University leaders juggle a lot. Financial sustainability. Strategy. Governance. Regulators. Government. Partnerships. Reputation. Committees upon committees. It’s no surprise leadership can feel like permanent firefighting.

But if there’s one role that should trump all others, it’s this: creating the conditions in which people can flourish. Everything else flows from that. And yet, in a sector under huge pressure –  tighter regulation, shrinking resources, constant “transformation” that usually means cuts – this core purpose is often the first thing to slip.

Ironically, it’s precisely in difficult times that leaders should double down on it.

What does “flourishing” actually mean?

Ask a room of academics what they need to thrive and you’ll get a hundred different answers. That’s not a problem, that’s the business. Academic work is deeply personal. Discipline matters. Career stage matters. Institutional context matters.

But some themes keep coming up: autonomy, time, trust, space to think, freedom to explore and challenge, and leadership that supports rather than constrains. Real wellbeing isn’t lunchtime yoga (pleasant though that may be). It’s manageable workloads, clear priorities, and leaders who remove obstacles rather than add them.

Flourishing isn’t abstract or fluffy. It’s intensely practical. And leadership is the difference between it happening or not.

Leadership has to be close to reality

If leaders want academics to flourish, they need to understand what university life actually looks like now – not how it felt when they last taught regularly, and not the sanitised version that makes its way up through layers of management.

The more senior you become, the more reality gets filtered. Bad news is softened. Problems are minimised. A “good news culture” creeps in. And reality never reaches the top on its own.

There’s a lot of advice in higher education about leaders needing to be ‘less operational and more strategic’. Strategy matters, of course. But separating the strategic from the operational is one of the biggest mistakes universities make. Adaptive leadership depends on moving constantly between the two , understanding how the organisation actually works and letting that shape strategy.

Why so much university strategy fails

Most university strategies look impressive. Slick design. Inspiring verbs. Five or ten year horizons. Pillars, themes, golden threads. They arrive with a sense of destiny.

And then… very little changes.

For most staff, strategy only becomes visible at appraisal time, when they’re asked how their work aligns with it. That’s a problem.

As Richard Rumelt explains, bad strategy is usually full of buzzwords, avoids naming real problems, confuses goals with plans, and sets vague objectives detached from reality. Universities are particularly prone to all of these.

Good strategy starts with honesty: heavy workloads, rising expectations from students, tighter regulation, changing job markets, and finite resources. It then sets a clear approach to tackling those problems and backs it up with coordinated, realistic action. Without that grounding, strategy becomes theatre.

Get closer, not higher

This is why leaders need to become proximal. Town halls and all-staff meetings rarely surface the real issues – speaking up in those spaces often feels risky. To understand what’s really going on, leaders need to meet people where the work happens, without layers of management present.

But proximity only works if people feel safe to speak honestly. Psychological safety matters here. Not performative listening, but listening that leads to change.

Flourishing lives in the operational details

Flourishing isn’t enabled by vision statements. It lives in budgets, workload models, systems, and calendars.

Financial stability matters because money buys time and space. If people are constantly asked to do more with less, flourishing is impossible. Workload models aren’t boring admin, they’re strategic choices about what a university values.

And then there’s the other activity: endless meetings, sprawling committees, bloated processes, and clunky systems. Much of this adds little to teaching, research, or people’s development. Leaders should be ruthless minimalists here. Fewer meetings. Fewer forms. Fewer systems. Less noise.

Culture is felt, not declared

Culture isn’t a statement on a website. It’s what people feel every day. Trust. Transparency. Freedom. Authenticity.

Leaders shape that culture by how they behave: explaining decisions openly, trusting people to do good work, admitting what they don’t know, modelling healthy boundaries, and treating failure as learning rather than punishment. Being human matters.

Strip away what blocks purpose

Academics don’t need leaders to invent purpose, it’s already there. What they need is leadership that removes the barriers that suffocate it: bad strategy, needless bureaucracy, punitive cultures, and constant distraction.

University leadership is hard, emotional, and often uncomfortable work. But creating the conditions for people to flourish isn’t a nice to have. It’s the job.