What to Look for in a New Dean, and How to Look

(Author’s Note: We received a lot of great email feedback on our last few posts, so starting with this post we have opened up comments below. If you have thoughts on today’s topic we’d love to hear them.)

Each year universities engage in searches for new leadership that often begin with a wildly optimistic premise — that there are dozens of candidates meeting a long list of exacting requirements, all of whom are eager to move their families and careers to lead College X into the next decade at the highest levels of excellence. Sometimes this optimism is well-founded. More often, as a scant handful of (qualified) applications trickles in, search committees start backpedaling on those ‘exacting requirements’. Nobody wants a failed search and to sit in these meetings for another year!

So, what really matters and what should you look for in a new Dean?

Should You Use a Search Firm?

We’ve experienced a mix of search strategies, some driven by external search firms, some driven by internal HR consultants focused on executive search. Both can work, but you need some professional on point who doesn’t have a day job teaching, researching, or leading another unit on campus.

Sometimes search firms have extensive files of likely candidates they know – especially in the larger disciplines. But often search firms fish for candidates from an email list that they spam with invitations to apply. (Trust us, we know. Once you’ve served as a Dean or Provost you receive scores of emails a year inviting you to be the next dean/provost/vice president/chancellor/president someplace.)

Search firms can be useful in putting together a position description and in crafting a useful description of the college and university. But that isn’t too hard.

What’s most helpful is the ability of a neutral arbiter to have honest, confidential conversations about the position. Candidates want to ask hard questions and they want accurate information on the search status. In most cases, candidates want to explore the opportunity in confidence. Internal search committees can struggle with these things.

Elite Scholarship isn’t Everything

In too many cases, the first impulse of faculty on a search committee is to pursue an extraordinary scholar in the field. Wrong! If you want someone to produce exceptional scholarship, go hire a named or distinguished professor. When hiring a Dean you want a leader, someone who can bring the college together around an ambitious agenda and move it forward. Sometimes that leader is an extraordinary scholar who is ready to put down (or at least slow) their scholarship for a time. And having scholarly chops can help a new leader initially earn the respect of faculty. But that respect will be lost quickly if the new Dean can’t lead.

Experience isn’t Everything

You don’t need to have done THIS job to be good at this job. And the reality is, you probably aren’t going to find candidates who have had the job you’re searching for at an institution of equal or better quality who want to join you. You do want someone who has worked with a team of people, led something and moved it ahead. But that experience can come in a variety of forms.

Fundraising experience in particular is overrated. Yes, Deans need to fundraise well, but few candidates who haven’t yet been Deans are likely to have done much previously. Happily, there are good indicators of fundraising success that can be read quickly in longer form interviews: the ability to articulate a clear set of priorities; the ability to communicate and connect on a personal level; the ability to be patient but persistent; and the recognition that fundraising is an important part of the role.

Donors are taking a big leap of faith when they invest in a college and need to believe that their investment will be used wisely and to good effect. If you don’t feel authenticity from a candidate in an interview, chances are a donor won’t either.

Interest, Passion, and Energy are Underrated

These jobs require an enormous amount of energy to do well. There are many long days. Travel. Fights and misunderstandings over matters substantive and trivial. Circumstances beyond your control that undo the best laid plans. Someone lacking passion for the job is more likely to disengage than to make the extra effort the job demands.

The best indicator is the passion and energy they brought to their current role but you can also learn a lot by asking how they plan to spend their time as Dean. Candidates who are overly focused on continuing their research program, or who plan to be on the road more than they are available within the college probably aren’t that interested in doing the job. Deans can continue their research and Deans will spend a substantial amount of time on the road. But the key is balance and making their new college the first thing they think about when they wake up in the morning.

Do They have a Clear Set of Priorities?

A common question asked of candidates is, “what’s your vision?” At one level the question implies an irritating level of pretension. Who, after all, claims to have visions? And it’s especially difficult to have a vision for a unit that the candidate barely knows. But the question really means… what would you like to prioritize? Where are you going to spend your energy and where would you direct the resources of the college?

If someone is unable to articulate a set of priorities, it means they haven’t invested the time to figure out what matters to them or to your institution. Or they are too fearful of alienating one constituency or another. But leading means choosing, and choosing well means having invested the time in, and having the courage to express, a set of thoughtful priorities.

Collaboration Matters – A Lot

The most successful Deans have strong networks across the university and know how to work effectively with and learn from other senior leaders. Empire builders or warlords quickly alienate peers. You want someone who stands up for the college and aggressively competes for resources, but does so in a way that keeps the college engaged as an integral part of the university team. Isolationist strategies ultimately limit opportunities for the college.

Internal Versus External Candidates?

We think this comes down to a question of investment versus perspective. Internal candidates are more likely to feel invested in your institution. They may have devoted many years to the place already, and hope to retire or return to faculty under improved conditions – not use the post to trade up to the next best thing.

