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 […]
Tag: higher education leadership
Building Capacity for Student Success: Four Structural Innovations in Student Affairs and Beyond
Higher education is in a state of perpetual response mode, while over the past several years, campus leaders have faced an unprecedented escalation in student needs, from mental health concerns to complex technological integration. My coaching colleague, Dr. Kate McCaffrey, founder of Paradigm Twist Executive Coaching and Consulting, and I work as external executive coaches […]
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 […]
Big Lives on Small Stages: Rethinking Leadership Coaching at Small Colleges
I have long argued that our institutions of higher learning are far more than simple mechanisms with replaceable parts – and not one is exactly the same. These complex adaptive human ecosystems also differ significantly by institutional type and determine where every interaction carries extra weight. When I wanted to explore this dynamic during a […]
Shifting Mindset: The Power of Assumptions
I’ve been thinking a lot about mindset. Not only was this the topic of a recent blog post and a fantastic conversation with my friend and colleague, Nozomi Morgan on LinkedIn Live. What I also realized is how – and how much – my own mindset has changed over the last three years, significantly enhancing […]
Leaders and Managers Revisited
It is no secret that I like to draw a clear (if somewhat graduated) delineation between management and leadership. In a previous piece on the topic, I summarized the difference as follows: Leaders and Managers tell and – under the best of circumstances – demonstrate what to do and how to do it. Leaders, on the other hand, model […]
Where Does Change Live?
As I continue my journey through the world of Agile and how its principles and values can transform higher education institutions, I have realized that it is time to revise a few of my initial thoughts on the topic. One that most recently popped up during an enlightening conversation with a former university provost was […]
No, You Are Not Hiring Leaders
I often hear people talking about hiring someone into a leadership position. And I have a problem with that. Granted, I may be splitting semantic hairs here, but it bears repeating that leadership is not positional; management is. Let me explain. As I have written elsewhere, management is, first and foremost, about telling people what […]