Higher education institutions devote considerable attention to leadership.
We develop strategic plans, establish institutional priorities, evaluate financial performance, monitor student outcomes, and measure progress toward organizational objectives.
We also invest in leadership development, supervisory training, employee evaluations, and initiatives intended to strengthen institutional culture.
All of these activities have value.
But throughout my years in higher education, I've often wondered whether some of the most important indicators of leadership effectiveness are the ones we spend the least amount of time examining.
Not necessarily the results presented in executive meetings or the accomplishments highlighted in annual reports.
Rather, the everyday experiences of the employees responsible for carrying out the institution's mission.
What if some of the most important things institutional leaders need to understand are the very things employees have stopped telling them?
This question introduces today's Rosenboom Workforce Institute professional-development series, What Leaders May Be Missing.
Throughout the day, we'll examine seven aspects of leadership and organizational culture that I believe deserve thoughtful consideration.
1. When Employees Stop Raising Concerns
One of the more troubling developments within an organization may occur without a complaint, disagreement, or obvious conflict.
Employees simply stop speaking up.
An employee who once offered suggestions becomes quiet during meetings. Someone who regularly identified operational concerns no longer raises questions. A department that previously challenged inefficient procedures begins accepting them without discussion.
From a leadership perspective, the workplace may appear calmer.
There are fewer disagreements, fewer complaints, and fewer difficult conversations.
But reduced criticism does not necessarily indicate improved employee satisfaction.
Sometimes it reflects confidence in leadership and genuine agreement. At other times, it may indicate that employees have concluded their observations are unlikely to produce meaningful change.
These possibilities require very different leadership responses.
Throughout my career, I've come to believe that employee silence deserves thoughtful examination rather than automatic interpretation.
Leaders might consider how employees have been treated when they raised concerns in the past. Were their observations acknowledged? Were decisions explained? Did anyone communicate what happened afterward?
Not every suggestion can be implemented, and not every concern reflects an institutional deficiency.
But employees should be able to identify problems without assuming that doing so will be pointless or professionally risky.
An institution should not confuse the absence of employee concerns with the presence of employee trust.
2. Recognition Is More Than an Annual Award
Most higher education institutions have mechanisms for recognizing exceptional employee contributions.
An individual receives an award. A department is acknowledged at a meeting. A supervisor highlights extraordinary service during a particularly demanding period.
These gestures can be meaningful.
But recognition becomes more complicated when employees are repeatedly celebrated for overcoming circumstances that institutional leadership has not adequately addressed.
Consider an employee who consistently works beyond normal expectations to compensate for staffing shortages, inefficient procedures, or recurring communication problems.
Leadership praises the employee's dedication.
Yet the conditions requiring that extraordinary effort remain unchanged.
Eventually, recognition may begin to feel disconnected from the employee's actual experience.
I've often thought that one of the most meaningful forms of recognition is demonstrating that leadership understands what employees encounter while performing their responsibilities.
That includes providing useful feedback, acknowledging contributions that are not always highly visible, sharing credit across departments, and addressing obstacles when reasonably possible.
Public appreciation and operational support should complement one another.
Recognizing exceptional employee effort should not prevent us from examining why that level of effort became necessary.
3. The Difference Between Listening and Acting
Institutions regularly seek employee feedback.
We conduct satisfaction surveys, hold departmental meetings, organize listening sessions, and encourage employees to share suggestions.
These activities can provide valuable information.
But collecting feedback is only the beginning of the process.
What happens afterward may be just as important.
Imagine an institution that administers an employee survey and receives detailed responses concerning workload, supervisory communication, professional development, and departmental coordination.
Leadership reviews the findings and thanks employees for participating.
Then several months pass.
Employees hear little about what was learned or whether anything will change.
Even when institutional leaders have legitimate reasons for delaying or declining certain recommendations, the absence of follow-up can create uncertainty about whether participation was worthwhile.
Meaningful listening does not require agreeing with every suggestion.
It does require taking the feedback seriously enough to explain what was heard, which concerns can reasonably be addressed, what limitations exist, and when employees can expect additional information.
This is where leadership credibility becomes especially important.
Employees may accept that leadership cannot address every concern. They may be less willing to accept that their concerns consistently disappear without explanation.
4. When Accountability Becomes Blame
Accountability is essential in higher education.
Our institutions operate within complex regulatory, financial, academic, and administrative environments. Employees must understand their responsibilities, follow applicable requirements, and exercise appropriate professional judgment.
But there is an important difference between accountability that strengthens performance and accountability that simply assigns blame.
Consider a student-service error involving several departments.
An employee may have made the final incorrect entry or overlooked an important step.
That decision deserves examination.
But what if the employee was working with incomplete information, conflicting instructions, inadequate training, or a process that failed to establish clear responsibility?
An institutional review that focuses exclusively on the person closest to the error may overlook the conditions that contributed to it.
Individual responsibility and organizational responsibility are not competing concepts.
Both deserve consideration.