But internal candidates may lack perspective that comes from seeing how other universities run and so may struggle to break away from business-as-usual. They may also be more concerned about maintaining existing relationships with friends on faculty and staff, and defer to these sensitivities more than is warranted.

External candidates are free from this baggage, but may miss unique local strengths, and — without some deeper connection to the place — may view it as a rung on a ladder to bigger and better positions. ‘Climbers’ – those in these roles purely for personal advancement – rarely make great Deans.

What’s Their Timeline?

Transitory Deans will show a pattern of staying in leadership roles for 2-4 years. In some circumstances you may want a short-timer to inject new ideas and energy, shake-up the status quo, even if that means alienating some groups of faculty and staff within the college. Having fixed what’s broken they can move on and leave the next leader with a clean slate.

But if the college isn’t broken, short-timers can struggle to make a difference. It takes a new leader a year to figure out what is going on in a place. A year or two to formulate new plans and build relationships and earn trust with boards, donors or legislators who will approve/fund major initiatives. Implementation takes place on yet longer horizons, particularly if it requires new faculty expertise or major capital projects. By then the next leader arrives with their own set of priorities and needed learning process, and the college is stuck on a treadmill.

Implementation and Sustained Success Matters more than Press Releases

In cover letters and short interviews, a candidate can sound impressive listing all the new programs and partnerships begun under their leadership. It’s a sensible interview strategy because search committees often focus more on new initiatives than on incremental improvements in existing programming. But for even the most entrepreneurial Dean, real success depends more on their ability to create or sustain excellence in things the college is already doing, not their ability to add a bunch of new initiatives.

If a candidate boasts of creating a bright shiny new thing, spend time to really dig into the details. What motivated that initiative? How was it resourced? What were the challenges to getting it off the ground? What are the tangible signs of success? Focus on outcomes – specific evidence that something positive happened. Then ask the same questions about important programs they maintained, not that they created. A good Dean has passion for both things! If they can’t answer these questions, they are managing by press release, not by doing the hard work of implementation.

Develop Candidate Pools that Offer a Diverse Set of Leadership Styles and Priorities

Diverse in this context doesn’t necessarily mean traditional categories of gender or ethnic diversity, though that can be a source of diverse styles and priorities. When you bring in candidates with different styles it provides you a kind of trial run at what life under this leadership would look like.

Do you want someone hands-off or someone who is in the weeds? Do you want someone to build on existing strengths and priorities or who brings completely fresh perspectives and strategies? Do you want someone who spends time internally or externally? You may imagine in advance that you favor one approach or another, but seeing the individuals who embody that change can make tangible the consequence of each approach.

Engage and Really Listen to a Broad Set of Perspectives on the Candidates

Even Deans with a great strategy can do almost nothing on their own; they need faculty and staff and peers to invest the extra effort required to realize their vision. As a result, making top-down selections without engagement and ownership from the unit they will lead makes a new Dean’s job much harder that it needs to be.

How should that engagement take place? Townhalls can be useful to learn about a candidate’s ability to communicate with larger groups. Small group meetings permit actual conversation with representative faculty, staff, and leadership. The style of conversations will be different depending on the audience, but the message and the degree of respect for the engagement should be consistent.

Someone who can impress a Provost or a Board member but can’t connect with faculty and staff will struggle to build a constituency for implementation of new ideas. Someone who doesn’t connect with other members of senior leadership will find themselves cut off from an incredibly important source of peer-learning and support. Someone who tells everyone what they want to hear, even if that is at odds with the conversation from the last meeting, hasn’t wrestled with the tradeoffs and the values of different constituencies.

Listen to References

This is tricky, but you need to get some perspective on how the person actually leads from someone other than the person themselves. References named by the candidate will be supporters by definition, so you have to push hard to get beyond talking points – evidence that reflects outcomes, impact, and leadership style. A laundry list of activities from a CV is not helpful and you must carefully listen for what they don’t say about a candidate. Talking with individuals who are not on the candidate’s list can be helpful, but you have to be aware that you may get someone with a personal grudge against the candidate.

Closing Thoughts

Finding the right leader starts and ends with understanding what you are looking for and what you want that person to accomplish. Getting clarity on that question will provide the guidance needed to know when you have found that person.

A final word to the wise: if you don’t think you have the right person, don’t fill the position. In our experience, candidates are at their shiny best during the interview process – and if you aren’t feeling it then, keep looking.

“Finding Equilibrium” is coauthored by Jay Akridge, Professor of Agricultural Economics, Trustee Chair in Teaching and Learning Excellence, and Provost Emeritus at Purdue University and David Hummels, Distinguished Professor of Economics and Dean Emeritus at the Daniels School of Business at Purdue.