How Can Universities Develop Leaders When Budgets Are Under Pressure?

UK universities are facing some of the most difficult financial conditions in recent years. Falling or uncertain international student recruitment, rising costs and pressure on traditional sources of income are forcing many institutions to reduce expenditure, restructure services and reconsider priorities.

Leadership development can easily look like discretionary spending in this environment. Yet this is also when the quality of leadership matters most.

Deans, Heads of School, Directors, and professional services leaders may be managing restructuring, tighter budgets, and organisational change while trying to maintain staff engagement, academic standards, and student experience.

The challenge for universities is therefore not simply whether they can afford leadership development, but how they can make it more focused and cost-effective.

Why develop leaders when budgets are being cut?

Difficult financial decisions place additional demands on leaders. They need to communicate decisions people may not welcome, maintain trust during uncertainty, work effectively across academic and professional boundaries and make choices between competing priorities.

They may also be leading teams in which workloads are increasing, and colleagues are understandably concerned about the future.

These circumstances can expose leadership weaknesses that were less apparent during more stable periods.

Stopping leadership development altogether may save money in the short term, but it can create greater organisational problems when universities need their leaders to manage change effectively.

The answer may be to make development more targeted rather than more extensive.

Using 360 feedback to target development

Traditional leadership programmes often provide the same development to a group of managers. That can be valuable, particularly when universities want to build shared skills and relationships.

But it doesn’t necessarily answer a more individual question:

What does this particular leader need to do differently?

This is where 360-degree feedback can be particularly useful.

360 feedback gathers confidential feedback about a leader’s behaviour from people who experience their leadership — typically their manager, colleagues and direct reports — and compares this with the leader’s own assessment.

It can reveal important differences between how someone believes they lead and how their leadership is experienced by others.

For example, a Head of School might believe they communicate extensively during a restructuring. Their colleagues may agree that information is being provided but feel that there are too few opportunities to question decisions or raise concerns.

Another leader may believe they need to improve their strategic thinking when their colleagues actually see delegation or collaboration as the greater development need.

Instead of investing in broad development based on assumptions, 360 feedback helps identify where development effort is most likely to make a difference.

University leadership needs a university-specific approach

Universities are unusual organisations to lead.

Academic autonomy, collegial decision-making, complex governance structures and the relationship between academic and professional services functions can make leadership very different from a conventional corporate hierarchy. A generic management 360 can therefore miss some of the behaviours that matter in higher education.

Protostar has developed a 360-degree feedback model specifically for university managers, reflecting the realities of leading within higher education. Where required, the approach can also be adapted around an institution’s own values, leadership framework and strategic priorities.

For example, Durham University and the University of Edinburgh have both had bespoke 360 feedback questionnaires designed by Protostar, enabling feedback to reflect their particular leadership context rather than relying on a standard off-the-shelf questionnaire.

That ability to tailor the questions matters. If a university is navigating substantial change, it may want particular emphasis on behaviours such as change leadership, communication, collaboration, strategic thinking, accountability and building trust.

Why 360 can be cost-effective

Cost-effective leadership development does not simply mean choosing the cheapest intervention. It means making the best use of limited development resources. 360 feedback can help because it provides a diagnosis before deciding what development is needed.

One leader may benefit from coaching. Another might need mentoring, peer support or a targeted workshop. For someone else, simply understanding their feedback and committing to two or three behavioural changes may be enough.

Not everybody needs the same intervention.

This reverses the conventional approach of starting with a leadership programme and deciding who should attend it.

Instead, the university starts with evidence and asks:

What development does this person actually need?

That can be particularly valuable when every development pound has to be justified.

360 feedback during restructuring needs to be handled carefully

There is an important caveat.

If 360 feedback is introduced during a period of redundancies or restructuring, people need to trust the process.

If participants believe their report might be used to assess their performance or influence redundancy decisions, leaders can become defensive, and colleagues may be reluctant to provide candid feedback.

Universities should therefore be very clear about:

• why the feedback is being collected
• who will see individual results
• how confidentiality will be protected
• how the feedback will be used
• what happens afterwards

A developmental 360 should normally remain clearly separate from formal performance management.

This isn’t simply good practice. Trust directly affects the quality and usefulness of the feedback.

Don’t save money by removing the follow-through

One false economy is to collect 360 feedback and simply send leaders their reports. A report can contain conflicting scores, difficult comments and large amounts of information. The lowest score is not necessarily the most important development priority.

A facilitated feedback session helps the leader identify patterns and decide what genuinely matters.

The objective should be a short, practical development plan:

• What should I continue doing?
• What should I change?
• Which one or two behaviours would make the greatest difference?
• How will the people around me know that I have changed?

This is the point at which 360 feedback becomes development rather than simply measurement.

Universities don’t necessarily need to include everyone

Another way to control costs is to be selective.

A university might initially use 360 feedback with newly appointed Heads of School, Deans and Directors, senior professional services managers, leaders responsible for major change, or people moving into significantly larger roles.

A phased approach can spread expenditure and allow HR and OD teams to assess the impact before extending the programme.

There can also be a wider organisational benefit. While individual results should remain confidential, anonymised themes across participants can highlight common leadership-development needs.

If communication, delegation or cross-university collaboration repeatedly emerges as an issue, for example, the university has much better evidence about where future development resources should be concentrated.

Making limited leadership-development budgets work harder

There is an understandable temptation to postpone leadership development until university finances improve. The difficulty is that universities need capable leaders to navigate the period before that happens.

Restructuring, reducing costs and redesigning services require more than sound financial decisions. How those decisions are led will affect trust, engagement, retention and ultimately the institution’s ability to deliver its strategy.

360 feedback is not a substitute for every form of leadership development. But it can provide universities with a relatively focused way of identifying what individual leaders need to improve before investing in further development.

At a time when budgets are under intense scrutiny, that distinction matters.

The aim shouldn’t be to spend as little as possible on developing university leaders. It should be to spend limited resources where they are most likely to improve leadership.

For universities considering this approach, Protostar can advise on using its university-specific 360 model or developing a bespoke questionnaire around an institution’s own leadership framework and priorities. Contact Protostar.