Key points:
- What does it mean to engage in effective leadership during profound institutional and environmental turbulence?
- Reshaping higher ed: The impact of proposed federal changes on institutions
- Data-informed decision-making in education: A comprehensive approach
- For more news on higher-ed leadership, visit eCN’s Campus Leadership hub
Crisis leadership is an imperative for leaders at all levels of our institutions. There is a growing recognition that the challenges facing higher education require a bold response–one that draws upon the broad engagement of colleagues across academic and administrative units and that taps into the collective expertise of our communities.
Indeed, the work of leadership in higher education is a highly relational, distributed, and collegial endeavor. In the spirit of shared governance, authority and decision making are dispersed throughout the organization. Within the context of higher education, successful influence relies less on positional power and more fully on the ability to build and broker relationships of trust in pursuit of shared goals. As many leaders have experienced, once this trust has been eroded, it can be difficult to rebuild.
The pursuit of organizational and academic excellence in higher education requires leadership effectiveness. The actions, decisions, behaviors, and messages of formal and informal leaders at all levels of higher education–including those engaged in unit/departmental, school, and institutional leadership–help to shape the culture, strategic priorities, and levels of engagement throughout the organization. During times of perceived stability, the work of leadership in higher education is a difficult undertaking; and it is made especially complex during these periods of institutional and environmental turbulence.
As organizations dedicated to the enterprise of learning, we must turn inward to learn about our own internal capacity for responding to the challenges of our time–and to invest in the development of future leaders who can both advocate for the ever-critical missions of our institutions and advance necessary change and innovation that will ensure the vibrancy and sustainability of these missions.
The time has certainly come for us to think critically about how we can best develop leaders who stand ready to lead both through and beyond disruption. In response to many of the pressures and challenges weighing on higher education–some of which threaten the financial viability of institutions, the reputation of the sector, or the sense of well-being and belonging on our campuses–leadership matters.
Leaders across the higher education landscape must contend with a host of contemporary disruptions. Some may go so far as to label these challenges as “crises” requiring urgent attention. In some cases, the challenges are localized to one’s campus or institution, as in the case of an active shooter situation, localized act of violence, or personnel scandal. In other incidents, the impact on colleges and universities is vast and widespread, as in the case of the COVID-19 pandemic or devastating natural disasters. In addition to responding to these localized and collective disruptions, college and university leaders must also monitor national and global events that require institutional attention, such as the outbreak of war in the Middle East or the public reckoning with racial injustice in the United States–events that profoundly impact members of the community and have the potential to ignite existing divisions or tensions. These highly volatile and intense periods in the life of an organization pose short-term and long-term pressure for leaders, and often disproportionately influence the broad array of campus constituents.
Fortunately, there are examples of institutions, associations, and consortia that are involved in efforts to strengthen leadership effectiveness and diversify the pipeline of individuals who might engage in formal and informal leadership in the future. In addition to the standard modules introduced in these programs, including, for example, those related to communication, leading change, engaging internal and external audiences, managing a budget, and navigating conflict, I would advocate for consideration of issues related to crisis and post-crisis leadership.
I continue to believe that it is in the darkness and chaos of crisis where values-based leadership becomes most critical, most visible, and most desired. This central theme was introduced in my book on Crisis Leadership in Higher Education: Theory and Practice. Building upon this thesis, in my newly published book, Post-Crisis Leadership: Resilience, Renewal, and Reinvention in the Aftermath of Disruption, I draw upon various higher education examples to extend values-based leadership as a guide in navigating the transition from crisis to post-crisis–a transition whereby learning, healing, growth, and transformation become possible.
Certainly, the complexities of leading in and through crisis can contribute to the absence of attention given to post-crisis leadership. The fatigue, frustration, and even trauma present in times of crisis have the potential to stall the healing and recovery that could result post-crisis. Often relegated as an afterthought in crisis scholarship and practice, the ability to navigate the post-crisis period can distinguish highly effective leaders and organizations. An investment in post-crisis leadership development–along with an investment in organizational recovery and learning during this period–serves both short-term and long-term interests, while helping to build capacity in responding to the inevitable challenges that have yet to occur.
