Lessons for college leaders dealing with today’s challenges (opinion)

The COVID pandemic of 2020 was a crash course on navigating uncertainty. College leaders adopted new mindsets, strategies and practices in order to make the best decisions they could to guide their campuses through the crisis. Since then, however, many have returned to more familiar ways of leading.

Yet uncertainty is here to stay; ambiguity and volatility remain constant companions, and things aren’t going to get any easier. And while it is tempting to return to more traditional and familiar modes of leadership, those approaches ultimately won’t serve our institutions. The leaders who continue to operate in ways that enabled them to make agile, innovative pivots during the pandemic will be those whose colleges and universities thrive well into the future.

Over the past year, we’ve had a series of in-depth conversations with 10 college presidents about the lessons they learned from grappling with the pandemic that they’ve continue to apply today. They shared some mindset shifts they’ve made and some practical strategies and practices they’ve adapted to deal with the ongoing and new challenges they are confronting.

Shifts in Mindset

The presidents we spoke with had to make some major mindset shifts during COVID, which they have not discarded today. Those shifts include moving from:

1. The tower to the front line. The pandemic served up a powerful lesson on the importance of understanding the daily lived experiences of front-line employees and the stakeholders they serve. Presidents who were successful in navigating uncertainty understood that their success in making good decisions was deeply connected to their ability to effectively solicit and listen to those individuals’ thoughts and experiences.

During the pandemic, communication on many campuses vastly improved because it became an institutional priority to keep people informed and avoid the negative impact of the rumor mill. Campus leaders created many different communication vehicles that catered to the specific needs of multiple audiences. It also became essential to ensure communications channels were used as effectively as possible, so that employees at all levels of the institution received the information they needed from senior leadership to act upon in their daily work.

2. Superhero to compassionate caregiver. During the pandemic, we all literally witnessed through Zoom windows the myriad challenges facing employees, students and their families. Top college administrators saw up close the criticality of leading with empathy. Those leaders were humanized themselves, as well. They, too, revealed more than ever before previously hidden aspects of their daily lives through their computer screens.

In the heights of confusion and grief, leaders expanded their capacity to give grace and compassion to others—and also to themselves when they made mistakes. Many leaders found themselves not just offering support but also asking for it, which takes some courage and lots of humility. And when they asked for help from the people they were leading, it often generated a powerful and positive response.

3. Knower to learner. The pandemic pushed all of us into learner mode. It didn’t matter what title you held, how many years of experience you had or how old you were—nobody had all the answers.

Many presidents expanded the number of people they consulted before making decisions and invited more individuals to join their senior leadership meetings, such as faculty members with relevant subject matter expertise. They also convened diverse cross-divisional teams to help solve emerging challenges. And they deployed methods for collecting real-time people data, asking people throughout the campus community questions like “How are you doing? What do you need? What do our students and communities need?”

They often tested multiple solutions at the same time—some of which worked and some of which didn’t. Many senior teams and division heads scheduled daily huddles to keep each other informed, communicate daily priorities and share challenges and successes. And they learned the importance of having a curious mindset about the evolving situation—and how that mindset could reduce uncertainty and its accompanying stress and anxiety.

Key Questions to Ask

During the pandemic, many leaders did things differently because they had to. The old ways of communicating, making decisions, listening to campus stakeholders, engaging multiple groups and solving problems changed significantly. But with the pandemic largely behind us, how can leaders make the most of the lessons learned as they confront new challenges?

If you are one of those leaders, consider the following:

• Are you continuing to convene diverse cross-boundary teams to help solve emerging challenges and problems?
• Does your senior team still have some kind of regular huddles? Why or why not?
• Are your current campus communication processes effective? How do you know this? Do campus stakeholders trust your current communication processes?
• How does your senior team view outsiders? Do they welcome the opportunity to learn from others? Or do they fall into the trap of listening to themselves too much?
• Are you continuing to create regular opportunities to share successes and points of pride across the campus to build a sense of community and confidence among people so they can navigate challenges together?

Practical Strategies

The leaders we interviewed also highlighted the following practical strategies to pursue.

1. “Got any ideas?” Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger asked his first officer that question in 2009 shortly before they emergency landed US Air Flight 1549, with 155 people aboard, on the Hudson River. Given that it was an unprecedented situation saturated with uncertainty, he had the humility to seek someone else’s counsel. As a college leader, it’s vital that you be willing to seek out advice from both the people around you and those farther afield.
2. Consider your confidence. Annie Duke, a Ph.D. graduate from the University of Pennsylvania, world-class poker player and author of several best sellers about decision-making, recommends that before making major decisions, leaders should rate them on a scale of one to 10, with 10 being the highest.

