Executive Leadership Coaching · Deans & Provosts · Regional Comprehensive Universities
I coach newly appointed deans and provosts through the transition that matters most.
500 Conversations
A new provost or dean has roughly 500 individual opportunities in their first year — in faculty senate meetings, hallway conversations, one-on-ones, open forums, and budget briefings — to show up, listen, and earn the trust of the institution they've been hired to lead.
Every one of those conversations is a choice. Show up or retreat. Absorb the heat or avoid it. Speak plainly or retreat into administrative language. The leaders who build lasting credibility make the same choice, over and over, before anyone is keeping score.
Culture is not built by memo. Trust is not established by strategic plan. Both are built face to face, one conversation at a time. That is what the first year is for — and it is what this work is about.
Why New Academic Leaders Struggle
In twenty-five years of academic leadership — as faculty member, department head, director, dean, and provost — I have watched talented people struggle in roles they were hired to lead. The reasons are almost always the same.
Faculty succeed through individual expertise and autonomy. Deans succeed by leading others — allocating resources, building teams, managing relationships across a college. Provosts succeed by shaping institutions at scale, with less direct control and far greater political complexity. Each step up requires not just new skills but a fundamental shift in identity. The habits and instincts that made you successful in the previous role will work against you in the new one if you don't examine them.
Under pressure, people default to mimicking leaders from their own experience. That's not always wrong. But borrowed leadership is fragile — it cracks when the situation doesn't match the template. The leaders who last are the ones who have done the harder work of finding their own authentic voice.
Too many people pursue the next role because they want the title, the authority, or the validation. A sustainable "why" has to be about the institution — its students, its employees, its stakeholders. Leaders who arrive for themselves eventually leave institutions worse than they found them.
The satisfaction you found in your own expertise and your own output — that source of energy is gone. In executive roles, your job is to create the conditions under which other people can be excellent. If you can't find genuine energy in others' successes, the role will drain you, and everyone around you will feel it.
Some leaders arrive already planning their next move. The initiatives they champion, the visibility they cultivate — it's more about their CV than about leaving a stronger institution behind. Faculty and staff recognize this quickly, and it destroys trust. The real work — closing a budget gap, developing people, building systems that outlast you — is what earns the next opportunity. Not a performance of impact. The actual thing.
The Engagement
My core engagement is a structured 12-month program built around the natural arc of a first year in a new role. The hard moments are predictable even when the specifics aren't — we work through them before they arrive, and in real time when they do.
I also work with leaders on shorter-term engagements focused on specific challenges — a budget crisis, a faculty governance conflict, a difficult personnel decision, or a leadership transition at any stage. If you're not sure what you need, a conversation is the right place to start.
Foundations
Before the institution defines you, we define you. This phase focuses on leadership identity — who you are, why you're here, and what the role actually requires. We examine what you're carrying from previous roles, what needs to be set aside, and what your authentic leadership voice looks like in this new context. We also work on reading the institution quickly and accurately: the political landscape, the relationships that matter, the early signals you should trust and the ones you shouldn't.
Navigating the Hard Moments
The first budget cycle. A difficult personnel decision. A faculty governance conflict. A cabinet that isn't working. These moments arrive on their own schedule in year one, and they're the moments that reveal and form a leader's character. This phase provides real-time coaching through specific challenges — not generic frameworks, but experienced judgment grounded in having navigated the same situations at multiple institutions.
Taking Stock
Year one ends. What did you learn about yourself as a leader? What did you get right, and what would you do differently? What does year two need to look like? This phase is a structured reflection and planning process that consolidates the growth of the first year and establishes a foundation for what comes next.
About Matt Cecil
I am currently serving as Interim Provost and Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside. I have held interim and permanent provost roles at three regional comprehensive universities — institutions enrolling between 4,000 and 16,000 students, facing the enrollment pressures, budget constraints, and workforce challenges that define this sector. I have closed budget shortfalls totaling more than $38 million, merged colleges and divisions, led institutions through COVID, managed presidential transitions, and built student success infrastructure from the ground up. This is not retrospective wisdom. It is what I am doing now.
I am also a published scholar. My three books from the University Press of Kansas examine how institutions build and protect their public identities under pressure — work that informs how I think about leadership, communication, and organizational culture.
I am not a generic executive coach. I am someone who has done this work, at this level, in this sector — and who has thought carefully about why some leaders thrive and others don't.
Let's Talk
I work with a small number of deans and provosts each year. Engagements are 12 months and begin at the start of a new appointment.
matt@500conversations.com