Academic Leadership Qualities for Meeting Today’s Higher Education Challenges

It’s been said that no one dreams of someday becoming an academic administrator. It’s a tough job that’s only gotten more challenging as budgets shrink, public scrutiny rises, and responsibilities continue to grow. It requires a unique skill set – part field general, part mediator, part visionary, and part circus barker – to name just a few. But what does it really take to be an effective leader?

Featuring 13 articles from Academic Leader this special report seeks to provide answers to your biggest leadership questions give guidance to anyone in a campus leadership role.

Academic Leadership Qualities for Meeting Today’s Higher Education Challenges

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Whether you’re an experienced administrator, or just starting out, this report will give you an inside look at what it takes to succeed.

For example, in the article “Leadership and Management: Complementary Skill Sets,” Donna Goss and Don Robertson, explain the differences between management and leadership, and share their thoughts on how to develop leadership skills in yourself and others.

In “Zen and the Art of Higher Education Administration,” author Jeffrey L. Buller shows how the Buddhist practice features many principles for daily life that could benefit academic leaders. Such advice includes “Walk gently, leaving tracks only where they can make a difference.”

In “Techniques of Leadership,” authors Isa Kaftal Zimmerman and Joan Thormann outline specific leadership skills for effectively running meetings, building consensus, and communicating across the institution.

The article “A Formal Approach to Facilitating Change” explains how Northwestern University’s Office of Change Management is structured as well as its operating principles for effectively managing change at the university. The key is to articulate how a change can benefit those directly affected and others not directly affected, to be accountable, and to provide clear criteria for measuring success.

Academic Leadership Qualities for Meeting Today’s Higher Education Challenges

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Other articles in Academic Leadership Qualities for Meeting Today’s Higher Education Challenges include:

• Factors That Affect Department Chairs’ Performance
• Changing Roles for Chairs
• Becoming a More Mindful Leader
• Creating a Culture of Leadership
• There’s More to Leadership than Motivation and Ability
• 10 Recommendations toward Effective Leadership
• Hope-Centered Leadership in Practice

Academic leadership roles are changing constantly. This free report will help you be a more effective leader during these challenging times.

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Faculty Focus contains a wealth of valuable material on all of the key issues that matter to today’s top faculty and administrators. It’s packed with strategies, tips, and other information you can use on the topics that impact your students, your school, and your work, including:

• Instructional Design
• Faculty Development
• Teaching Strategies
• Distance Learning
• Classroom Management
• Educational Assessment
• Faculty Evaluation
• Learning Styles
• Curriculum Development
• Trends in Higher Education
• And much, much more.

Academic Leadership Qualities for Meeting Today’s Higher Education Challenges

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Actually, there is a better way. It’s a much longer, more structured process that goes well beyond the type of orientation academic leaders typically receive when they step foot onto a new campus, or get promoted to a new leadership position. It’s called onboarding and while it got its start in the corporate world, some universities have started to adapt its principles to the higher education community.

In the recent online seminar A Good Start: Institutional Support for New Academic Leaders, Anne Massaro, project manager and organizational design consultant to The Ohio State University, outlined the key distinctions between orientation and onboarding, and explained how Ohio State has structured its onboarding program.

For example, while orientation is about learning the written rules, onboarding is about learning the written and unwritten rules that make up the campus culture. Also, while orientation is a one-time event, onboarding is a process that could last from one month to one year depending on the person’s leadership position, and includes a variety of formal and informal learning opportunities.

Ohio State provides onboarding for provosts and vice presidents, and plans to launch a program for department chairs soon. For the senior executives, it’s a 12-month process where each new leader works with a “transition coach” to build relationships, understand culture, and achieve results at individual, unit, and institutional levels.

Massaro notes that the transition coach is a critical resource because new leaders need “a safe place where they can go and reflect on what they need to do in order to be an effective leader, and have an open dialogue about what they’re learning and what their plans are.”

The onboarding process also ensures the new leader receives regular feedback regarding how well he or she is performing on the established objectives – at the two-month mark from the person’s hiring manager, and anonymously at the six-month mark from the person’s direct reports.

Massaro says the benefits of onboarding include it:

• Minimizes the possibility of derailment;
• Accelerates performance results;
• Facilitates smoother integration experience; and
• Ensures the new leader understands the organizational norms and performance expectations; integrates into the new university; and is highly productive and engaged.

Although each department operates under its own set of conditions, there are lessons to be learned from departments that have taken a purposeful approach to leadership succession.

Nancy Buffone, director of communications and special initiatives at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, did an in-depth study of one exemplary chair transition at New England University and proposed an orientation program for new chairs based in part on what she learned.

Like many institutions, New England University does not offer formal department chair training, although some members of the administration meet informally with new chairs to talk about the responsibilities and processes of the positions. However, the outgoing chairs in these cases felt obligated to help prepare the incoming chairs and had enough time to do so.

Toward the end of his third three-year term, outgoing chair “Matthew” sought nominations for his replacement. There was only one person, “Maria,” who had the support of her colleagues and was willing to take on this role.

