Editor’s note: This is the fourth installment of a new column on how to improve the higher-ed workplace. Read the previous essays here.
Spend even a brief amount of time in the research on higher-education leadership and you’re bound to encounter a common critique: Colleges don’t adequately prepare people to be campus administrators. Studies that assess the state of formal leadership preparation in higher ed use rosy descriptors like “absent,” “minimal,” and “haphazard.”
That lack of attention is perplexing given that institutions are filling leadership vacancies all the time: for department chairs, presidents, and everything in between. In many cases, colleges hire or promote leaders not on the basis of their formal preparation for the role, but rather, on their perceived success in a related or precursor position. Professors become chairs, chairs become deans, deans become provosts and presidents.
Trouble is, prior success in one campus role isn’t always predictive of effectiveness in another.
The pipeline to administration. “There’s still the challenge that most faculty go into leadership roles because they’re really good at being a faculty member — really strong in their discipline,” said Diane Chapman, associate vice provost for faculty development at North Carolina State University, in an interview. But even superstar scholars face a steep learning curve when “they get into leadership roles and have not had specific leadership training.”
It can feel like you are being set up to fail. New or interim administrators often step into a trial by fire where they are expected to intuitively understand how to lead — and those who don’t quickly flare out. New managers often bemoan the paucity of resources invested in their success and the difficulty of finding institutional support to develop their leadership skills. In desperation, some turn for help to the flourishing leadership-coaching industry, which can provide outstanding guidance but isn’t available at scale and can be pricey.
Some people possess innate leadership skills or cultivate them without having to sign up for a specific program. But the overwhelming evidence suggests that academe’s “figure it out on your own” model isn’t working especially well for most leaders or the people they lead. For example, the higher-education scholar Chelsea Pratt notes in her research that many staff members are dissatisfied with the quality of supervision they experience, and it’s often cited in studies as a primary reason for burnout and turnover.
While critiques of paltry institutional offerings are warranted, the reality is that configuring the right leadership-development program for your campus can be hard.
Higher education — in comparison with other employment sectors such as health care and business — has “channeled very little support and funding into leadership development,” according to Adrianna Kezar, director of the Pullias Center for Higher Education at the University of Southern California. By one estimate, the private sector spends upwards of $40 billion a year on leadership development, with additional investments in management capacity across an organization. (No one collects data on how much higher ed spends on leadership development, but it’s definitely not in the billions.)
The good news is that awareness of this problem is spreading, and many people involved in leadership development have noticed colleges expressing greater interest in starting, expanding, or revamping such programs. For example, Kevin Dettmar noted in his Ask the Chair column that “more and more institutions are investing in their chairs.” Which raises a crucial question: If colleges are going to invest more in preparing people for administrative roles, how should they do it?
What does a well-designed program look like? Unfortunately, research is scarce on how best to structure leadership development in higher education. In search of answers, I interviewed multiple people intimately familiar with designing and delivering programs to train campus leaders. My interest is primarily in programs that institutions create for their own employees, but I also sought advice from two people working for a multi-campus partnership that prepares campus leaders across the country.
Most administrators could use a little training in both leadership and in skills-based management (i.e., using internal systems, following applicable laws, maintaining a budget). But most of the programs I explore here don’t take that dual approach and instead focus explicitly on leadership training — how to set a vision, establish a strategy, and communicate change.
What follows is a distillation of our conversations aimed at identifying what works. Nearly everyone I talked with conceded that even these promising ideas would benefit from additional evaluation and, even better, from peer-reviewed research to explore if participants grew in their skills and if the quality of campus leadership improved.
What these interviews underscored: While critiques of paltry institutional offerings are warranted, the reality is that configuring the right leadership-development program for your campus can be hard. Just like any curriculum, there are a host of choices regarding what content to include, when to schedule meetings, and how to determine eligibility. The following tips could reduce decision overload and help your college to either start or revive a leadership-development program.
Start with a needs assessment. Some programs don’t have a strong research basis. They may be the pet project of a former leader and, as such, reflect things that the leader found valuable, resulting in what Beronda L. Montgomery, a biologist and vice president for academic affairs at Grinnell College, called “imprinting,” or “patterning … individuals’ behaviors after the norms of a recognized group.” These programs have a tendency to prepare new leaders in the mold of old ones, which may not be what the present or future requires.
By contrast, Ralph Gigliotti, assistant vice president for organizational leadership at Rutgers University, and his team follow an inquiry process when designing new leadership programs. “We do a needs assessment involving folks who would go through the program,” he said in an interview, “and have conversations with key sponsors and senior leaders around the competencies that they think would be most useful in leaders at a given level.” People who provided input on the design are invited to pilot the program and give additional feedback. The result is a greater sense of buy-in, as well as curricula tailored to the needs of both emerging leaders and the institution.
