Effective Leadership Styles for University Leaders at All Levels
Leadership is vital in universities at all levels, be it an institutional leader, faculty member, or administrator. Effective leadership is necessary to foster growth, encourage positive change, and inspire success.
This blog delves into different leadership styles and their impact on university leadership. We’ll explore the qualities of effective leaders who navigate the challenges of academic institutions while creating a supportive and thriving community. Understanding these leadership approaches equips current and aspiring leaders with valuable insights and strategies to lead confidently.
Why is Effective Leadership in Universities So Important?
Leadership in universities has unique characteristics and brings unique challenges due to the complex nature of academia, the highly distributed organizational structure, and the diverse stakeholders involved. Universities need leaders with effectiveness, integrity, and the highest ethical standards.
Some of the critical tasks required of university leaders include:
Shared Governance. Decision-making in universities often involves collaboration across various faculty, administrators, staff, and sometimes students. Effective leaders must navigate this system and foster open stakeholder communication and cooperation.
Protecting Academic Freedom. Leaders must support faculty autonomy to pursue their research and teaching interests without fear of reprisal.
Focus on Student Experience, where leaders must address the institution's needs while prioritizing student success, well-being, and access to resources and support services, as well as ensuring the curriculum and teaching methods are up-to-date and achieving desired goals.
Support for Fundraising and Grants - from supporting grants and government relations to managing donors, leaders in academic institutions need to be great managers of resources and relationships to ensure there are sufficient funds to achieve the academic mission.
Promoting Multicultural Awareness, Diversity, and Inclusion - leaders must support their institutions in taking culturally responsive approaches to teaching and to faculty and student experience that support all community members.
Balancing Tradition and Innovation - embracing rich institutional history and tradition while supporting innovation to adapt to changing educational, research, and technological trends. This includes reviewing and managing internal processes to ensure they are fair and transparent and supporting innovative, creative, and outstanding research and scholarly activities.
Creating a Positive and Collaborative Campus Culture. From a faculty and staff perspective, this includes fostering a collaborative culture that encourages working together, sharing ideas, and supporting each other's professional growth. This also includes developing students and student leaders who support each other, work toward common goals, and contribute to a thriving learning and research environment.
Addressing Societal Issues - the world's most pressing challenges, such as climate change, poverty, and inequality, require effective leadership to advance research and develop solutions. Universities play a crucial role in nurturing leadership qualities in students, fostering a socially aware and proactive generation ready to tackle complex problems.
Success in these and many other areas are just a few critical reasons why leadership development in universities is so important. Effective university leadership promotes a positive learning environment and contributes to the advancement of society as a whole. It embodies competence, empathy, and a commitment to positive change.
Understanding Leadership Styles
Leadership styles refer to different approaches when guiding and directing their teams or organizations. Leadership styles encompass a leader’s behaviors, attitudes, communication methods, decision-making processes, and overall approach to leading and guiding others in service of the organization’s goal.
Leadership is perhaps the most published topic in business, and many leadership styles have been identified over the years. Some of these are well-researched and described in academic literature; others have a more popular origin and appeal.
Effective leadership involves understanding the unique characteristics of the organization, the team, and the situation to make informed decisions on which leadership style to use. Each leadership style has its unique characteristics, strengths, and weaknesses. Effective leaders often use a combination of styles depending on the situation and the needs of their followers.
Below, we will look at the styles typically more and less effective in academic settings.
Leadership Styles That Are More Effective in University Settings
While there is no ‘one size fits all’ in leadership, some leadership styles are more effective in academic settings than others.
A recent 2022 peer-reviewed meta-analysis of the relationships between leadership styles in higher education and academic staff job satisfaction (cite) found that effective leadership in higher education can increase the job satisfaction of academic staff and thereby positively affect employee retention, trust, organizational commitment, and academic staff performance. The three styles that have a positive effect in the university setting are:
Transformational Leadership
Transformational leadership is a style that inspires and motivates followers by inspiring followers to achieve their full potential and set aside their self-interests for the greater good of the organization and society. Transformational leaders create and communicate compelling future visions, encourage innovation and creativity, and empower followers to take ownership of their work and embrace change. Transformational leaders gain respect, consider the moral and ethical consequences of decisions, and provide incentives that increase motivation. They often serve as role models and mentors, inspiring their followers to become better versions of themselves and, in the process, changing values, beliefs, and attitudes while increasing their self-confidence by revealing their talents and skills. (From Daniel Goleman's perspective, this approach is similar to what he calls “authoritative leadership.”)
Servant Leadership
Servant leadership prioritizes the well-being and growth of the people in an institution and emphasizes serving the needs of others above the leader's self-interest. Leaders who adopt this style put the needs of their followers first, supporting them in achieving their goals and personal development. Servant leaders practice empathy, collaboration, compassion, trust-building, respectful decision-making, and active listening. They work to create a collaborative work environment by empowering and uplifting followers and creating a culture that promotes growth, creativity, and a sense of community. Their dedication to supporting the success and development of others and the institution's vision increases the job satisfaction of those working there.