In my experience, meaningful accountability should examine what happened, why it happened, which expectations were communicated, what information was available, and whether reasonable preventive measures could reduce the likelihood of recurrence.
This approach does not eliminate consequences when they are appropriate.
It recognizes that correcting an employee's behavior without examining the circumstances surrounding that behavior may leave the institution vulnerable to repeating the same problem.
5. Leadership Is Experienced at the Department Level
Institutions often describe their cultures through broad organizational commitments.
We value collaboration. We support professional development. We encourage innovation. We respect employees. We promote transparency.
These statements may accurately reflect leadership's intentions.
Yet employees experience institutional culture primarily through everyday interactions.
They experience it when a supervisor assigns work, responds to a mistake, approves a development opportunity, addresses an interpersonal concern, or explains an important decision.
This means employees working within the same institution may experience significantly different workplace environments.
One department may provide meaningful supervisory support, reasonable autonomy, and open communication.
Another may operate with limited feedback, unclear expectations, or inconsistent decision-making.
Both departments belong to the same institution.
But their employees may describe very different organizational cultures.
This is one reason I believe institutional assessments should examine employee experiences at the departmental level rather than relying exclusively on institution-wide averages.
Broad measurements can provide useful context, but they may obscure important differences in how leadership practices are experienced.
Institutional culture may be established through organizational values, but it is experienced through everyday leadership behavior.
6. What Would a Better Leadership Measure Look Like?
Higher education institutions depend on measurable outcomes.
Enrollment, retention, graduation, financial performance, compliance, and operational efficiency all provide information that leaders need.
But these indicators do not necessarily tell us how employees experience the work required to achieve those results.
A department may meet every reporting deadline while depending on chronic overtime.
A team may maintain acceptable student-service metrics while experiencing frequent staff turnover.
A supervisor may achieve established performance objectives while employees report limited autonomy, inconsistent communication, or insufficient support.
None of these observations automatically establishes ineffective leadership.
But they suggest that traditional performance measures may not provide a complete picture.
What might we learn if leadership evaluations considered employee experiences alongside operational outcomes?
We might examine whether employees understand their responsibilities, have access to necessary resources, receive meaningful supervisory support, and believe they can raise concerns constructively.
We might also consider whether departments collaborate effectively and whether employees experience institutional practices as reasonably fair and consistent.
These measures would not replace traditional institutional performance indicators.
They would provide additional information about the conditions under which those results are achieved.
Institutional success should include attention to both what employees accomplish and what they experience while accomplishing it.
7. From Leadership Questions to Practical Development
As we consider these leadership questions, an important distinction emerges.
Recognizing the importance of employee trust, effective communication, accountability, and organizational support is not the same as knowing how to strengthen those conditions.
Leadership development requires opportunities to examine realistic situations, consider competing responsibilities, practice difficult conversations, and evaluate different approaches.
For example, how should a supervisor respond when an experienced employee stops contributing ideas?
What should leadership do when employee feedback identifies a problem that cannot immediately be resolved?
How should an institution examine an operational error involving both individual judgment and weaknesses in the underlying process?
These questions rarely have universally applicable answers.
Institutional context matters. Regulatory requirements matter. Available resources matter. The experiences of the employees and students involved also matter.
This is why I've increasingly focused my professional-development work on realistic scenarios, guided reflection, and collaborative learning.
Through the Rosenboom Workforce Institute, my objective is to create resources that help leaders and employees examine challenging situations, compare perspectives, and consider approaches they can adapt to their own institutions.
The purpose is not to suggest that my experiences provide the only answers.
It is to encourage the kinds of conversations that can help institutions find better answers for themselves.
Leadership Begins With What We Are Willing to Notice
One of the challenges of institutional leadership is that the higher someone advances within an organization, the more their understanding may depend on information provided through reports, meetings, and supervisory channels.
Those sources are necessary.
But they do not always reveal the complete experience of employees carrying out daily institutional responsibilities.
A performance report may demonstrate that a department met its objectives without showing the extraordinary effort required.
An employee survey may provide a satisfaction score without explaining why employees feel differently across departments.
A reduction in complaints may appear encouraging without revealing whether employees remain confident that speaking up will make a difference.
Leadership requires judgment about what information means, what additional questions deserve consideration, and whose perspectives may be missing.
Perhaps the most important responsibility is not having an immediate answer to every institutional concern.
Perhaps it is creating an environment where employees are willing to share what leaders need to understand, even when those observations challenge existing assumptions.
Because stronger institutions begin not simply with leaders who know what is happening, but with leaders who are willing to discover what they may be missing.
Throughout today's What Leaders May Be Missing series, I'll explore these questions in greater depth and welcome perspectives from colleagues throughout higher education.
Today's question worth asking:
If your institution's employees could tell leadership one thing about their everyday workplace experience without hesitation or fear of consequences, what do you think leadership would learn?
Dr. Matthew Rosenboom
Rosenboom Workforce Institute
Practical perspectives on leadership, employee engagement, organizational culture, and institutional effectiveness.
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