Public-private partnerships (P3) in higher education have quietly moved far beyond traditional dining halls and student housing. Today, college and university leaders increasingly turn to private sector partners to launch online degree programs, build international pathway pipelines, and expand specialized academic offerings. Yet, while these P3 collaborations are generally established as financial or operational fixes, […]
Tag: executive coaching
The Coaching Invitation: Why Higher Education Needs a New Professional Development Paradigm
Many coaches in higher education know this moment all too well: A staff administrator, exhausted and overextended, managing the same institutional dysfunction for the fifth year in a row, finally walks into a coaching engagement—not because their institution values their growth, but because a budget line item is expiring or the employee is seen as […]
Missing the Mark: Why We Need to Rethink Faculty Leadership Development in Higher Education
Higher education has long promoted its most accomplished faculty into leadership roles under the tacit assumption that brilliance in an academic discipline directly translates into competence at leading others. It is a seductive theory, and one of the most persistent and pernicious reasons why many academic leaders struggle. In the Season 1 finale of Coaching […]
When the Coaching Program IS the Institutional Strategy: Lessons from Boston College’s Ignatian Leadership Development Program
There is a persistent illusion in higher education professional development that a well-designed coaching program, once launched after a standard RFP process and the selection of vendors, simply runs by itself: coaches get paired with participants; assessments get administered, sessions get scheduled and held… and somewhere along the way, leaders are expected to emerge, transformed […]
The Competent Outsider: Bridging Institutional Silos and Driving Strategic Alignment in Higher Education
What puzzles me to no end is how many higher education leaders still view and treat their institutions as mechanical systems that can be overhauled with a new strategic plan handed down from the President’s office or “fixed” by replacing a proverbial squeaky wheel in the form of an employee who won’t fall in line. […]
The Inward Frontier: Why Global Education Leaders Must Turn Their Cross-Cultural Lens on Their Own Campuses
Navigating international higher education feels like managing continuous tectonic shifts, from national policy changes to dramatic enrollment fluctuations, leaving global educators no strangers to uncertainty. According to NAFSA: Association of International Educators, since the beginning of 2025, international student enrollments at U.S. colleges and universities have shifted toward a steep downturn, driven by dropping new […]
The Broken Campus Contract: Why Self-Care Can’t Fix Systemic Academic Burnout
As external executive coaches and organizational development advisors to colleges and universities, we frequently observe leaders who are highly accomplished but deeply exhausted. In higher education, professionals experience a profound form of exhaustion that goes far beyond typical workplace stress. When I spoke with Dr. Rebecca Pope-Ruark, a certified professional coach, expert on academic burnout, […]
Nudging the Cotton Ball: Trust Coaching to Bridge the Leadership Divide
Universities are built for learning, yet they are notoriously resistant to learning from within. As external partners working to develop academic leaders, Dr. Jennifer Brown, the CEO and founder of Northstar Consulting, and I frequently observe a frustrating paradox: Institutions of higher education are highly complex systems where contemporary leadership is not only in demand, […]
From Firefighting to Future-Proofing: Reimagining Leadership Development in Enrollment Management
With the new academic year upon us, I find myself reflecting on the sheer intensity of the pressures our colleagues in higher education enrollment management face. These units are the fiscal engines of our institutions, yet they are currently operating amid unprecedented volatility. In Season 1 of my podcast, Coaching in Higher Education, I had […]
The Hero Liability: Moving from Solo Mastery to Systemic Leadership in Academic Medicine
I have long argued that our institutions of higher learning function as complex adaptive human ecosystems where every interaction carries weight – and in few areas is this more pronounced than when we’re coaching professionals at academic medical centers. Last year, I had a chance to explore this unique and often volatile world on my […]