Higher education institutions are built on the foundational promise of learning, growth, and intellectual development. Yet a glaring paradox exists on modern campuses: colleges and universities frequently struggle to apply these very principles to their own workforce’s.
When I brought up this issue with Dr. Rubina Malik, a global learning and development expert and the managing director of Malik Global Solutions, on my podcast, Coaching in Higher Education, we quickly homed in on the critical challenges facing academic career pathways, talent pipelines, and employee retention during what has been termed the great higher education resignation.
I have often mentioned how the lack of clearly defined advancement tracks fuels a costly retention crisis – a glaring deficiency I experienced firsthand and one that eventually led to my resignation from an otherwise comfortable job.
I have since come to understand that to build sustainable campuses for the future, we must help administrative leaders unlearn outdated structures and transform universities into learning organizations.
Mapping the Cultural Silos of the Modern Campus
To grasp fully why career advancement on campus is often failing, we must first look beyond standard organizational charts. Universities are not monolithic entities. Instead, they are collections of deeply entrenched subcultures and departmental silos that operate like distinct sovereign territories.
Rubina highlighted how applying an intercultural lens can open doors for navigating these campus environments, especially as faculty and staff experience the workplace in fundamentally different ways. Research shows that heavy workloads and resource constraints often drive faculty burnout, while professional staff struggle with limited development opportunities and the deflating feeling that no one hears them.
By applying cross-cultural frameworks, such as examining power dynamics and individual versus organizational expectations, professional coaches can help administrators recognize and bridge these internal divisions. When we treat campus departments as distinct cultural landscapes, rather than simply offices with different KPIs, we can tailor professional development. This approach directly addresses the specific anxieties and aspirations of each group.
Overcoming the Faculty Leadership Trap and Staff Stagnation
A major roadblock to creating sustainable academic talent pipelines is what I like to call the “faculty leadership trap”: Traditional academic training focuses on individual milestones such as dissertations, research, publications, and tenure. However, when these subject matter experts move into leadership roles, they often lack the preparation to manage complex budgets, run departments, or empower their teams.
On the staff side, the situation is equally frustrating. Institutions often hire professional staff into rigid job descriptions and hierarchies with no built-in succession planning. Many tacitly expect these employees to stay in the same position for decades, unless they leave the institution entirely to advance. Alarmingly, some institutional handbooks or questionable policies – whether true or not – even prohibit supervisors from making retention counteroffers to staff members who receive external job offers.
This is where professional leadership and organizational development coaches play a critical role. As external service providers, we use coaching as a bridge to make invisible transferable skills visible by helping academic and administrative professionals re-frame their professional identities and giving them the confidence to translate their strengths across different institutional units.
Shifting from (Rigid) Jobs to (Flexible) Work
To survive both the demographic shift of retiring baby boomers and the loss of critical institutional knowledge that comes with it, and the drastically shifting demands and expectations of a younger workforce, higher ed administration must embrace modern organizational design, including flattening hierarchies and shifting the focus from rigid job titles to the actual work that needs to be done.
Imagine an agile campus where employees can collaborate on cross-functional projects based on their strengths and passions, rather than being confined by bureaucratic ranks.
However, this much-needed structural shift requires university leaders and administrators at all levels to unlearn the past, integrate both professional development and proactive succession planning directly into performance reviews, and cultivate internal talent early. And this shift requires that leaders know their employees, their professional cultural contexts, and their aspirations in making a lasting impact on their campuses.
Practicing What We Teach
I have often stated from my proverbial “soapbox” that universities must move away from superficial, one-off webinars and embrace sustained, active professional development. By investing in professional coaching, live workshops, and leadership incubators, institutions can build the resilient, collaborative communities that employees desire.
If you are an administrative leader looking to design more impactful and sustainable professional development on your campus, or a professional coach seeking to deepen your impact, I invite you to explore my professional coaching and advisory services. Let us collaborate to help your institution transition from a rigid bureaucracy into a thriving, agile learning organization. Reach out to check out my professional coaching and advisory services today, and let us shape the future of higher education leadership together.
You can find this and all other Coaching in Higher Education podcast episodes on:
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Frequently Asked Questions: Career Pathways and the Learning Organization Paradox
What is meant by the “learning organization paradox” in higher education?
The contradiction is that colleges and universities are built on the promise of learning and growth, but too often do not apply those same principles to their own employees where career advancement and internal development is severely underdeveloped.
What is the “trap of faculty leadership”?
It takes on the reality that academics are trained for years to focus on individual achievements like research, publications and tenure but when they move into leadership roles they are often left unprepared to run departments, manage budgets or lead teams.
Why do professional staff often struggle to advance in higher education institutions?
Too often, staff are hired into rigid job descriptions with little or no succession planning, and some institutions have policies that don’t allow supervisors to make counter offers when staff receive outside offers of employment, leaving little room for growth or retention.
How does a cross-cultural lens help address these workplace problems?
When coaches and leaders begin to see the various departments on campus as distinct cultural landscapes and not merely offices with differing KPIs, they can better understand what drives burnout in faculty as opposed to stagnation in staff and develop development that meets the true needs of each group.
What’s the meaning of the flexible work on campus instead of rigid jobs?
It means moving away from rigid job titles and bureaucratic hierarchies to an agile structure where employees collaborate on projects according to their real strengths and interests, facilitated by proactive succession planning and continuous professional development.