Universities run on people who were trained to be great scholars, not necessarily great managers. When those scholars become program directors, department chairs, research group leaders, or deans, the job changes dramatically - but the support and feedback they get often doesn’t.
That’s why a dedicated 360‑degree feedback survey for academic leaders is so valuable.
The many faces of academic leadership
Academic leadership isn’t just “senior management.” It shows up in many roles, often part‑time or layered on top of teaching and research:
- Program / course directors: Coordinate degree programs, oversee curriculum, manage assessments and student experience, often while still teaching and advising.
- Department chairs / heads of school: Sit in the middle of everything: workload, hiring, promotion input, conflict, budget discussions, strategy, and representing the department to the institution.
- Research group leaders / center directors: Lead grants, supervise postgraduate researchers, manage labs and teams, and balance research agendas with institutional expectations.
- Associate deans / deans / faculty leaders: Take a broader view: portfolio strategy, cross‑department initiatives, quality, external partnerships, and overall faculty/staff wellbeing.
Across all of these roles, leaders are expected to serve students, support faculty and staff, safeguard quality, and deliver on institutional priorities - while often still maintaining their own academic work.
Common challenges for academic leaders
Stepping into these roles brings a distinct set of challenges:
1. Leading peers, not subordinates
Academic leaders often lead colleagues who are also friends, former mentors, or senior scholars. Authority is fuzzy; influence is negotiated. That makes it harder to:
- Give honest feedback about performance or behavior.
- Say “no” to requests that don’t fit priorities.
- Make decisions that some colleagues won’t like.
Without support, many leaders avoid difficult conversations, which quietly hurts standards, morale, or equity.
2. Juggling multiple missions
Higher education leadership is never about just one thing. Leaders must balance:
- Teaching quality and curriculum coherence.
- Research productivity and grant capture.
- Student success, inclusion, and wellbeing.
- Compliance, accreditation, and external reputation.
- Faculty workload, career development, and morale.
Those missions sometimes align beautifully - and sometimes clash. Leaders are constantly making trade‑offs that affect real people.
3. Role overload and identity strain
Most academic leaders still teach and/or research. The leadership role is often added on top of existing workloads, with:
- Email volume and meetings exploding overnight.
- Less time for deep scholarly work.
- Expectations from “above” and “below” that don’t always line up.
Many feel pulled between being a good scholar, a good teacher, and a good leader, without clear guidance on what “good enough” looks like in each domain.
4. Leading change in skeptical, high‑autonomy cultures
Universities value critical thinking and debate. When leaders try to implement change, such as new curricula, assessment methods, workload models, or strategic priorities, they often face:
- Skepticism about motives and evidence.
- Concern about academic freedom.
- Fatigue from past “initiatives” that came and went.
Change leadership in this context is less about issuing instructions and more about building trust, engaging colleagues, and pacing change so people can come with you.
A generic corporate 360 rarely touches these realities.
A competency framework built for academic leaders
To make feedback genuinely useful, a 360 for academic leaders needs to focus on the behaviors that matter most in this environment. The framework below does that by grouping competencies into five clusters.
1. Personal Effectiveness & Integrity
Academic leaders are culture carriers. Their personal behavior sets the tone.
- Ethical practice & academic integrity Acting consistently with institutional and disciplinary values; prioritizing fairness, academic integrity and student wellbeing; being honest when things go wrong.
- Self‑awareness & resilience Seeking feedback, recognising stress and overload, maintaining composure in difficult situations, and setting boundaries so they can lead sustainably.
Why it matters: if people don’t trust a leader’s integrity or judgement, everything else - strategy, initiatives, policies - meets resistance.
2. Collegial Relationships & Communication
Leadership in academia depends heavily on relationships and communication.
- Collegiality & trust‑building Building constructive relationships with faculty, staff and students; handling disagreements respectfully; being seen as fair and approachable even when decisions are unpopular.
- Communication & listening Sharing information clearly and early, explaining decisions and changes, listening to concerns, and enabling real dialogue rather than one‑way messages.
Why it matters: department‑level climate is one of the biggest drivers of faculty morale and student experience. Leaders create (or erode) that climate day by day.
3. Leading People & Supporting Academic Work
Academic leaders are there to help others do their best teaching, research and service.
- Supporting teaching, research & service Taking a real interest in colleagues’ academic work; helping remove barriers; connecting people to resources and opportunities; valuing different forms of contribution, not just a narrow metric.
- Performance, recognition & difficult conversations Giving specific feedback, addressing persistent issues rather than avoiding them, applying standards consistently, and recognising achievements in ways that feel fair.
Why it matters: when leaders avoid performance issues or ignore good work, it shows up as resentment, perceived unfairness, and eventually attrition.
4. Managing Programs, Resources & Quality
This is where leadership meets operations and quality assurance.
- Program & resource management Organising teaching, schedules, and workloads in ways that support quality and fairness; using budget, staff time, and space thoughtfully; anticipating and responding to operational problems.
- Quality, data & external requirements Using student outcomes, evaluations and other data to inform decisions; paying attention to accreditation and regulatory expectations; involving colleagues in continuous improvement rather than treating quality as a tick‑box exercise.
Why it matters: student experience and academic standards are directly shaped by how well programs and resources are managed at unit level.
5. Strategic Thinking & Leading Change
Academic leaders have to look beyond the next semester.
- Vision, alignment & change Articulating a clear direction for the unit that fits institutional strategy; helping colleagues understand why changes are needed; pacing and leading change in ways that consider both outcomes and human impact.
Why it matters: higher education is under sustained pressure - financial, technological, political, demographic. Leaders who only “keep things running” will struggle; those who can align local initiatives with bigger trends give their units a better chance to thrive.
Why a dedicated academic 360 is worth it
A 360‑degree survey built on this framework gives academic leaders something generic tools can’t:
- Feedback that fits your world: Questions about collegiality, academic integrity, curriculum, quality, and leading change in a high‑autonomy context feel immediately relevant to faculty and staff. That makes responses more honest and the results more credible.
- A mirror for real impact: Leaders see how their behavior affects faculty morale, student experience, research culture, and the unit’s ability to manage change - not just whether they “manage processes.”
- A shared language for development: Departments, faculties and institutions gain a common vocabulary for talking about academic leadership strengths and growth areas, across very different roles.
- A practical starting point for growth: Instead of vague advice like “communicate more” or “be more strategic,” leaders get targeted signals:
- “Explain the reasons behind decisions more clearly.”
- “Recognise teaching and mentoring contributions more consistently.”
- “Involve colleagues earlier in discussions about curriculum changes.”
For program directors, department chairs, deans, research group leaders and others, an academic‑specific 360 isn’t about judging their scholarship - it’s about giving them the feedback they rarely get on the leadership part of their job, so they can grow in ways that benefit faculty, staff and students alike.
