Leadership Transition Support for Institutions
Structured transition support for colleges and universities developing several leaders at once, combining confidential coaching, shared development, and a former provost’s understanding of higher education leadership.
Supporting capable leaders as their responsibilities expand
Colleges and universities often have several leaders growing into larger roles at the same time, particularly when a unit is being launched or reorganized or when there has been significant turnover. Transition support can give new leaders structured opportunities to build on the judgment, relationships, and capabilities that brought them to the role.
Boards, presidents, and vice presidents have an opportunity to approach these periods as more than a series of separate coaching contracts. An institutional engagement can support several leaders through related transitions while preserving the confidential and personalized work each individual needs.
Three ways to structure transition support
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An institution can sponsor confidential individual coaching for several leaders under one agreement. This structure works well when the leaders share the experience of moving into greater responsibility but need individualized support because their roles, institutions, relationships, and priorities differ.
A typical engagement might support a defined cohort of leaders over approximately six to nine months. Each participant has a coaching relationship with me. The institutional sponsor and I establish the broad developmental purpose, logistics, and confidentiality expectations at the outset.
Individual leaders might use their coaching to:
develop an institutional mindset;
strengthen relationships with supervisors, peers, faculty, direct reports, and institutional partners;
prepare for consequential decisions and conversations;
distinguish where they have authority and influence;
build on existing leadership strengths; and
learn from experience so that they become increasingly capable of working through future situations independently.
The institution benefits from a common commitment to leadership development with enough flexibility and personalization to support each participant.
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When a larger group of leaders — several department chairs, for example — is entering new or expanded roles, a cohort structure can combine shared development with individual confidential coaching. Shared sessions address recurring needs such as how to think institutionally, what to delegate, where authority ends and influence begins, and what conditions leaders need in order to do good work. Individual coaching then allows participants to apply those ideas to their own leadership situations.
This structure can be especially useful for a president’s cabinet, provost’s office, university division, or leadership development program supporting a group of newly promoted or newly appointed leaders.
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Sometimes a leadership transition coincides with a larger organizational change. A leader may be taking responsibility for an office whose roles need clarification, whose work needs to be organized differently, or whose relationships with other parts of the institution need to be reconsidered.
In those situations, I can combine confidential individual coaching with targeted organizational consulting. The coaching gives the leader space to develop the judgment, confidence, and practical skills needed to lead significant change. The consulting work addresses the organization around them: how responsibilities are divided, how decisions and information move, how an office works with other units, and what structures or practices would help people do their work more effectively.
A combined engagement might include:
confidential coaching for the senior leader;
interviews or working sessions with members of the office or division;
scoping of new or revised positions;
clarification of roles, responsibilities, and decision rights;
facilitation of planning or organizational design conversations;
development of practical tools, frameworks, or other deliverables; and
support for improving how central and distributed offices work together.
This structure supports two facets of institutional improvement: the professional development of individual leaders and the organizational conditions in which key personnel and their colleagues are working. Rather than asking the individual to compensate for unclear roles, processes, or structures, the engagement can develop leadership capacity while also helping the office become better organized for the work ahead.
Confidential coaching inside an institutional engagement
Coaching multiple leaders at the same institution requires clear boundaries. The institution can establish the broad purpose of the engagement and identify priorities it wants to support, but each participant needs a genuinely confidential relationship in which they can think candidly about their own decisions, relationships, questions, and uncertainties.
Before the work begins, we agree on what the sponsor will and will not receive. The content of individual coaching sessions remains confidential unless the participant has explicitly agreed to another arrangement. Similarly, I do not carry information from one participant’s coaching into another’s. Sponsors can know the high-level goals the engagement serves for the cohort without confidential coaching functioning as an internal reporting channel.
Higher education experience
I served 15 years as a faculty member before moving into senior academic leadership, where I served 5 years as an associate vice president for academic affairs and 5 years as provost and vice president for academic affairs, including 3 years when I also was vice president of student affairs. I bring a cabinet-level understanding of the realities leaders encounter as their responsibilities expand: distributed authority, faculty and administrative relationships, shared governance, resource constraints, competing priorities, and decisions that cross several parts of an institution. My clients receive leadership coaching from someone who understands the kinds of institutions in which they are being asked to lead.
Let’s discuss your institution’s leadership development needs
A discovery conversation starts with what division or group of leaders needs support at your institution. We can talk about whether individual coaching, a cohort-plus-coaching structure, or a variation on those models best fits their needs. We’ll consider sponsor responsibilities, confidentiality boundaries, and institutional budget. The final scope will reflect the number and seniority of participants and any other advisory or consulting work that is needed to complement the coaching.