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Leading Leaders

Leaders in academia are crucial to creating vision, setting strategic approaches, and facilitating constructive and positive academic environments. As universities, colleges, and other institutions are changing, a solid leadership and executive team is needed to guide institutional efforts. However, in these academic settings, most candidates for leadership positions are trained as researchers and sometimes as instructors, not as leaders. This means useful and effective leadership development is a necessity in helping aspirants and novices successfully make the transition to leadership and serve to help them to build their competencies and skills in a changing higher education scene.

Drs.  and  are co-chairs of the International Study of Leadership Development in Higher Education (ISLDHE), and the Canadian team are leading the way with our national study. The ISLDHE aims to investigate the availability and effectiveness of current leadership development with the view to promoting optimal, relevant, and culturally appropriate leadership development experiences in higher education.

Phases 1-3 have been completed and findings from the literature review, mapping of available leadership development, as well as from interviews with senior university leaders across Canada indicated there was a lack of available, relevant, and culturally appropriate leadership development for academic leaders, particularly Deans. Further, what was available was not adequately preparing leaders for the contemporary challenges in leading the academy.

Training sessions were often focused on the pragmatics of management, as opposed to preparing them to be visionary, entrepreneurial leaders. Institutional expectations for Deans indicated they must demonstrate effective interpersonal and communication skills, the ability to build collegial and positive faculty cultures, as well as be entrepreneurial with sound vision and strategy. While there was a recognized need to train candidates for their new roles, existing programs must be responsive the challenges of academic leadership within contemporary higher education institutions.

Challenges and Consequences

Currently, there is a lack of sound, practical, and evidence-based opportunities for training new Deans. Canadian universities frequently rely on US-based programs for their leaders, given the lack of established alternatives at home. In addition to the expense involved in these programs, the considerable differences between the American and the Canadian university systems mean these are often not totally relevant to our leaders. This leaves Canadian senior university leaders with a dilemma: to either design their own leadership development strategy to ensure alignment with their institutional, or to send their leaders and aspirants to external programs in order to facilitate networking and access to greater theoretical insights into leadership.

Given the current lack of preparation programs, new Deans frequently rely on their innate talents, learning on the job, or through a mentor, if one is available. Hence, Deans often require additional supports from Provosts, which presents additional demands on these senior leaders’ time. While Deans may have learned from previous mentors, this can influence novice Deans adopting traditional and/or outdated approaches rather than learning more effective and contemporary ways of leading.

Another issue raised by senior university leaders concerned the changes in higher education whereby Deans’ previous administrative and managerial responsibilities have been pushed down to middle-level leaders, such as associate deans and heads of department. While this enables Deans to be more fully engaged with their professional communities, political and networking activities, and fundraising, unfortunately, many associate deans are expected to assume the managerial operations but without additional support, experience, or authority. This ‘flow on’ effect creates additional stress for those working under the auspices of the Dean, and can cause contention throughout the organization.

Global Connection

While still in its early phases, the study has attracted the attention of scholars from around the world. There is a growing network within the ISLDHE, with teams in 13 countries studying their own higher education contexts and collaborating with this scholarly collective. There was particular interest from scholars in throughout the European Union, the UK and Australasia, and the study has grown to include leaders across all university disciplines. The study is currently looking into the many similarities in leaders’ experiences across the international context, as well as exploring how cultural differences can significantly influence their practice.

The team will continue to explore other university leadership roles and levels as the study advances through its different phases. The next phase will include interviews with deans and associate deans/heads of department across the nation to explore their personal experiences with leadership development with the view to inform more useful and theoretically sound programming.

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* Phases 1-3 of this study were supported by a University of Calgary Research Grant (URGC).