One cloudy morning last March, an associate dean for faculty affairs booted up her laptop for a standing meeting. “Elaine” (a pseudonym) was leading an ambitious new project — a core pillar in the college’s strategic plan — to build a stronger faculty by improving hiring, retention, and professional development. The provost had publicly tasked her with “leading the charge,” and campus messaging was clear: This is “Elaine’s initiative.” But there was a catch.
While responsibility for progress rested with her, decision-making authority did not. So she organized the meetings, gathered benchmarking data, aligned timelines with hiring cycles, and ensured consistent communication. But all the real changes — every proposed investment, every new fellowship, every policy change about onboarding or evaluation — were subject to approval by leaders higher up the ladder.
And so, predictably, momentum stalled:
- A proposed faculty-success program for early-career hires needed just $3,000 in seed funding — but the finance office required additional justification.
- A revised mentoring structure had broad faculty support — but HR wanted to vet it for compliance.
- A coordinated faculty-recruitment toolkit was supposed to roll out last semester — but the necessary policy shifts remain unapproved by senior administrators.
- Meanwhile, faculty members began to grumble: “Where’s the follow-through?” and “Is this just more lip service?”
Elaine found herself (and yes, these details are factual, with only the associate dean’s name changed) stuck on familiar ground as a midlevel manager: accountable and visible, yet unable to move the procedural and budgetary levers that would bring meaningful change.
Responsibility without authority. Elaine’s situation is emblematic of a widespread leadership paradox in higher education, particularly for administrators in midlevel roles — associate deans, directors, center leads — that sit at the critical intersection of strategy and operations.
On the one hand, middle managers are vital to the functioning of the modern campus. They lead complex initiatives, align diverse stakeholders, and shepherd change across a varied mix of departments and offices. On the other hand, their positions do not come with any real power to act. They are unable to approve budgets, set policy, or enforce timelines.
This mismatch — in which responsibility is conferred without authority — creates a perfect storm of frustration, inefficiency, and in many cases, burnout.
The structural ambiguity of these roles has real consequences. Good ideas stall, not because of poor leadership, but because of invisible organizational bottlenecks. Innovation is delayed. Strategic goals are undercut. Midlevel leaders, despite their vision and talent, end up acting more as bureaucrats than changemakers. Over time, institutions risk losing strong leaders from the management pipeline who feel disempowered, undermined, or pigeonholed into thankless roles.
When a lack of authority sets up middle managers to fail, the message becomes clear: Ambition is risky, and initiative is often unrewarded. That has a chilling effect on leadership pipelines, particularly for women and professionals of color who disproportionately occupy these roles. Moreover, the failure to empower middle managers threatens institutional agility, innovation, and continuity. When organizational charts do not match the realities of responsibility and decision-making, strategic goals become aspirational rather than actionable.
The invisibility of this paradox also limits accountability at the senior level. Cabinet leaders may assume that progress on a certain project is stalled due to poor execution, when in fact, the very people they tasked with moving it forward are waiting on approvals that remain indefinitely delayed. Without structural clarity and timely responsiveness from senior leadership, it’s all too easy for an ambitious venture to lose momentum and credibility.
How to Begin Fixing the System
Resolving this problem is not just a matter of rewriting job descriptions. It will require an intentional recalibration of how authority and responsibility are distributed on your campus. Below are six key recommendations:
1. Conduct role-clarity audits. Senior leaders should regularly (e.g., once a year) review the scope of midlevel leadership positions to ensure that the level of responsibility assigned to a role is matched by a commensurate level of authority. Where gaps exist, specific lines of decision-making need to be clarified. This process can also highlight systemic inefficiencies and build stronger alignment across organizational tiers. While such audits need not be time-intensive — often completed within a few hours per position — they offer substantial returns in organizational clarity and efficiency
2. Delegate decision-making authority strategically. Cabinet-level leaders must be willing to relinquish some budgetary and policy authority — in targeted areas — to trusted middle managers, especially when a new program or campaign requires nimble decision-making. Delegation not only empowers midlevel managers but reduces administrative bottlenecks and boosts institutional responsiveness.
3. Set clear deadlines for review and response. When final approval of something must go to senior leadership, establish a structured schedule for the decision. Middle managers need to be able to communicate realistic timelines to their teams and stakeholders, with a clear endpoint in sight. Ambiguity breeds mistrust and disillusionment. Senior leaders should model timely decision-making.
4. Formally recognize midlevel leadership roles. Too often, the leadership labor of program directors and associate deans goes unnoticed. Every college should formalize its leadership pipelines and offer recognition — both symbolic and material — for the contributions made by middle managers. That might include professional-development funding, opportunities to co-chair a major project with a senior leader, or pathways to promotion and advancement.
5. Keep the conversation flowing among all leaders. Midlevel administrators need regular, structured communication with senior leadership — not just for reporting, but for collaborative problem-solving. Such routine dialogues can improve mutual understanding, create space for surfacing organizational friction points, and reinforce shared accountability.
6. Develop a culture that rewards administrative initiative. Senior leaders must ask themselves: Are we cultivating a management culture in which middle managers feel trusted and empowered to lead? That requires intentional modeling — saying yes more than no, creating space for experimentation, accepting the blame when the experiment falls short, and being clear when decisions are shared versus retained.
Don’t let this happen on your watch. We’ve all seen the fallout of responsibility without authority: stalled projects, campus grumbling, and middle managers “waiting for approval” and doing damage control when they aren’t at fault for the delays. Leadership is not just about titles and org charts; it is about enabling people to move work forward with purpose and clarity. When midlevel leaders are set up to succeed — trusted with real decision-making power, supported in their efforts, and recognized for their labor — the institution as a whole thrives.
Don’t let another initiative die on the vine because a talented, motivated associate dean was denied the tools to lead. Don’t let your institution’s credibility suffer because decisions linger unmade. And most importantly, don’t let leadership become a burden that burns out those most willing to carry it.
Responsibility and authority must go hand in hand. Anything less isn’t just inefficient — it’s unsustainable.
