Leadership Transition Coaching for Higher Education Leaders
Confidential coaching for higher education leaders preparing for new roles, taking on broader responsibilities, and deciding how they want to lead in the next stage of their careers.
Grow into the new role
A leadership transition gives you a chance to think deliberately about how you want to work before new habits and expectations become settled. You bring experience, relationships, and judgment into the new role, but larger responsibilities may require you to use them differently.
As your scope expands, you may find yourself thinking differently about priorities, delegation, relationships, institutional responsibilities, and the work that deserves your personal attention. Coaching gives you confidential space to work through those questions and helps you build on your strengths, recognize what the new position calls for, and decide how you want to lead.
Establish ways of working
Some new leaders begin coaching with clear goals, while others want room to observe the new role, sort through what they are learning, and decide what deserves their attention first. Our work might include:
deciding where your time and attention can have the greatest value;
building productive relationships with a new supervisor, leadership team, faculty colleagues, direct reports, or institutional partners;
developing a broader institutional perspective as your decisions begin to affect people and units beyond your previous area;
preparing for important conversations and decisions before you act;
identifying where you have authority, where you have influence, and where collaboration will be necessary;
deciding what conditions will help you do strong and sustainable work; and
becoming more confident in your own judgment as the role becomes more familiar.
Create a place to think while the role takes shape
Higher education leadership rarely offers complete information or complete authority. You may be responsible for an outcome even when several constituencies have competing legitimate interests. Coaching gives you a place outside of those relationships to think before you act. You can consider how a situation looks from another part of the institution, clarify what is actually yours to decide or do, and decide what you want to do with the choices that remain available.
Build on the leader you already are
Most people who move into larger higher education leadership roles have already demonstrated substantial ability. The transition asks them to apply that ability in a setting where the scale, relationships, expectations, and consequences may have changed.
A skill that served you well in one role may need to be used differently in another. Deep involvement in the work may have made you an excellent department chair, for example, while a dean’s role may require you to create more room for others to lead, and reserve your attention for decisions that only you can make. Coaching allows you to examine those shifts, strengthen what you already do well, recognize capacities you have not yet needed to use fully, and develop new approaches where your responsibilities now call for them.
Coaching grounded in higher education
I spent 15 years as a faculty member, five years as an associate vice president, and five years as a provost and vice president for academic affairs, three years of which I was also vice president of student affairs. I understand from experience the recurring conditions of higher education leadership: distributed authority, faculty and administrative relationships, competing institutional priorities, resource constraints, shared responsibility, and decisions whose consequences extend well beyond your area. That experience informs the questions I ask and the perspectives I invite you to consider.
Creating your coaching plan
We begin by identifying what you want from the transition and jointly developing a coaching plan. Your initial goals give the engagement direction, while leaving room for the situations and opportunities that emerge.
A coaching session might focus on a decision you need to make, a relationship you want to develop, an opportunity you are considering, a conversation you want to prepare for, or a pattern you have begun to notice in how you are working. You may leave with a decision, an experiment, a plan for a conversation, or a clearer understanding of what deserves your attention.
As you try an approach, gather information, build relationships, make decisions, and experience the institution from your new position, we use what you learn to refine your thinking and strengthen the judgment you will carry into future situations.
A typical transition coaching package
A typical starting engagement includes eight individual coaching sessions over four to eight months. That gives us enough time to establish goals, put ideas into practice, and learn from the experience.
Your needs may call for a different structure depending on the position, the timing of the transition, and what you want to accomplish. A discovery call gives us a chance to talk about your circumstances and what kind of engagement makes sense for you.
When can transition coaching begin?
You can begin coaching before you enter the role, during your first several months, or later in the transition. Before you start, coaching can help you think about priorities, relationships, and how you want to enter the role; once you are in it, coaching can help you make the new role your own.
Who leadership transition coaching is for
I coach higher education leaders whose responsibilities are expanding or changing substantially, including faculty members, program directors, department chairs, assistant and associate deans, deans, vice provosts, and vice presidents moving into administration, and others taking on broader leadership responsibilities. Some are moving to new institutions, while others are growing into larger roles where they already work.
What connects them is the opportunity to develop the judgment and skills required by wider responsibility. They want to lead deliberately, learn from experience, and become increasingly capable of working through consequential situations on their own.
Start with a discovery conversation
You do not need to arrive with a fully developed coaching agenda. During a discovery call, we can talk about the transition you are making, what you want from coaching, and what would make the engagement useful. We can then consider what kind of support would be useful, whether my approach fits what you need, and what an appropriate engagement might look like. If we decide to work together, we will establish the scope, confidentiality expectations, initial goals, and a schedule for our work.