This simple but powerful scoring strategy works especially well with a team if you ensure people can be anonymous so you get an honest evaluation. Pass around an index card and ask each team member to write down their “confidence number.” Then have someone put all the numbers on a flip chart or whiteboard, giving you a quick snapshot of what your team members think about the decision.

Recently, for example, one college’s senior team that was considering an external partnership with a regional organization used this process. The president was excited by the prospect, yet she agreed to anonymously assess how her team perceived it. And the results weren’t what she expected. One score was a nine (hers), but everyone else scored the potential partnership between two and six. Although it wasn’t the enthusiastic endorsement the president was hoping for, it created a framework for discussing the implications of the scores and whether to move forward.

We have found that presidents tend to be more optimistic than others about challenges and opportunities, so it’s helpful to have some kind of reality check in place to create a balanced picture. This confidence process also gives leaders a picture of people’s viewpoints without the usual politicking and lobbying or domination of certain voices.

3. Actively seek truly diverse perspectives. That means reaching out to people at different levels of the institution who think differently than you. This practice helps you avoid blind spots, as every leader has those they can’t detect. It is only when others share their distinct viewpoints and perspectives that such blind spots are revealed.

Of course, most higher education leaders welcome various perspectives, but people must feel psychologically safe in a group setting to share alternative viewpoints, especially when differences in positional power exist within the group. Meaningfully engaging people farther down the organizational chart who haven’t been solicited or heard from in a long time will require building trust. They might be reluctant to participate, unsure of themselves or skeptical about the motivation behind this new type of engagement. Additionally, self-appointed critics (or campus curmudgeons) can quickly shut down participants and conversations in a meeting.

Top leaders need to design and facilitate large group meetings that encourage stakeholders’ voices and ideas to be shared in a safe and coherent manner. The effort will take practice and patience, but the benefits are worth it—leaders who are thoughtful in creating spaces for productive debate will gain rich insights.

4. Make your thinking visible. When dealing with a challenge or seeking a solution, don’t just keep your thoughts to yourself. Share them out loud with people on your team so they get to hear your thinking and offer up their own views and ideas.

For instance, a new provost met with her deans’ council about a big yet ambiguous opportunity. She made three statements that formed a discussion protocol we recommend you consider, as it is an excellent way to unpack your thinking and seek feedback. We’ve listed those statements and their broad application below.

• “This is my best current thinking about this topic, theme or strategy.” The leader communicates that their immediate thoughts and lets other people know they are open to ideas. They haven’t decided yet and are still exploring.
• “This is how I got to this place.” The leader shares their thinking and the research they conducted, conversations they’ve had and even places they’ve visited that have informed their preliminary views. When the leader explains the rationale behind their thinking, it is almost always helpful to others. It shouldn’t be a mystery, but many leaders fail to do this, because they have the unfounded assumption that people will automatically get it.
• “Now tell me what I am missing.” The leader sets the table for open discussion by actively asking for feedback, honest reactions and information sharing. When done authentically, this can be a game changer. Team members feel positively obligated to help the leader by providing their feedback and ideas in a constructive, not critical, way.

5. Make your thinking visual. Too often, we think through things auditorily. Yet many of us are not auditory learners and need different kinds of stimulations to better see the situation. It is almost always helpful to make your thinking visible to others, even to yourself. Capturing your ideas visually helps make your thinking more disciplined, because it forces you to communicate your thoughts externally and not just leave them rattling around in your head. When you visualize your challenge or problem, you and others can see the interconnectedness of ideas better. You can use flip charts or whiteboards and their digital equivalents to capture the ideas and flow of the conversation. You can also make them available after the meeting, so team members have more time to process and revisit the ideas.
6. Find your confidants. Building time for reflection is often quite challenging in our fast-paced technological society, but it is necessary, and that is where thought partners and confidants come in.

In Leadership on the Line, Ronald A. Heifetz and Marty Linsky describe confidants as those individuals whom you deeply respect and admire and with whom you can be vulnerable. You can be yourself with them, because they are honest and care about you as a person. And when dealing with a failure, you can turn to them and express difficult emotions, such as disappointment or even anger.

Not surprisingly, failure is not a favorite topic for presidents and other senior leaders. They tend not to talk about it even with trusted friends and colleagues. Yet it holds vital information that could be a strategic asset. Embedded in difficult experiences are lessons we cannot learn elsewhere.

Almost every leader will fail at some point in their careers, and it will often be quite public. Given that the future will be saturated with ambiguity and uncertainty, leaders must be able to both deal with the emotional pain that often accompanies failure as well as distill lessons learned from such tough experiences.

This is not easy. In fact, it is one of the most difficult things a leader can do, and it takes a lot of humility and courage to discover the lessons—and even more to share them with others. Few leaders have role models for how to do that, but it is vital for navigating uncertainty.