

But charisma by itself is not leadership.

In searches we have been part of at Bechler Leadership, I have seen that the strongest hiring processes do not stop at whether a candidate is impressive. They slow down and ask, “What evidence do we have that this person can lead people well over time?”

That is a different question.

Can they build trust with student-athletes?

Can they hold standards without creating fear?

Can they manage conflict without becoming defensive?

Can they communicate honestly when things are not going well?

Can they develop assistant coaches instead of simply using them?

Can they collaborate with compliance, academics, athletic training, admissions, advancement, and the rest of the department?

Those answers rarely come from charm. They come from patterns.

Resume Strength Does Not Tell the Whole Story

A candidate’s resume gives you a starting point. It tells you where they have been, what roles they have held, who they have worked under, what level they have recruited, and what kind of success they may have experienced.

But a resume cannot tell you what environment followed them.

That is one of the most important questions in any coaching search:

What kind of environment does this coach create?

Do people grow under their leadership?

Do assistants feel developed or diminished?

Do athletes feel challenged and supported?

Do colleagues trust them?

Do they leave things healthier than they found them?

A resume can show movement. It cannot always show maturity.

A resume can show achievement. It cannot always show humility.

A resume can show opportunity. It cannot always show reliability.

This is why athletic directors have to look beyond titles and records. A candidate may have worked in a successful program without being the reason it was successful. Another candidate may have been in a difficult situation and demonstrated exactly the kind of leadership your institution needs, even if the win-loss record does not immediately jump off the page.

Context matters.

Winning Matters, But It Is Not the Only Evidence

Athletics is competitive. Results matter. Every athletic director wants coaches who can recruit, teach, organize, game-plan, and compete.

But winning does not automatically answer the deeper leadership questions.

How did they win?

What did it cost?

Was the culture sustainable?

Were student-athletes developed as people?

Was there alignment with the mission of the institution?

Did the coach build something durable, or did they create short-term results through pressure, personality, or control?

Especially at smaller colleges, the right coach has to do more than chase results. They have to understand the whole ecosystem of the institution. They have to recruit students who can succeed there. They have to care about retention. They have to work within resource constraints. They have to communicate well with campus partners. They have to be steady when the budget is tight, the roster is thin, or the season is hard.

A winning record is important. But it should lead to better questions, not fewer of them.

The Traits That Are Harder to Measure

The traits athletic directors most need to understand are often less obvious.

Leadership is not just whether the candidate can give a great answer about vision. It is whether they can turn vision into daily habits, standards, conversations, and decisions.

Culture-building is not whether they use the right words. Most candidates can talk about family, accountability, discipline, and excellence. The real question is what those words feel like to the athletes who live under them.

Reliability is not whether the candidate says they are organized and committed. It is whether they have a pattern of doing what they said they would do, especially when it becomes inconvenient.

Humility is not soft leadership. It is the ability to receive feedback, own mistakes, share credit, and keep learning. Coaches who cannot be coached themselves often struggle to build healthy programs.

Department citizenship is one of the most underrated traits in coaching hires. A head coach does not lead in isolation. They are part of an athletic department and a campus community. The best coaches understand that compliance is not an obstacle, athletic training is not a service window, academics is not a nuisance, and admissions is not simply a pipeline. They know how to be a teammate inside the department.

That matters tremendously.

A coach who wins but creates constant strain across the department can wear everyone down. A coach who communicates poorly, ignores processes, blames others, or resists collaboration may eventually cost the institution more than their record is worth.

Better Searches Look for Evidence

The best way to uncover these traits is to stop relying too heavily on impressions.

Instead of asking, “Do we like this candidate?” ask, “What evidence did we hear?”

When a candidate says they build culture, ask for a specific example.

When they say they develop leaders, ask how.

When they say they value accountability, ask what that looked like after a hard loss or a team issue.

When they say they collaborate well, ask about a time they disagreed with compliance, sports medicine, academics, or another coach.

When they say they are self-aware, ask what feedback they have received that was difficult to hear and what they changed because of it.

Strong candidates usually welcome those questions. They have lived examples. They can name specifics. They can talk about people, not just principles. They can explain what they learned.

Weaker candidates often stay abstract. They give slogans instead of stories. They over-credit themselves. They blame others quickly. They describe standards mostly through control. They struggle to name mistakes they have owned.

Those are not small details. They are previews.

The Goal Is Not to Find a Perfect Coach

No candidate is perfect.

Every coach has growth areas. Every hire involves risk. Every athletic director has to make a judgment call with incomplete information.

But the goal is to make the right things visible before the decision is made.

A coaching search should help an athletic director see beyond the resume, beyond the interview presence, and beyond the record. It should reveal how the candidate leads when pressure rises, how they treat people when they have power, how they respond when challenged, and how they build a program when nobody is watching.

Because after the announcement is over, those are the traits the department will live with every day.

The best coaching hires are not always the most charismatic candidates.

They are the ones whose leadership holds up after the room is no longer impressed.