Leaders Come to Us with a Specific Challenge. Start with Yours.
Select your situation below. We'll show you exactly how we've helped institutions work through it.01.
CHAIR DEVELOPMENT
Your chair has to move a curriculum revision forward, and every faculty member in the room thinks you’re selling out by proposing it.
That’s not a hypothetical. That’s a Tuesday. Department chairs are asked to hold the line between institutional direction and faculty autonomy often with no preparation for that specific kind of pressure, no peer to call, and no room for error. We build the skills and the peer network that make those moments survivable, and over time, manageable.
HOW WE APPROACH IT
Start with the peer community
Chairs are often isolated—they’ve stepped out of the faculty community but aren’t quite administrators either. When a chair has to support a decision they didn’t make and move a resistant department forward, having a peer who’s been in that exact bind changes everything. We build that cohort.
Ground it in your institution
We don’t run generic chair programs. We learn your institutional context—your shared governance culture, your specific chair population, the decisions they’re actually being asked to make—and design to fit. We help chairs design meetings, prep for difficult conversations with individual faculty, and build a department culture they want.
Build the skills that actually matter
How do you move forward a decision you disagree with and still maintain your credibility? How do you facilitate a curriculum conversation when the room is already hostile? How do you give feedback to a tenured colleague? These are the real questions and what our programs are built around.
Build the capacity to sustain it
We train your internal facilitators so this program doesn’t depend on us to keep running. By Year 2, your staff are facilitating. By Year 3, the program is fully yours.
The chair who knows how to hold a room when it objects to the project—who can put on their institutional hat without losing their faculty identity—is one of the most valuable people a provost has.
PARTNER STORY
Large Research University
Institution-Wide Membership, Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty
THE CHALLENGE
The Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty wanted to give new department heads and associate deans a more intentional, cohesive leadership development experience—one that built the skills needed to navigate complex administrative demands while fostering trust, managing conflict, and leading with agility. Monthly chairs meetings existed, but they weren’t doing the development work.
WHAT WE DID
In partnership with the Vice Provost’s office, we reimagined the monthly chairs meeting as a year-long leadership development cohort. The program includes three in-person full-day workshops anchored by Five Paths to Leadership®, monthly sessions applying concepts to real institutional challenges, and peer cohort structures that build genuine relationships across the university. Now in its second year, the cohort has expanded in scope and depth.
THE OUTCOME
A standing, institutionalized leadership development program for academic leaders: one that strengthens individual careers and enhances the institution’s academic culture. Chairs leave with tools, mindsets, and a peer network that keeps supporting them long after the formal program ends.
02.
NEW SUPERVISOR TRAINING
Your supervisor is down two people from a hiring freeze and needs to accomplish the same amount of work.
The jump from individual contributor to supervisor is hard enough. Leading through institutional chaos—with a smaller team but the same expectations—is a different thing entirely. Most people figure it out by making expensive mistakes. We give them something better to work with.
HOW WE APPROACH IT
Build the cohort first
The supervisor who’s managing through a hiring freeze needs to know they’re not alone in it. We build peer cohorts before we build curriculum because the person who’s been in the same bind is often the most valuable resource in the room.
Give them a shared language
The Five Paths to Leadership® gives your supervisors a common framework for how they lead and how to talk about it with their teams. Shared language makes the conversation about a difficult decision, a missed expectation, or a feedback moment immediately more productive.
Focus on the real challenges
How do you manage a team that is short-staffed and resents it? How do you give meaningful feedback when you used to be peers? How do you delegate when you’re used to doing it yourself and everything is already on fire? These are the actual questions and what our curriculum is built around.
Keep developing them
Our year-long curriculum blends certificate programs, live discussions, and Sophia’s coaching into a structured path, so development builds month over month instead of fading after a single training event.
The supervisor managing through tight staffing is doing some of the hardest work in the institution. Get them real support—a peer cohort, a coach available at 9pm—and the whole team is better for it.
PARTNER STORY
Regional College
Team Membership, Library Services
THE CHALLENGE
A library services division was restructuring and, almost overnight, a team of 20+ staff members were being promoted from within into supervisor roles. Nearly everyone was brand new to supervision. The director needed to set them up for success from the start, not wait for them to learn by trial and error.
WHAT WE DID
We built a year-long supervisor training curriculum that blended the Supervision Certificate Program, the Advanced Supervision Certificate, live online discussions, on-demand courses, and Sophia—all organized around a monthly theme. The curriculum moved from foundational identity (Five Paths, understanding your leadership style) through skills like feedback, delegation, conflict, and coaching.
THE OUTCOME
A cohort of brand-new supervisors who didn’t have to figure it out alone. The curriculum gave them language, tools, and a peer group from day one, and the year-long structure meant development was ongoing, not a one-time event.
We hear a lot right now about what higher education can’t do. The funding pressure. The political headwinds. The workforce under strain. That’s all real. But it’s not the conversation we’re in.