With an underlying commitment to values-based, principle-oriented, and people-centered approaches to leadership, these five practices, described further in the table below, stand out as especially critical in the aftermath of crisis: (a) encourage learning, (b) inspire growth, (c) stimulate meaning making, (d) pursue reinvention, and (e) advance renewal.
Table 1: Post-Crisis Leadership Practices (Gigliotti, 2025)
In the conversations and facilitations I have participated in across my institution through my work at the intersection of university strategy and academic leadership development, in addition to my many conversations with colleagues across higher education in my role as president of the Network for Change and Continuous and Innovation, I sense a deep and sincere interest among colleagues in wanting to advance change and innovation. At the same time, leaders often comment on the need to respect the traditions of shared governance, monitor the sense of change fatigue and burnout experienced by colleagues, and ensure an ongoing commitment to existing programs and services that remain core to each of our mission areas. In light of these co-existing priorities, I invite us to think critically about what it means to engage in effective leadership during a time of profound institutional and environmental turbulence, to consider how we might balance the most essential existing tenets of our work with a desire to engage in necessary transformation, and to navigate crisis and post-crisis periods with an understanding of the unequal impact such events have on the members of our communities.
As I discuss more fully in the book, within each of the post-crisis leadership practices noted above, leaders in higher education might consider the following actions as we collectively navigate these unsteady and uncertain periods of disruption:
Encourage learning
- Provide formal and informal opportunities to analyze, debrief, and learn from the experiences of past crises
- Design opportunities to learn from exemplary crisis leadership practices based on the experiences of others from across disciplines, institutions, and sectors
- Encourage employees to create a learning organization mindset through a continual and systematic review of organizational culture, established structures and policies, and leadership behaviors that might either encourage or hinder organizational learning
Cultivate resilience
- Pay attention to the dynamic process of resilience and the ways in which members of one’s unit, department, or organization can bounce back or reintegrate with confidence and conviction
- Lean on colleagues throughout the institution and across other organizations for support and strength
- Be wary of compassion fatigue and prioritize your own self-care
Stimulate meaning making
- Communicate and behave with intentionality and purpose, recognizing that words and actions communicate intended and unintended messages with multiple possibilities for interpretation and misinterpretation
- Crises disrupt existing meaning systems, and leaders serve an important role in helping to provide potential explanations for the disruption in ways that require honesty and trust
- The joint construction of meaning relies less on knowing all answers and more on posing questions and possibilities that allow for a shared construction of the situation.
Pursue reinvention
- Explore areas for change and improvement that are modest in scope, easy to accomplish, and likely to lead to greater impact
- Engage in the co-construction of reinvention efforts that draw upon the input, feedback, and buy-in of members of the community
- Develop a cadence for the reinvention effort that meets the moment, taking account of the impact of the crisis on the emotional state of various stakeholders, the waves of change that may have preceded the crisis, and the history with organizational change and transformation that might influence how new strategic directions are perceived by others
Advance renewal
- Demonstrate trauma-informed leadership behaviors in ways that build trust, including respect for the individual, active listening, presence, and empathy
- Respect the need for individual and collective healing, and the ways in which this effort occurs in both private and public settings
- Create opportunities for physical, social, emotional, and spiritual healing in ways that seem most appropriate given the scale of the crisis, the impact on institutional stakeholders, and the institutional setting
Effective leadership before, during, and certainly in the aftermath of crisis requires intentionality, along with a focus on communication, an understanding of enduring principles and values, and a deeply rooted commitment to people-centered ways of being. Internal and external stakeholders impacted by crises crave hope, compassion, and trust–and engaging these audiences in co-creating a path forward can cultivate resilience and renewal, focusing on both a return to what was and a pivot to what might have never been.
Ralph Gigliotti, Ph.D. is Assistant Vice President for Organizational Leadership in University Academic Affairs and a part-time faculty member at Rutgers University. He also serves as president for the Network for Change and Continuous Innovation. He is the author of Post-Crisis Leadership: Resilience, Renewal, and Reinvention in the Aftermath of Disruption (2025) and Crisis Leadership in Higher Education: Theory and Practice (2019).
- The pursuit of post-crisis leadership in higher education - February 7, 2025
- When adopting AI, colleges shouldn’t override human connections - February 6, 2025
- Trump deportation threats weigh on groups offering FAFSA help - February 5, 2025