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Leadership Insights
Here’s a pattern we see regularly at Academic Impressions: higher education leaders who manage the academic year with extraordinary drive and discipline, who then spend June doing the same thing, just with different tasks. The calendar clears, but the pace doesn’t.
We understand the pull. Planning feels responsible, while rest feels indulgent. And in a sector that has been navigating sustained institutional pressure, compressing your recovery window might even feel like the right call.
But it isn’t. And the reason isn’t primarily about your well-being (though it matters). It’s about your capacity to lead in September.
The quality of your leadership in the first weeks of the academic year will largely be determined by decisions you make this month about how you’re using your time. Leaders who arrive in August running on accumulated stress tend to lead reactively. They fill calendars, avoid ambiguity, and default to control. Leaders who’ve actually recovered tend to be more present, more willing to delegate, and more capable of holding the longer view when things get complicated.
This isn’t an argument for disengaging from summer planning. It’s an argument for building recovery into your planning deliberately, because if you don’t schedule it, it won’t happen.
Every path in the Five Paths to Leadership® has a shadow side, the version of your strengths that surfaces when you’re depleted and running on default. Critical Thinkers can become rigid and over-analytical, asking for more data when the situation needs a decision. Warriors push harder and faster, which can read as controlling when the team needs steadiness. Relators overextend to preserve harmony at the cost of their own capacity. Visionaries scatter across new ideas without the bandwidth to follow through on any of them. You may already recognize your own pattern from this past year. The question isn’t whether your shadow will show up in September; it’s whether you’ll arrive with enough in reserve to catch yourself before it does.question isn’t whether your shadow will show up in September; it’s whether you’ll arrive with enough in reserve to catch yourself before it does.
One concrete practice: Identify one hour per week this summer that you protect specifically for thinking, not doing. Not meetings, not email, not planning documents. Strategic thinking, professional reading, or simply walking away from the screen. Name it on your calendar so that it has the same standing as any other commitment.
That one protected hour will return more value in September than almost anything else you could put there.
Pause & Reflect
Be honest with yourself: On a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being most depleted, how depleted are you right now? And what would it take to arrive at the new academic year one point lower on that scale? Write down one specific thing you’d need to stop, start, or protect this summer to make that happen.
Pro Tip: In your Academic Impressions account, open Sophia and enter: “Help me design a summer plan that balances my planning responsibilities with intentional recovery. Here’s what I know about my schedule and stressors: [add your context].”
Learn more about leading change in Lessons from the Work, a recent paper by Amit Mrig.