We’re in the conversation about what becomes possible when leaders are developed well. When a new supervisor doesn’t have to figure it out alone. When a department chair has a peer group and a coach. That’s the work.
That’s the work. And it’s worth doing.
03.
MID-CAREER FACULTY
Your mid-career faculty have stopped showing up—to events, to governance, to the work of the institution—and you need to bring them back.
This isn’t disengagement from their discipline. It’s disengagement from their institution, and it usually comes from a specific place: they’ve been doing the informal leadership work for years without recognition, without a peer group, and without anyone ever telling them they’re already leaders.
HOW WE APPROACH IT
Start with identity, not skills
Faculty who find productive ways to engage without throwing senior administrators under the bus have done the identity work first. They know how to hold two things at once: their faculty perspective and their institutional responsibility. The Five Paths gives them the language for that shift.
Build in community
Mid-career faculty are isolated by design—their expertise sets them apart. A cohort of peers who are navigating the same tension between scholarly identity and institutional leadership changes the calculus. The peer group is often what people remember most.
Make it practical
Sessions are built around real situations: how to lead a curriculum conversation when you have no positional authority. How to mentor a junior colleague without overstepping. How to show up to events and governance without feeling like you’re abandoning your scholarly identity.
Offer support between sessions
Sophia is available between cohort sessions: before a hard committee meeting, after a conversation with a senior administrator that didn’t go well, when a faculty member needs to think through how to engage without burning a bridge.
Mid-career faculty who find their way back to the institution—who show up not just as scholars but as leaders—are the people who shape what comes next. Getting them there is one of the highest-leverage investments a provost can make.
PARTNER STORY
Large Research University
Enterprise Membership, Office of the Senior Vice Provost
THE CHALLENGE
A COACHE study and internal focus groups showed that this institution’s mid-career associate professors—61% of whom were within five years of earning the rank—needed more than research support. They needed leadership development that honored their expertise while building the skills and identity needed to lead. No formal program existed for this population.
WHAT WE DID
In partnership with the Senior Vice Provost’s office, we designed the Academy for Scholars as Leaders: a year-long program for mid-career faculty built on Five Paths to Leadership®. The program opens with a retreat covering empowered leadership, conflict resolution, and high-performing teams. Monthly workshops continue on trust, feedback, delegation, and coaching. Year 1 launched with 12 participants; Year 2 expanded to 20 through a formal application process.
THE OUTCOME
Faculty who completed the program gained both the skills and the leadership identity to act on them. The program is now in its second year with expanded cohort size and Five Paths integrated into every session. The institution is using its Enterprise Membership to build out additional programming across staff, graduate students, and administrative roundtables.
04.
FUNDRAISING
Your advancement division was handed a goal based on desire, not data, and your shop isn’t geared up to achieve it.
A campaign goal that outpaces your team’s current capacity isn’t a fundraising problem. It’s a leadership and organizational problem. The VP knows it. The frontline staff feel it. The supervisors in the middle are absorbing the gap between the two. We work at all three levels because that’s the only way the gap actually closes.
HOW WE APPROACH IT
Find out where the shop actually is
We conduct focus groups with frontline staff, supervisors, and senior leaders—separately—before we design anything. What those three groups say rarely agrees. That gap between them is almost always more specific and actionable than anyone expected. The goals will always feel like a stretch. But without alignment across the division and the leaders who carry it, you don’t have a real shot at them.
Build capacity at every level
A gift officer can’t perform above the ceiling set by how well their supervisor coaches them. A supervisor can’t lead well if there is no psychological safety for them to raise real issues. Senior leadership can’t close the culture gap by professing one set of values but modeling another. We build development that works at every layer, so the whole shop moves, not just the people at the top.
Connect culture to performance
Advancement divisions that consistently outperform their goals aren’t just technically skilled. They have a shared identity, shared language, and shared standards for how they work. In doing so, they begin to embody what they ask of donors: trust, collaboration, and a genuine commitment to something larger than the transaction. The Five Paths gives the whole division that foundation. Sophia keeps it reinforced in the real moments between formal programming.
Build toward sustainability
Year 1 equips. Year 2 activates across the division. Year 3 sustains through trained internal facilitators. We build your internal capacity to keep this going, not your dependency on us to run it.
A goal handed down without the capacity to meet it isn’t a motivator—it’s a morale problem. The divisions that build the leadership culture to support high performance at every level meet those goals.
PARTNER STORY
Large Research University
Enterprise Membership – Multi-Year Strategic Partnership
THE CHALLENGE
This Advancement division had a clear goal: sustain $100 million raised annually. What they didn’t have yet was the strategy, the pipeline, or the leadership culture to get there reliably. The shop wasn’t geared up to achieve it, and senior leadership knew it. What they needed wasn’t a training event. They needed a partner who could work on the strategy and the people simultaneously.
