Institute of Coaching - Coaching

Wise Mind Decision-Making and The Power of Coaching in Higher Education During Turbulent Times

Rob Kramer — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 03:54:49 +0000

December 14, 2025

Abstract:

In today’s disrupted higher education landscape, leaders at every level are under pressure to make decisions in response to emergent challenges while also seeking to sustain their institution’s future^{^[1]}. Given the urgency and multiple lines of attack, many leaders seem to default to approaches they relied upon when crises hit^{^[2]}. However, old strategies are not enough and the complexity of the moment demands something different from leaders. They need to learn their way through this new situation. This may require them to test whether legacy structures are fit-for-purpose, deepen their understanding of changing stakeholder needs and wants, and revisit outdated success metrics.

In this context we explore how coaching can support leaders to navigate complexity and lead from their wise mind. “When the winds are howling and the storms are raging,” leaders can leverage coaching as a practical, high impact resource to sharpen timely decision-making and strengthen their inner compass. This allows space for them to build judgment, discernment, and wisdom that offers clarity now and creates value for the long-term.

For those tasked with steering institutions through uncertainty, coaching isn’t a luxury, nor something used to fix a poor leader. It’s not therapy or consulting^{^[3]}. Rather it’s a pragmatic leadership tool to expand the leader’s impact – helping to strengthen judgment, avoid legacy thinking, and help ensure decisions made today reflect both the needs of the moment and those of the future. It’s about building a leader’s capacity to navigate uncertainty with greater ease and driven by purpose and clarity. For those leaders drowning under the weight of decisions to be made and the expectations of others, partnership with a coach can be a lifeline. Coaching rewards the naturally curious and those open to learning, and helps leaders to question assumptions, sense new possibilities, and lead from the inside out.

With practical examples and accessible frameworks, we offer a compelling case for why coaching is an essential tool for higher education leaders navigating the volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity of these times in the global higher education sector.

The Weight of Today’s Decisions

In the early 1950s, higher education leaders in the U.S. found themselves leading under quiet siege, navigating the invisible pressures of McCarthyism. Robert Oppenheimer comes to mind. He led the Manhattan Project with great notoriety but was unmoored by political scrutiny and short-term decision-making that crept into the heart of academic life. A generation later, during the Vietnam War, leaders faced a new wave of unrest. Decisions were made in the face of campus protests, draft resistance, and calls to reimagine the role of higher education in society.

Like their predecessors, today’s university leaders at every level face both political and cultural firestorms that are emerging with less clarity and more stakeholder scrutiny, each demanding outcome that may collectively have contradictory outcomes. So, how might a leader strengthen both their ability to learn from the complexity to fuel wise decision-making capacity and lead with the vision, courage, and discernment necessary to inspire meaningful and timely change, sustaining institutional mission in the fierce intensity of today’s moments?

When Strengths Become Blind Spots

What is true is that higher education leaders today, for the most part, are incredibly competent. They are deeply analytical, expert communicators, and operationally skilled. They know how to navigate governance structures, budget constraints, and the ever-present tension between tradition and innovation in advancing education, research, and community engagement.

Yet, competence isn’t the same as wisdom. Being wise is to elevate beyond one’s knowledge, skills, and abilities and call on a more expansive level of thinking. Wisdom is not influenced by the urgent matter of the day, but rather it relies on leveraging a higher perspective, seeing the entire playing field, and evaluating decisions consciously. Psychologist Marsha Linehan, the creator of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, calls it having a “wise mind,” or the synthesis of one’s emotional and reasonable self.

Most leaders are rewarded for precision and steadiness, strengths essential for decision-making in more stable environments. These strengths can, paradoxically, become liabilities in times of accelerating change and complexity. Over time, familiar strategies, relationships, and routines can calcify into blind spots. Whether through well-worn narratives, over-attachment to cherished processes, or the sheer momentum of habit, the instinct to protect what leaders build can overshadow the imperative to reimagine or release them. Simply put, navigating complexity relies upon learning new leadership habits and behaviors.

