One of the biggest barriers we face in our work with institutions is the constant refrain that leaders don’t have time to do leadership development. We hear this about both faculty and staff leaders, but it’s most acute with Department Chairs. Even when institutions are willing to invest in providing leadership development to Chairs, they have a hard time getting them to participate.
Some institutions have resorted to paying stipends for Chairs to participate in professional development. I think paying people to do leadership training sends the wrong message and is ultimately ineffective at producing better leaders. To be an effective leader requires a commitment to ongoing learning, not a “check the box” approach.
So, What Can Institutions Do to Engage Chairs?
For starters, senior leaders like Provosts and Deans need to model the way. They need to signal their commitment by investing in their own leadership through ongoing professional development, participating in 360-degree feedback processes, and using leadership coaches. These signals aren’t just symbolic; they will yield an improved culture of leadership from the top down.
Academic Impressions’ research has found that when leaders model the way by investing in their own leadership and professional development, their direct reports are more likely to report higher job satisfaction and less likely to seek a position outside the institution.
The good news is that most faculty and staff are hungry for leadership development opportunities. In that same study, 85 percent of faculty and staff reported strong interest in participating in a leadership program, but only 38 percent reported having anything available to them.
Still Getting Resistance?
Department Chairs have some of the toughest jobs on campus—most still maintain their teaching and many are active scholars. While course releases and stipends are common, many of the administrative responsibilities of leading the unit come on top of an already full workload. It’s not uncommon for a leadership program to be seen as “one more thing” on an overloaded plate.
Here are five ways we design programs for Chairs that are seen as both meaningful and a good use of time:
- Start Small
Especially at the R1 institutions we work with, leadership is something that is not aspired to or even looked highly upon. In these situations, there may be little interest in participating in a leadership program. It’s okay to start small and build interest over time.
Leadership development requires some time to fully immerse yourself in the discipline, but if you only have 90 minutes, make it count and deliver value in each session.
- Focus on Interested Chairs
Your first attempts will likely draw those who were already intentional and thoughtful leaders. You may look around the room at your first convening and focus more on those who aren’t there but probably need to be. That’s okay—focus your limited energy on those who are interested. Over time, their positive experiences can help engage others who may be more skeptical; peer endorsement and word-of-mouth is more valuable and more effective than any short-term incentives to get Chairs to participate.
- Focus on Leadership, Not Management
When institutions do offer Chair orientation or workshops, most of them focus on the hard skills of managing the unit—budgeting, the annual evaluation process, promotion and tenure, HR do’s and don’ts, etc. These are of course critical and should not be ignored. But they should also not be the full extent of what’s offered. Most Chairs struggle in their roles not because of the hard skills, but because of the “soft” skills—giving effective feedback, dealing with conflict, or even the self-awareness to know how they’re impacting the unit.
- Make It Practical and Skills-Based
As we’ve established, Chairs are busy. They need to leave each and every session feeling like this was a great use of their time. Making the program practical and skill-based is key. Use real-life scenarios and case studies, give them practical leadership models and frameworks, and help them practice giving feedback or having difficult conversations, etc.
- Build Community
By making the sessions interactive and intentionally mixing up Chairs to work together, you can both deliver practical and meaningful leadership experiences and help them build a critical network of support. Building trust and relationship capital among the Chairs makes it easier for them to lean on each other—increasing the chances that they ask for support when they need it, and before situations escalate to the point where the attention of the Dean or Provost, or worse, the Counsel’s office, is required.
Need Help Making the Case?
If you lack the bandwidth or expertise internally to pull off meaningful leadership development, it’s worth bringing in an outside organization like Academic Impressions which has decades of experience designing hundreds of leadership programs and experiences. You want experts in front of the room who are both students of leadership and have lived experience in these roles to be credible and effective facilitators—if Chairs feel like the session is too basic, too corporate, or too theoretical, the work is over before it begins.
If you need ideas to help secure the resources, consider these two realities—again drawn from our many years of pioneering the leadership development space in higher education.
- You’re Going to Invest the Time One Way or Another
- Leadership development is not optional if you want effective teams. You can invest time up front to build trust, skills, and shared vision—or spend even more time later dealing with escalating conflicts, toxic cultures that drive out your best faculty and staff, or missed opportunities to grow programs and research.
- Investing in leadership development is like an ounce of medicine to prevent a pound of pain. Intentional support of leaders leads to more engagement, more alignment with institutional priorities and a more rewarding leadership experience for the Chairs—something that can motivate others to want to assume the role too.
- Conversely, neglecting leadership development conveys the message that service is less important than other parts of the job, reinforcing the narrative that service to the institution should be avoided when at all possible. These attitudes solidify the individualistic nature of faculty work and make collaboration harder.
- Leadership Moves at the Speed of Trust
- As Stephen Covey famously said, “You move at the speed of trust.” When trust within a unit is low, every decision and action taken by the Chair gets questioned, stalling progress and the agenda of the Dean or Provost. The Provost needs all unit heads and Deans working in the same direction—if there is urgency to grow research or enrollments, you need buy-in, not individual units questioning the motive behind every decision or discussing and debating the issue instead of experimenting and learning. Building trust through leadership development fosters collaboration and alignment.
- Without trust, there’s no empowerment. Every issue gets bottlenecked because Chairs hesitate to act without explicit approval, further slowing down progress and reinforcing a pattern of passivity. Chairs often take a passive approach to leading their units and are naturally hesitant to take on hard issues like updating the curriculum or addressing difficult personnel issues. The problem, of course, is that these issues don’t get better with time, they get worse—cultivating Chairs who have a more proactive and constructive approach to building positive cultures in their units can help address core issues, maximize faculty engagement and prevent conflicts from turning into grievances or lawsuits.
The Case for Prioritizing Leadership Development
Leadership development is not a luxury; it’s a necessity for institutions navigating today’s complex landscape. By prioritizing and modeling a commitment to ongoing learning, senior leaders can create a culture where leadership development is valued and integrated into the fabric of the institution.
Investing time in leadership development isn’t about adding another task to an already full plate—it’s about building the capacity to lead with greater effectiveness, resilience, and impact. When leaders grow, institutions thrive.
Explore how Academic Impressions can help prepare your Chairs to lead more effectively. See our Department Chairs Success Program.