WHAT WE DID
We designed a multi-year partnership working at every level of the division. On the strategy side: a philanthropic health assessment, pipeline development for future major and principal giving donors, and a fundraising capacity program for Deans. On the leadership side: quarterly team development for senior leaders, an Emerging Leaders Program for mid-level leaders, and a division-wide membership giving every staff member access to My Path, Sophia, and live facilitated sessions. The whole initiative was built around one question: what does it actually take to sustain $100 million in fundraising a year?
THE OUTCOME
They committed to a three-year renewal to sustain their growth. The division now has a standing Emerging Leaders Program, a division-wide development infrastructure, and a strategic plan built for what comes after the current campaign ends. Leadership development is now how the division runs.
05.
SERVICE EXCELLENCE
Your admissions staff have 40-deep call queues, and their supervisor just added a new intake process on top of it.
When the people closest to students are overwhelmed, undertrained, and one more policy change away from disengaging, enrollment pays the price. The problem usually isn’t effort—it’s that expectations keep rising without the capacity, the leadership, or the shared standards to meet them. We help you build all three.
HOW WE APPROACH IT
Start with discovery, not assumptions
The admissions counselor with a 40-deep queue who just got handed a new intake process isn’t failing because of attitude. They’re failing because the system doesn’t support them. We map the actual friction points before we prescribe anything: journey mapping, CRM data, focus groups with both students and frontline staff.
Build service pillars, then standards
We help you distill your findings into your Service Pillars and then build tiered standards that map back to them. Core standards that apply universally. Operational standards specific to each unit. All in plain language that a first-year student can understand.
Develop the supervisors who set the tone
The supervisor who keeps adding process without removing anything—who doesn’t know how to support a team under this kind of pressure—is often the problem. We develop the supervisory capacity that makes the whole team more effective.
Build structures that sustain it
Standards die without accountability. We help you build implementation infrastructure so the standards outlast the initial effort.
The student who calls admissions with a question about financial aid and gets a confident, clear, human answer is more likely to enroll. The one who gets transferred three times and waits a week for a callback is not. Service excellence is enrollment strategy.
PARTNER STORY
Large Public University
Enrollment Management, Custom Engagement
THE CHALLENGE
An enrollment management division wanted to move from assumed problems to data-driven insights, and from informal service norms to a formal, sustainable Service Charter. They needed a process that would surface what students actually experienced, identify where friction was costing them enrollments, and produce standards that frontline staff would actually use.
WHAT WE DID
We facilitated a structured four-phase process: discovery and diagnostic (journey mapping, CRM data review, focus groups with students and frontline staff), drafting and definition (service pillars, tiered standards, plain-language review), feasibility vetting with frontline staff, and implementation planning. Every standard was stress-tested against real operational constraints.
THE OUTCOME
A Service Charter grounded in real data, co-created with the staff who would deliver it, and built to last. The division left with a complete implementation roadmap including desk reference cards, a staff recognition program, onboarding integration, and an annual review cycle.
06.
ONE-PERSON OFFICE
You’re a one-person office responsible for leadership development across thousands of people, and the provost just added three more priorities to your list.
The mandate keeps growing, and the team stays at one. You’re the facilitator, the strategist, the coordinator, the person who gets called when a chair has a 9pm crisis. You need a partner who takes real things off your plate, not a vendor who sells you more content to manage.
HOW WE APPROACH IT
Content and curriculum
Ready-made cohort programs you can launch in weeks, not months, built specifically for higher ed. You don’t start from scratch. You start from something that already works and make it yours.
Facilitation
Expert facilitators who know higher ed inside and out. You don’t have to be the facilitator, the designer, and the strategist all at once. We’ll help build your capacity to facilitate and train others alongside you with facilitation guides and materials that support your development.
Individual leader support
Sophia handles the 1:1 coaching layer that would otherwise land on you. Leaders get real-time support 24/7.
Coordination and logistics
Your Partner Success Manager knows your campus, manages the logistics, and keeps the program moving.
The institutions that do this well aren’t doing it alone. They’ve found a partner who can carry the facilitation, the coordination, and the 9pm coaching calls, so the one person who owns the strategy can actually stay in strategy mode.
PARTNER STORY
Regional Comprehensive University
Team Membership to Enterprise, Learning & Development Staff Member
THE CHALLENGE
One person. A provost who wanted leadership development campus-wide. No budget for a team. No time to build programming from scratch. The director needed to launch something credible within a semester without burning out in the process.
WHAT WE DID
Team membership gave their office access to ready-made cohort programs they could launch immediately, Sophia for individual leader support, and a Partner Success Manager who handled coordination. The director focused on strategy and campus relationships—the work only they could do.
THE OUTCOME
Three years later, they’re running institution-wide programs across multiple cohort tracks. The provost went from skeptical to champion. They expanded the partnership to the rest of their campus to provide the same ROI on a larger scale.
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