Unlike during his transition to chair, Matthew made it a point to provide adequate time for Maria to learn from his experience and lay the groundwork for success. The following are elements of this transition that Buffone considers worth emulating:

• Allow adequate time for the transition. There was a sense in the department, even during Matthew’s second term as chair, that it was time for a change. But lacking a clear successor, Matthew stayed on. Marie was selected with a full semester to prepare, with Matthew’s help. “I think a semester is a good amount of time. Much more than that would probably be too long,” Buffone says.
• Negotiate with the dean. Being chair is a major sacrifice and service to the department can distract a faculty member from his or her research and teaching. Like most incoming chairs, Maria was concerned about how being a chair would affect her research, so she negotiated with the dean for a research leave in order to get some research done before becoming chair.
• Meet regularly with the outgoing chair. Although Maria had some different ideas about leadership—she planned to delegate more than Matthew had—meetings with Matthew provided essential mentoring and helped maintain continuity throughout the transition.
• Meet important people who can help. As a longtime chair, Matthew was able to provide Maria with insight into how the institution operated. He introduced her to key administrators, which gave her the opportunity to speak with them about how she might change things. “It gave [Maria] the opportunity to think about a lot of the issues before she was responsible for making things happen. It really gave her a lot of opportunity to think and strategize and plan for that first day on the job,” Buffone says.
• Meet with the faculty. “Before she even stepped into the chair’s role, she talked to people in the department and got a sense of what they were looking for and used it as an opportunity to share her thoughts and to lay the groundwork,” Buffone says.

Excerpted from A Purposeful Approach to Chair Transition, Academic Leader, Nov. 2008.

“I had been teaching for 21 or 22 years and had sworn never to get into administration. The history program chair wasn’t doing such a good job, so the dean said, ‘Monte, why don’t you do it?’ I said, ‘Fine, I’ll try it out for a while. It will give me something to else to do’ because I was kind of getting bored with the classroom,” Finkelstein says.

Soon after, the division dean unexpectedly announced his retirement, and Finkelstein made an uncharacteristic spur-of-the-moment decision to apply for the position. Looking back, his career to that point had prepared him somewhat for the challenges he faced; as program chair he worked with adjunct faculty members and often dealt with student issues. He also served as faculty senate chair, which enabled him to see the big picture beyond the history program.

Some things he was not prepared for, such as the change in the way that others viewed him. “When I opened my mouth as dean for the first time, it was like that E.F. Hutton commercial—everybody all of a sudden started looking at me as if anything I said was the gospel. I think that was the biggest challenge for me. People were looking to me for leadership, and it continues. I sit on a bunch of study groups, and the tendency is for others to look at me and listen to me closely,” Finkelstein says.

Another difficult issue has been managing the changing relationships with long-time colleagues. One of the advantages of moving from faculty member to dean is that Finkelstein knows everybody and the specific challenges that faculty members face on campus. On the other hand, some of the people he’s now leading were long-time friends and colleagues, even a former roommate.

Finkelstein offers the following advice for faculty members making the transition to administration.

• Understand why you want to do it. Finkelstein took an administrative position because he wanted a new challenge. “I’ve heard others say that they got into administration because of the money. It’s not worth it because it can be a real headache. It can exhaust you,” Finkelstein says.
• Understand your new role. There are different levels of deans, and the roles vary among institutions. It’s important to understand what the position entails and how it will change your daily activities. The transition from faculty member to administrator entails a shift in perspective, autonomy, and recognition.
• Give yourself time to learn the job, and monitor your progress and satisfaction. When Finkelstein took the job in 2004, he decided to allow three years to learn the job and another two years to determine if he was doing an effective job and felt comfortable with it. He constantly asks, “Am I making progress?” “Do I feel better?” “Am I growing into my skin, or do I hate coming to work every morning?” “When the day comes where I say, I’m not satisfied anymore, I’ll walk away and probably go back to the classroom,” Finkelstein says.

Excerpted from The Transition from Faculty to Administrator, Academic Leader, December 2006.

Academic Leadership Development: How to Make a Smooth Transition from Faculty to Administrator

Inadequate preparation, unrealistic expectations, and increased workload can create undue stress on faculty members making the transition to department chair or other levels of administration. All too often new administrators are left to fend for themselves when it comes to discovering and developing the skills they need to succeed in their new position.

Making the leap from faculty to administration will never be easy, but this report will help new administrators navigate the potential minefields and find their voice when it comes to leading effectively.

Academic Leadership Development: How to Make a Smooth Transition from Faculty to Administrator

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Remember how you felt during your first semester of teaching? Excited? Nervous? A little over-whelmed? At times you even might have wondered how the school could give you a job with so much responsibility and so little training.

Now you’re a seasoned educator making the move from faculty to administration. And guess what? You’re excited, nervous, and a little overwhelmed. And, once again, you wonder how the school could give you a job with so much responsibility and so little training.

Academic Leadership Development: How to Make a Smooth Transition from Faculty to Administrator will get you on the right track for long-term success.

Academic Leadership Development: How to Make a Smooth Transition from Faculty to Administrator

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Here are some of the articles you will find in Academic Leadership Development: How to Make a Smooth Transition from Faculty to Administrator:

• Look Before You Leap: Transitions from Faculty to Administration
• It Seems Like Only Yesterday … The Challenges Face by Recently Appointed Administrators
• Translating Teaching Skills to Leadership Roles
• The First 1,000 Steps: Walking the Road from Academic to Administrator
• Why New Department Chairs Need Coaching
• 10 Recommendations toward Effective Leadership
• A Practitioner Model for Ethical Leadership
• Look Before You Leap: Transitions from Faculty to Administration

This report will help new administrators find their way, while shedding new light on leadership styles, myths and responsibilities. It also may remind experienced leaders what it was like that first year in hopes that they might reach out to help make someone else’s transition a little easier.

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Faculty Focus is packed with innovative ideas, best practices, and other information you can use right away on the topics that impact your students, your school and your work, including:

• Teaching and Learning
• Instructional Design
• Faculty Development
• Distance Learning
• Classroom Management
• Educational Assessment
• Teaching Strategies
• Faculty Evaluation
• Learning Styles
• Curriculum Development
• Community College Issues
• Trends in Higher Education
• And much, much more.

Academic Leadership Development: How to Make a Smooth Transition from Faculty to Administrator is the perfect example of the free, high-value we offer on Faculty Focus.

Academic Leadership Development: How to Make a Smooth Transition from Faculty to Administrator

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