Find out the top 10 core skills you need to master as a sports director and what hard skills you need to know to succeed in this job.
A Sports Director is responsible for working with the athletic administration, school or organization to oversee the facility management, human resources, funding and policy adherence in compliance with the rules and regulations.
The principal duties of this post include scheduling games, overseeing coaching staff and organizing practices, observing coaches and athletic teams to ensure they are following the requirements and restrictions, travelling with the teams for competitions, responsible for usage and safety of the sports facility, enforcing rules regarding the usage of the sports facility, hiring new coaching staff, working with the team to ensure there is continued support, keeping a keen eye on accounts to ensure the funds are delivered according to need, overseeing the budget and allocate money as required.
Core Skills Required to be a Sports Director
Core skills describe a set of non-technical abilities, knowledge, and understanding that form the basis for successful participation in the workplace. Core skills enable employees to efficiently and professionally navigate the world of work and interact with others, as well as adapt and think critically to solve problems.
Core skills are often tagged onto job descriptions to find or attract employees with specific essential core values that enable the company to remain competitive, build relationships, and improve productivity.
A sports director should master the following 10 core skills to fulfill her job properly.
Coaching others:
Coaching is the process of improving performance that focuses on enhancing and bridging the gap from where one is to where they want to be.
A Sports Director ought to use coaching to avoid burnout and maximize the chances of the staff's success that leads to the company's success by investing in coaching them and believing in their ability to become better.
Talent Management:
Talent Management is the shift that is used when hiring, training, and retention of the most skilled and superior employees available in the job market.
A Sports Director must understand the secret of using this paradigm shift in the strategic human resource planning to improve business and allow the organization to reach its goals through the talent hired while ensuring the growth of the employee in different aspects.
Equal Opportunity and Diversity:
Equal Opportunity and Diversity means having employees from a wide range of background that includes different ages, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religious belief, educational background, physical ability and treating them equally.
A Sports Director is required by the law to create a workplace free from discrimination and harassment to its employees as well as understand and adhere to the rights and responsibilities under the human rights and antidiscrimination law.
Personal Accountability:
Personal Accountability is the feeling that you are entirely responsible for your actions and consequences taking ownership without blaming others.
A Sports Director should provide a list of duties and responsibilities that every employee is expected to perform and define timelines and supervisors who oversee the work to ensure each knows what she /he should do and remain accountable without passing blame.
Business Ethics:
Business Ethics is the ability to learn what is right and wrong in the world of business and choosing to do what is right at all times.
A Sports Director must emulate good business ethic that is essential for the long-term success of an organization by implementing an ethical program that will foster a thriving entrepreneurial culture while increasing profitability and personal maturity.
Business Trend Awareness:
Business Trend Awareness is the capacity to be conscious of the changing ways in which the companies are developing in the marketplace.
A Sports Director should have the required knowledge of new business trends that he can instigate or follow and the understanding of how they are impacting the business decisions which will eventually bring success to the employees as well as the enterprise
Entrepreneurial Thinking:
Entrepreneurial Thinking is a mindset that allows embraces critical questioning, innovation, service and continuous improvement with an attitude of change.
A Sports Director should challenge himself to see the big picture and creatively think outside the box too with the ability to fight all the challenges faced and keep going in the face of calamity and the social skills needed to build great teams in the workplace.
Intercultural Competence:
Intercultural Competence is the knowledge and skills to successfully interact with people from other ethnic, religious, cultural, national and geographic groups.
A Sports Director should have a high degree of intercultural competence that enables him to have successful interactions with people from different groups as well as train his employees to be sensitive to the cultural differences and be willing to modify their behavior as a sign of respect for each other.
Process Improvement:
Process Improvement is the creation of new processes or improving the existing ones that will work and take your corporation to the next level.
A Sports Director must maintain the continuous improvements in the workplace that are favorable to the current investors, potential investors, and stock owners while working with methods that can serve as a foundation for future business decisions causing a profitable growth.
Training others:
Training is the ability to expand the knowledge base by learning new truths that are useful in the workplace.
A Sports Director needs to creatively schedule training for his employees in a focused manner that will allow the employee stay useful in the workplace and get new knowledge so that both the business and the worker not suffer from delays and work related stress.
Hard Skills Required to be a Sports Director
Hard skills are job-specific skill sets, or expertise, that are teachable and whose presence can be tested through exams. While core skills are more difficult to quantify and less tangible, hard skills are quantifiable and more defined.
Hard skills are usually listed on an applicant's resume to help recruiters know the applicant's qualifications for the applied position. A recruiter, therefore, needs to review the applicant's resume and education to find out if he/she has the knowledge necessary to get the job done.
A sports director should have a good command of the following hard skills to succeed in her job.