Leadership in higher education asks a great deal of people. It asks for vision, patience, resilience, judgement and emotional steadiness, often at the same time. Academic leaders are expected to manage complexity, support colleagues, respond to institutional priorities, maintain academic standards and keep moving forward, even when the direction is not always clear.

Yet one thing higher education rarely makes enough space for is honest reflection.

Not the surface-level reflection that appears in appraisal forms, development plans or annual reviews. Rather, the deeper kind of reflection that asks more difficult questions: Why am I leading in this way? What is this role doing to me? What have I stopped noticing? What values am I compromising without realising it? What kind of leader am I becoming?

We spend considerable time discussing leadership models, strategic frameworks, performance indicators and institutional outcomes. These are important. However, we speak far less about the inner experience of leadership: the uncertainty, the emotional labour, the doubt, the fatigue, and the quiet moments when a leader loses sight of why the work mattered in the first place.

This blog reflects on the importance of coaching and reflection in helping academic leaders return to clarity, purpose and more intentional leadership.

When Doing Becomes Its Own Trap

There is a particular kind of exhaustion that many academic leaders understand very well. It is not simply tiredness from too much work, although that is often present. It is the mental fog that develops when a person is constantly doing, responding, solving, attending and delivering, without ever pausing to ask whether any of it is still meaningful or effective.

Higher education moves quickly. Leaders are pulled between institutional targets, staff expectations, student needs, regulatory demands, research priorities and operational pressures. In such an environment, reflection can begin to feel like a luxury. It may appear difficult to justify time spent thinking when there are emails to answer, meetings to attend and decisions to make.

However, this is exactly where the danger lies.

When academic leadership becomes only a cycle of action and reaction, leaders may become busy without becoming effective. They may continue to perform the role while becoming increasingly disconnected from its purpose. They may meet deadlines, attend committees and manage teams, but lose the deeper clarity required to lead with judgement and direction.

Reflection interrupts this cycle. It creates space to ask whether current actions are aligned with values, whether decisions are being made intentionally or reactively, and whether the leader is still operating from purpose rather than pressure.

Reflection Is Not a Soft Skill

Reflection is sometimes treated as something optional, personal or secondary to the “real work” of leadership. In many institutions, it becomes an administrative exercise: a section in a performance review, a paragraph in a development plan, or a conversation that happens only when required.

Real reflection is much more demanding.

It requires honesty. It requires the courage to look carefully at what is working and what is not. It requires the discipline to sit with uncomfortable questions rather than immediately searching for convenient answers. It requires leaders to examine not only their actions, but also their assumptions, habits, reactions and motivations.

In this sense, reflection is not a soft skill. It is a leadership discipline.

Academic leaders who practise reflection seriously often develop a stronger sense of professional grounding. They become less reactive. They are better able to distinguish between what is urgent and what is genuinely important. They begin to notice patterns in their decisions, relationships and emotional responses. Most importantly, they become more aware of the kind of leadership they are actually practising, rather than the kind they intend to practise.

This awareness matters because leadership is not only about what a person does. It is also about how they show up, how they listen, how they respond under pressure, and how consistently their actions reflect their stated values.

What Coaching Offers That Other Development Does Not

There is no shortage of leadership development in higher education. Academic leaders may attend workshops, conferences, mentoring schemes, leadership programmes and professional networks. These experiences can be valuable, particularly when they provide knowledge, frameworks, tools and exposure to wider practice.

Coaching offers something different.

Coaching is not primarily about transferring knowledge from one person to another. It is not about giving advice, providing ready-made solutions or telling leaders what they should do. At its best, coaching creates a structured and confidential space in which leaders can think more clearly about their own circumstances, using their own judgement.

A good coach does not arrive with answers. A good coach arrives with questions.

These questions slow the leader down. They help the leader hear what they are saying, not only what they intended to say. They reveal assumptions that may have gone unnoticed. They bring attention to tensions, contradictions and possibilities. They help the leader step back from immediate pressure and see the situation with greater clarity.

This kind of listening is rare in professional life. Many academic leaders spend most of their time listening to others, solving problems for others and holding space for others. Coaching reverses that dynamic. It gives the leader a space where they are not required to perform, defend, justify or immediately fix anything.

That experience can be quietly transformative.

Leadership Is Also a Question of Identity

One of the most important contributions of coaching is that it often moves the conversation beyond performance. Leaders may begin coaching by discussing workload, strategy, time management, difficult conversations or institutional pressures. These are legitimate starting points.

However, the deeper work often concerns identity.

Who am I as a leader?
What do I believe leadership is for?
How did I come to lead in this way?
What values shape my decisions?
Where am I acting from fear, habit or expectation?
Is the way I lead consistent with the person I want to be?

These questions are not always easy. They can be uncomfortable because they move beyond tasks and into the leader’s sense of self. Yet they are often the questions that unlock the most meaningful change.

When leaders become clearer about their values and purpose, many practical decisions become easier. They know what to prioritise. They become more consistent in how they communicate. They are better able to manage competing demands. They can say yes and no with greater confidence. They can lead with more steadiness because their actions are anchored in something deeper than immediate pressure.

This does not remove complexity from academic leadership. However, it helps leaders navigate complexity with greater integrity.

What This Means in Practice

The value of reflection and coaching does not always require a large formal programme or significant institutional budget, although structured coaching provision can be extremely valuable. The practice can begin in much simpler ways.

An academic leader might begin by protecting thirty minutes each week for uninterrupted reflection. No agenda. No performance report. No immediate output. Just time to think honestly about the work, the role and the person doing the role.

Another leader might choose to have a regular reflective conversation with a trusted colleague, where the purpose is not advice or problem-solving, but deeper thinking. Others may use reflective writing, leadership journals, coaching circles or mentoring conversations to examine their experiences more intentionally.

The key is not the format. The key is the quality of attention.

Reflection becomes powerful when it is honest, regular and connected to action. It should not remain abstract. It should help leaders notice what needs to change, what needs to be protected, what needs to be challenged and what needs to be restored.

One useful question for academic leaders is:

What kind of leader do I want to be this week, and what would that look like in practice?

This question is simple, but it can be powerful. It moves leadership away from title and responsibility and brings it back to behaviour, choice and intention.

Returning to Clarity

The academic leaders who navigate complexity with the most grace are not necessarily those who have all the answers. More often, they are those who have learned to ask better questions.

They ask better questions of their institutions.
They ask better questions of their teams.
They ask better questions of their own assumptions.
Most importantly, they ask better questions of themselves.

In higher education, where leadership is often measured through outputs, plans, strategies and performance indicators, there is still a need to remember the human being behind the role. Leaders do not only need skills and frameworks. They also need space to think, to reflect, to realign and to recover their sense of purpose.

Coaching can provide that space. Reflection can sustain it.

Perhaps the most important leadership questions are not always the ones asked in meetings, reports or strategic plans. They may be the quieter questions leaders ask themselves when they finally pause long enough to listen.

And those may be the questions that matter most.

Contributed by:

Prof. Zeina Hojeij, Zayed University, UAE

Professor Zeina Hojeij joined Zayed University in August 2013. She is currently the Assistant Dean for Research and Outreach at the the College of Interdisciplinary Studies.