Don’t rely on volunteers and altruism. As I talked with experts, I got the distinct sense that some programs survived on a shoestring budget, and without dedicated staff support. At many institutions, “it’s often the top faculty-affairs person at the university who’s also doing leadership development as a side program,” said Jonathan Holloway, leadership-program manager at North Carolina State University. In such cases, leadership development can fall low on the priority list or fizzle out as faculty-affairs leaders come and go.
Holloway said he feels fortunate to have the support of his institution’s provost, making it possible for leadership development to be his full-time job. That support means that the university’s Office for Faculty Excellence is able to run a portfolio of evolving programs that serve a large campus. Campus financial support makes it easier for busy faculty to participate: For example, the Provost’s Faculty Fellows Program is designed to help faculty members “explore leadership roles.” It supplies departments with funds to relieve the fellows, during their training, from 25 percent of their normal faculty duties.
Reduce barriers to participation. Jennifer Hart, chair of the history department at Virginia Tech, was involved in reviving a leadership-development program there. And one of the things she was adamant about was allowing people to self-nominate to participate.
“A lot of leadership-development programs require upper administration or a supervisor to nominate you,” she said in an interview. “Particularly when you’re in a toxic workplace, or if you’re being bullied, or if you happen to be marginalized in any way, it’s often much harder to be nominated.”
There are instances when it makes sense to have eligibility criteria or an application. For example, some programs may occur during working hours, requiring a supervisor’s sign-off. But multiple people I interviewed extolled the importance of having at least one core training opportunity that is not touted as “highly selective” and is open to future leaders wherever they may be working in the organization. Having an “introductory program” that is open to people who don’t have any leadership experience “is essential,” said Chapman of NC State, “because a lot of people don’t see themselves as ready to go into more-advanced programs because of imposter syndrome or not feeling qualified.”
Institutions need to start thinking about how to provide leadership development at an earlier point in peoples’ careers.
Don’t tie all programs to specific leadership titles. Many of the experts I interviewed cautioned against tailoring a college’s leadership development to people who have already ascended into particular roles or titles. That is, in part, because it creates a missed opportunity to develop a pipeline of emerging leaders, but also because it’s critical for people to build an understanding of their management values and who they want to be as leaders before they are inundated with the day-to-day responsibilities of the job at hand.
Institutions need to start thinking about how to provide leadership development at an earlier point in people’s careers. Bob Parks, assistant vice president and senior director of training and organizational development at the University of Florida, shared with me that he worries when a new manager steps into a position without any training: “Because they don’t have a framework for thinking about leadership, it’s easier for them to get lost in the stress and demands of the role. They actually lose sight of who they wanted to be as a leader.”
Go beyond the one-and-done. Skeptics might rightly question if it makes sense to provide leadership development before someone is in a managerial post and can put what they’ve learned into practice. The precise timing of a program is less of a concern if institutions think about creating a suite of offerings that build upon one another. For example, the University of Florida sees its programs as a progressive pathway, starting with open management classes available to any staff or faculty member. Then participants might take part in the university’s academy for early-career leaders, before pursuing a more-advanced leadership training.
Florida also has a leadership network in which alumni of its various programs get together once a semester for professional development. Several other institutions have similarly developed ways for department chairs, in particular, to meet over lunch to troubleshoot common challenges. The goal is to make leadership development less of a time-limited course and more of an ongoing community of practice.
Think outside the classroom. Leadership development faces the same constraints as any other educational program: How do we best deliver a lot of content to maximize learning among a very busy group of people? Some programs have landed on a structure akin to a college course: Participants meet periodically to observe a presentation or engage in discussion on a list of leadership topics.
But you don’t have to limit your campus leadership program to that structure. Kim D’Abreu and Darcie Milazzo are two of the architects of the Academy for Innovative Higher Education Leadership — a partnership between Arizona State and Georgetown Universities — which supplements traditional, cohort-based learning with one-on-one coaching, peer mentoring, and an applied-learning project, in which participants advance an innovative idea on their campus.
“By design,” Milazzo said in an interview, “learning creates some internal confusion. We do that very intentionally. That’s why every leader has a coach, a small group-learning circle, and an innovation partner to support them during the challenging moments. We want to create a bridge between their current perspectives and new mindsets that could enhance their leadership effectiveness.”
Many of the existing leadership-development programs have had the benefit of running numerous times, providing opportunities for fine-tuning and iteration. But in each case they started with humble origins — someone willing to advocate for developing campus leaders as a worthwhile organizational investment.
Research on the effectiveness of leadership development in higher ed is still in early stages. But a 2025 study shows it can build affinity with the organization, promote a sense of community and belonging, encourage succession planning, and even connect leadership with institutional strategic priorities. And it’s certainly got a leg up on just throwing new leaders into the deep end and seeing if they can swim.
It’s unlikely that colleges are going to find billions of dollars to invest in leadership development. But they can start with a single, well-designed and -resourced program and build from there.
