We engage in deliberate and thoughtful conversations to determine your specific goals, timelines, and operating procedures. Only then do we craft a customized process for your search based on our proven methodology to ensure that your search is strategic, efficient—and ultimately, successful.
Having served in campus leadership roles themselves, our consultants have a deep understanding of your personnel needs and are available to assist with:
“Exercising leadership is a way of giving meaning to your life by contributing to the lives of others. At its best, leadership is a labor of love. Opportunities for these labors cross your path every day, though we appreciate through the scar tissue of our own experiences that seizing these opportunities takes heart.” (Leadership on the Line, Heifetz and Linsky, p. 223, 2002)
In the best of times leadership takes heart, courage and wisdom. Competence is required, but competence alone is not enough. The adaptive realities of today make college and university leadership more challenging, more vexing, and more uncertain. What a leader has done in the past does not guarantee present or future success. The most successful and effective presidents and executive leaders know how to ask for and receive help. They know that their growth, capacity, sustainability and well-being are ongoing endeavors.
Welcome to Academic Search’s Executive Coaching Practice. Our commitment to identifying and securing talented leaders for colleges and universities goes far beyond executive search. We are deeply committed to the ongoing effectiveness, sustainability and well-being of new and incumbent leaders through our distinctive Executive Coaching Practice solely for higher education presidents and executives.
Wise and effective leadership is necessary for institutional health and well-being. This is especially true in the current reality of profound adaptive challenges. It is critical that institutions invest in their presidents and senior leaders. Strong, thriving and sustainable institutions necessarily depend on strong, adaptive and sustainable leaders. The corporate sector realized long ago that one of the most valuable investments it can make in its key leaders is executive coaching.
To learn more about Executive Coaching, please contact Steve Titus or Shawn Hartman.
Academic Search recognizes that mission-critical challenges in higher education sometimes require an immediate interim appointment—followed later by a comprehensive search for a permanent appointment.
In such cases, Academic Search partners with the Registry for College and University Presidents to provide a seamless transition. The Registry excels at filling interim appointments in a very short time frame, from a large pool of fully vetted candidates. Together we can meet each of our institutional partners’ unique needs in making both interim and permanent appointments while offering cost savings, efficiencies of scale, and close collaboration between our two organizations. Our partnership with the Registry also helps to eliminate potential conflicts of interest that can arise when deciding on the timing of a permanent search.
To learn more about these services, please contact us.
In addition to the valuable insights provided by our consultants, third-party assessment instruments can provide additional data points for evaluating the strengths and shortcomings of prospective candidates. Academic Search has partnered with two organizations to provide assessments to our college and university boards and search committees: Gallup and Hogan. These organizations are leaders in the field of assessment with over 150 collective years of research and data on leadership, skills, and talents.
No hiring decision should be based solely on assessments, but these tools can provide excellent supplemental and complementary data about candidates. Assessments offer insights into candidates and how they may fit with a certain team or organizational culture, while also preparing a customized roadmap for transition and ongoing support for the selected executive. Many candidates are wary of assessments in the selection process, and we will work with search committees to communicate clearly both the rationale and the use of the instruments prior to interviews. Creating shared understanding about assessments and their usefulness to the search process is important for all parties involved.
At Academic Search, Shawn Hartman, our chief operating officer, has been specially trained on these instruments and would be more than happy to walk through the options with you and discuss the pros and cons of each.
An executive search isn’t finished when the perfect candidate is hired. Academic Search believes in partnerships that extend beyond hiring transactions to become longstanding, mutually beneficial relationships.
LEADERSHIP CONSULTANTS
With our unique focus on leadership development, Academic Search is invested in the success of the administrators whom we help to place in positions of leadership. We offer a range of coaching services to ensure that they are effective in their new roles.
Our leadership consultants draw from decades of personal executive experience in higher education to advise and guide newly hired administrators. As available and trusted confidants, our consultants work closely with campus administrators through in-person meetings, telephone sessions, e-mail questions, or video conferencing. Our consulting assignments can last anywhere from three months to a year or more, depending on the level of ongoing support desired by the partnering organization and the newly hired leader.
For first-time presidents and cabinet-level appointments, this customized partnership can prove to be invaluable as they navigate relationships with colleagues and governing boards—not to mention the expectations of the institution’s many constituents. We can build this customized post-hiring support into the initial search proposal so that is included in our professional services fee.
To learn more about leadership consulting as a proactive service to help administrators rise to their best potential, please contact Shawn Hartman.
Leadership transitions are significant in the life of any entity.
Academic Search believes that a leadership change represents a critical time for tending to the needs of boards, the campus community, senior leadership teams, the departing administrator, and of course the newly arriving leader. A clear transition strategy can significantly impact the success of the new administrator. We work with our partners to ensure that a plan is in place not only for the search process—but for the critical transition period as well.
Put simply, the goal for the unique transitional period is to help institutional and organizational leaders work effectively toward the smooth handoff of the baton from one leader to the next, to support a gracious and celebratory exit of the outgoing leader, and to prepare the campus community for the entrance and long-term success of a new leader.
To learn more about planning for the transition period, please contact Shawn Hartman.
Our commitment to building capacity through leadership transitions extends beyond our institutional and organizational partners to the candidates involved in our searches. We see our relationship with candidates not as transactional, but as a critical part of our leadership development mission.