Compounding the challenge, leaders today are often inundated by competing datasets, stakeholder demands, and consultant frameworks, alongside conflicting expectations from trustees, accreditors, donors, politicians, and governance bodies, not to mention public and media interest, and legal challenges. Seeking to deepen their understanding, what may start out as due diligence can quickly become a fog of inputs, obscuring the leader’s ability to see clearly. This blindness can lead to inertia and stalled or sub-optimal decisions. The new context for higher education leaders demands that they make wise decisions in a timely manner – decisions that challenge the status quo and embrace innovation. So, what might leaders do? What does it take to move from blind spot to breakthrough?

It takes more than smarts to lead wisely. It takes discernment, trust in oneself, and a deeper form of knowing. As Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard said^{^[4]}:

“I think leadership takes what I call a strong internal compass… When the winds are howling, and the storms are raging, and the sky is cloudy, so you have nothing to navigate by, a compass tells you where true North is... you have to rely on that compass.”

Coaching as a Catalyst for Wise Decision-Making

Higher education leaders are stepping down or being ousted for failing to meet the moment, while others are choosing not to step up to senior roles or switch institutions. In the midst of the relentless storms, how might these leaders enhance their capacity, capability, and courage to lead by drawing on what coaching can offer? Unlike traditional advisory or consulting roles, coaching can create a pause in the chaos, a space for the wise mind to surface. A coach is a strategic thinking partner who enhances the quality of a leader's reflection and decision-making, helping them achieve better outcomes than they could reach on their own. In doing so, coaching can become a catalyst for wise decision-making.

Coaching’s return on investment is clear, reaching impacts of more than seven times the outlay investment^{^[5]}. Professional coaching helps leaders produce better results and clearer decisions that are aligned with both their internal compass and the institutional mission. The process includes offering thoughtful questions, keen observations, and strategic insights, helping the leader “see” through the competing priorities, access their wisdom, and make better decisions; it provides greater focus and awareness of choices available to the leader.^{^[6]}

Coaching in Practice

Coaching is a highly validated process that maximizes performance and results by helping people focus, discover, and/or clarify:

where they are today, including hidden assumptions, emotional drivers, and blind spots;
where they want to go, with a vision rooted in today’s world and not yesterday’s metrics;
and how to get there ^{^[7]} with thoughtful, intentional actions.

For example, amid stakeholder pressure a coach may ask, “What needs your attention? How can you separate the truly important from the noisy urgent?”

Or, when leaders lean into default strengths a coach could invite curiosity, “What if that assumption no longer held true?”

A coach can be a gentle provocateur. “What are you protecting and at what cost?” Through this process, coaching helps leaders access their wise mind by

Spotting patterns they hadn’t detected earlier.
Challenging default strengths that no longer serve.
Discerning meaningful signals amid a flood of inputs.

In a world where leaders are pulled toward noise, coaching helps them listen for signals, enabling the leader to reflect, analyze, make choices and plans, follow through and evaluate, and provide feedback. For those leaders who are already asking deeper questions, coaching meets them at that very edge. It doesn't hand over answers. It cultivates the kind of inner spaciousness where better questions, and wiser answers, can emerge.

Next Steps: Identifying and Selecting a Coach

Like any important resource, finding the right leadership coach is vital. A common process is to ask trusted colleagues for a referral, then review the coach’s LinkedIn profile or website to assess relevant experience. It’s wise to meet with two or three candidates to gauge alignment in style, temperament, and goals.

A second option is to check with the institution’s faculty affairs office and/or human resources department. It is becoming more commonplace that these offices will have vetted and endorsed a handful of coaching providers for the university. Additionally, the leader’s professional associations may have recommendations. With a list of potential coaches in hand, it is still recommended to meet them first before making a choice.

Lastly, the internet is an option, albeit one that can be overwhelming. If going this route, look for providers that have extensive experience working within higher education and/or with clients from the sector. When conducting a search, focus on coaches who have graduated from an accredited coaching program and/or are accredited by a major coaching body to ensure quality and professionalism, such as the International Coaching Federation (ICF) or the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC).

Summary: Coaching as a Leadership Asset

Higher education leaders are navigating complexity unlike any generation before them. The stakes are high, timelines constrained, and the outcomes have a lasting impact. The need for wise decision-making is constant in the new normal of higher education. Coaching is more than a nice-to-have or a professional benefit, it is a strategic leadership support system. A space for the wise mind to emerge, a catalyst for wiser decisions that align the needs of the moment with institutional goals, and a way for leaders to stay true to their internal compass in these turbulent times.