Spiritual Leadership
Spiritual leadership is an approach that incorporates values, ethics, and a sense of higher purpose into the leadership process. It involves guiding followers in a way that aligns with shared values and a broader spiritual or ethical context. A spiritual leader seeks to create a work environment that fosters a sense of purpose, community, and personal fulfillment. Examples of applications of spiritual leadership in higher education include interacting with faculty and staff to create an inspiring vision, a heightened sense of moral and ethical values, and a focus on the viability and sustainability of the institution. While not as frequently discussed as transformational or servant leadership in academic settings, spiritual leadership has also been shown to affect academic staff job satisfaction positively.
Styles that Are Less Effective in Academic Settings
These leadership styles might work for a short time or in some situations, but generally are to be avoided:
Transactional Leadership
Transactional leadership is based on an exchange relationship between leaders and followers. Transactional leaders focus on the mutual interests between them and those they lead. Leaders who adopt this style set clear expectations, goals, and performance criteria. Followers gain prestige and rewards (or are punished) based on how well they meet the leader's expectations. It can be effective when tasks are well defined and the focus is on achieving immediate results (for example, retail sales). However, it is less effective in situations that require long-term vision, creativity, or innovation, which is one reason it is less suited to academic settings. It has a positive but low-level effect on satisfaction.
Passive (Laissez-Faire) Leadership
A hands-off approach from the leader characterizes passive leadership. In this style, leaders provide minimal guidance and oversight to their teams while allowing subordinates to make decisions and solve problems independently. These leaders do not interfere, avoid talking to followers, and fail to set performance standards. Passive leaders can be perceived as ineffective, unwilling, or incapable of making decisions independently because they lack knowledge, experience, and expertise. While this style can sometimes work with teams with a high level of knowledge and self-direction, passive leaders don't provide the guidance, structure, and support that many followers need to achieve their goals, and it has a negative and moderate effect on satisfaction.
Additional Leadership Styles that Can Be Helpful to Academic Leaders
An article that many of our coaching clients enjoy is Daniel Goleman’s classic HBR article “Leadership that Gets Results.” (cite) In this article, he identifies six different leadership styles (coercive, authoritative, affiliative, democratic, pacesetter, and coaching), describes the related emotional intelligence competencies for each, and discusses whether they positively or negatively impact the team and organizational climate.
Three styles Goleman highlights that are helpful to academic leaders in certain situations and worthwhile to master, are:
Coaching
Leaders who practice a coaching style focus on developing their people for the future by providing guidance, support, and personalized development. They engage in frequent one-on-one conversations to offer feedback and encouragement, helping team members improve their skills and performance. This approach fosters a culture of continuous learning and growth and empowers followers to reach their full potential. It does not work, however, in situations where followers are resistant to learning or unwilling to recognize their need to improve.
Affiliative
Affiliative leaders prioritize building strong relationships and a sense of belonging among team members - it is a style that every leader can and should practice as one of several leadership approaches. Affiliative leaders show empathy, understanding, and concern for their team members' needs and feelings, and they work to keep employees happy and create harmony among them. Affiliative leadership helps build trust and foster a positive team dynamic, which can be particularly helpful in times of stress or conflict. However, leaders who rely too heavily on this style can allow poor performance to go uncorrected. Employees may perceive that mediocrity is tolerated in the organization. Additionally, affiliative leaders do not provide the clear vision or direction needed to navigate complex challenges.
Democratic
The democratic style, also known as participative leadership, emphasizes collaboration and involvement of team members in the decision-making process. Leaders who follow this process encourage open communication and actively seek input when making decisions. They value the diverse perspectives and expertise of the people they consult, helping them to feel empowered and invested in the outcomes. They facilitate discussions based on consensus building. Through their leadership, they build trust, respect, and commitment. Challenges with this style, which has a low positive impact on climate, can be that it leads to seemingly endless meetings and deferred decisions. People can end up feeling confused and leaderless; sometimes, this approach can escalate conflicts. In a university setting, it can also be tricky to use when people responsible for making a decision aren’t truly equals or peers, for example, in a situation involving both faculty and staff.
Academic Leadership Group Offers Personalized Leadership Support for University Leaders
How many of these leadership styles do you currently use? Reading a particular situation and then being able to flex to several different styles given the situation at hand can be very helpful: From a leadership development perspective, we talk about having several styles at your disposal being like having various tools in a toolkit or different lenses you can use on a camera.
One of the challenges with leadership development is that simply learning the concepts is different from being able to practice them. While your intention and knowledge matter, in the end, leadership is what others perceive based on how you interact with them - your behaviors.
If you are looking to improve your leadership skills, we recommend looking at our Coaching Services. Organizational leaders who wish to understand leadership perspective in the context of a unit or department, or school may also wish to engage us for an Organizational Assessment or Culture survey.
Contact us to learn more!