Higher education is at a crossroads. Our institutions are wrestling with enrollment cliffs, questions of relevance, technological disruption and the age-old challenge of governance.
Boards debate how to remain solvent. Presidents strategize about new programs and partnerships. Provosts explore AI, online expansion or micro-credentials. Everyone is reaching for levers they hope will strengthen the institution.
Yet beneath all these efforts lies a single, urgent question: How do we make our institutions stronger in a time of change?
In my experience, the answer is deceptively simple: develop leaders.
Why we keep missing the obvious
Walk onto almost any campus and you’ll see resources poured into activities that may look bold but rarely change the long-term trajectory of the institution.
- Marketing campaigns generate new slogans and billboards, but front-line workers are never trained in customer service so the student experience falls short.
- Reorganizations shuffle names on the org chart, but the same people carry the same habits, and results don’t improve.
- Mission statements get rewritten, yet faculty and staff roll their eyes because nothing in the daily culture shifts.
- Budget decisions swing between cost-cutting and new spending, without addressing the root capacity of the institution: the people leading it.
We underestimate a hard truth: weak leaders weaken institutions. Strong leaders strengthen them.
It doesn’t matter whether your priority is enrollment growth, improving student culture, expanding research, launching a new initiative or creating external partnerships. The deciding factor will always be whether your institution has enough leaders—and whether they are sufficiently developed—to carry the weight of the vision.
Leadership is not just the president’s job
When most people hear “university leadership,” they picture a president, chancellor or provost. However, the reality is quite different: leadership on a campus is established through hundreds of smaller decisions made every day.
Research suggests that up to 80% of institutional decisions happen at the middle management level, through deans, chairs, program directors and area coordinators. These leaders shape faculty workloads, program design, advising culture, scheduling and community partnerships.
They are the primary point of contact for most employees and students. They are how virtually all students and staff members experience the institution.
Yet most were promoted because of research or teaching expertise, not because they were prepared to manage conflict, motivate teams or steward budgets. In other words, the very people shaping most of the student and faculty experience are often underdeveloped as leaders.
Failing to invest in this layer of leadership is like building a beautiful library but leaving the foundation unfinished.
What developed leaders deliver
When institutions invest in developing leaders—not just top executives, but department chairs, deans and even emerging faculty—the returns are profound.
1. They engage and retain faculty and staff
Leadership is the single biggest factor in whether people feel connected to their work and whether they stay. Gallup found that 70% of engagement variance comes from the manager, and engaged teams deliver 23% higher profitability, 18% higher productivity and up to 43% lower turnover.
In higher education, the same pattern holds. A decade-long study of 15,000-plus faculty and staff found that leadership support for professional development was the top predictor of job satisfaction, and dissatisfied employees were 67% more likely to leave within a year.
When mid-level leaders learn how to listen well, coach effectively and support growth, faculty and staff not only stay longer but also contribute more fully to the mission.
2. They drive institutional performance
Leadership quality directly shapes results. A meta-analysis of 113 studies over 25 years found that transformational leadership significantly improves outcomes at the individual, team, and organizational levels.
For universities, this translates into stronger collaboration, more productive teams and more effective execution of strategic priorities. A chair who can align faculty around a vision or a dean who can inspire staff during change directly influences the institution’s ability to perform.
When leaders grow, institutions adapt and perform.
3. They broaden partnerships and networks
Leadership development doesn’t just improve culture inside a university, it expands its external reach. A four-year Erasmus+ initiative across Chinese and European universities reported significant increases in cross-institutional networking, collaborative projects, partnerships and influence on policy and practice.
Strong leaders extend their institution’s influence. They attract donors, cultivate community partnerships and represent the university in ways that open doors for students and faculty alike.
4. They secure the future
Without intentional development, every leadership departure creates disruption. With a pipeline, transitions become opportunities to grow stronger.
Faculty who receive mentoring early in their careers report four times greater job satisfaction, are less likely to stagnate in rank, and are more likely to mentor others—multiplying leadership capacity across generations (NCFDD).
Leadership development builds continuity instead of crisis, ensuring your institution can weather change without losing momentum.
5. They share the leadership load
Presidents and provosts cannot carry institutional change alone. Research on distributed leadership shows that when decision-making is shared across mid-level leaders, universities execute strategies more effectively and avoid bottlenecks.
Developed leaders create a distributed network of ownership. Responsibility and progress is shared across the institution, not concentrated at the top.
Simply put: Every dollar spent on developing leaders pays dividends across enrollment, advancement, culture and student success. Research shows the payoff is real.
A 2023 New Level Work study found an average ROI of $7 for every $1 spent, through improved retention, promotions, and performance.
Why leadership development doesn’t happen naturally
If developing leaders is so powerful, why don’t more institutions do it?
- It takes time. Developing a leader is not a two-day workshop. A single training event won’t shift behavior.
- It takes commitment. Leaders need ongoing support and reinforcement. It’s a process of coaching, feedback and growth.
- It feels intangible. A new building or marketing campaign is easy to showcase. Leadership growth is harder to point to—until its effects show up in culture, retention and results.
- It challenges culture. Leadership development often requires faculty and staff to rethink ingrained habits, which can stir discomfort.
- It lacks ownership. Too often, no one is tasked with building leaders. It sits in the category of “good idea” but not urgent.
Because of these barriers, leadership development is frequently pushed aside. But avoiding it doesn’t make the need go away. Your institution’s capacity will always equal your leaders’ capacity.
From dream to team
Leadership author John Maxwell offers advice that is especially relevant to higher education: “Don’t overvalue your dream and undervalue your team.”
Universities are full of ambitious dreams: launching new programs, climbing in rankings, doubling research output or preparing the workforce society depends on. But dreams without leaders are just slogans.
Here’s the paradox: when you focus on developing leaders, you often reach those goals faster—not because the goals are easy, but because your team is stronger.
Building a culture of leadership development
Leadership development isn’t a one-off workshop, it’s an ongoing process of equipping people to influence, decide, and move the institution forward. To build a culture that supports it:
- Broaden the definition of leader. Don’t stop at presidents and provosts. Include chairs, deans, directors and staff supervisors.
- Invest in coaching and mentoring. Pair new chairs with seasoned leaders. Create peer learning cohorts. Provide access to professional coaches.
- Tie development to advancement. Too often, advancement in higher ed depends only on research productivity. Reward faculty who demonstrate leadership potential and provide training before they step into formal roles.
- Measure outcomes, not hours. Track the impact of leadership development through engagement, retention, fundraising and team culture, not just “training hours.”
- Model it from the top. When senior leaders commit to their own growth, they send a powerful signal: Development isn’t optional, even at the highest level.
At its best, leadership development shapes how people think, how they act, and how they grow others around them.
Growing the institution
Universities spend millions each year on marketing, facilities, technology and reorganizations. But without developed leaders, those investments rarely achieve their full potential.
Leadership development multiplies the impact of every other effort—boosting culture, retention, partnerships and results. It is the one investment that ensures every other investment succeeds.
If your institution wants to improve culture, increase enrollment, launch new programs, or expand partnerships, the next step is clear: Make leadership development a standing priority.
Developing leaders is difficult. It takes time. But it is the one investment that ensures every other investment has a chance to succeed. Because in higher education, as in any organization, growing leaders grows the institution.
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