Authors:

- Archana Bharathan, Director of Outcomes, Columbia Business School
- Rob Kramer, Senior Advisor to the Provost, Southern Oregon University
- Megan Akatu, Founder, Megan Akatu Coaching & Culture
- Wendy M. Purcell, Rutgers School of Public Health, Rutgers University

^{^[1]} Deloitte. (2024). 2025 US higher education trends: Navigating disruption while shaping the future. Deloitte Insights. https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/industry/public-sector/2025-us-higher-education-trends.html

^{^[2]} Pucciarelli, F., & Kaplan, A. (2016). Competition and strategy in higher education: Managing complexity and uncertainty. Business Horizons, 59(3), 311–320. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bushor.2016.01.003

^{^[3]} Maltbia, T. E., Marsick, V. J., & Ghosh, R. (2014). Executive and Organizational Coaching: A Review of Insights Drawn From Literature to Inform HRD Practice. Advances in Developing Human Resources, 16(2), 161-183. https://doi-org.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/10.1177/1523422313520474 (Original work published 2014)

^{^[4]} Fiorina, C. (2003, February 11). Technology, business and our way of life: What’s next? Hewlett-Packard. https://www.hp.com/hpinfo/execteam/speeches/fiorina/churchill03.html

^{^[5]} Retrieved from https://coachhub.io/en/, October 2021; Florko, L. (2022, June 29). Coaching Employees Like It’s a Sport: Lessons from original coaches. Psychology Today; Joesten, N. (2012, January 30). Forbes.com reports on huge ROI’s for executive coaching [Web blog post].

^{^[6]} Adapted from International Coach Federation. Retrieved from http://www.coachfederation.org/

^{^[7]} Kramer, Rob. Stealth Coaching: A Roadmap to develop Independent Thinkers, Proactive Problem Solvers, and Exceptional Leaders. (Luminare Press: Eugene, OR). 2020.

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Blog

Living and Leading with Curiosity: A True Story of Discovery, Transformation, and Growth — How Curiosity Leads to Personal and Professional Success

Danad t Deek — Wed, 27 Aug 2025 15:03:48 +0000

Summary:

What is your relationship with change and otherness? How often do you revisit your beliefs? How included do you feel and you think you make others feel? How do you manage to stay curious despite your experience, knowledge, and success? Do you see other coaches as competitors or as allies? What coaching/leadership legacy are you building for the world?

Jose M. Romero will do a deep dive into his brand new leadership book to inspire the IOC coaching community in a session where he will open up to share his relevant lived experiences around the world and answer your meaningful questions without filter in the Q&A section.

Immerse in the real story of the exciting, thriving, challenging, and purposeful life of a young professional global coach who has built his coaching identity & a name in the industry by transforming his weaknesses into strength, based on the pursuit of cross-cultural experiences and constant exposure to difference.

As coaches we know that getting out of our comfort zone is the foundation for growth. Yet, fear to change, ego, and lack of humility to challenge our own thinking and beliefs by embracing perspectives that may initially feel opposite to ours, are barriers we all face due to our human biases and temporary insecurities.

In these kinds of situations, curiosity can be our biggest asset: That magic ingredient that keeps us alive, reminds us that there are many things we still do not know, helps us be the change we want to see, and makes us more collaborative leaders. Becoming a well rounded and happy chief master coach requires humility, a continuous learning mindset, and servant leadership skills to better serve our clients and all the people we influence daily through our work.

Dare to build your legacy on your own terms, the world needs you in your best and happiest version.

Takeaways for Participants:

Understanding how constant exposure to otherness makes coaches grow out of their comfort zone to sustain a curious and non-judgemental mindset, and become more inclusive leaders.
How to leverage the power of transformation and collaboration to build your own leadership legacy.
How to be coached and trained by the world's best coaches to become a Chief Master Coach certified in all these disciplines at once: Life Coaching, Executive Coaching, Team Coaching, Strategic Business Coaching, and Coaching Culture.

Author:

Romero, Jose

Content Type:

Video

Coaching Specialty:

Career & Professional Development Coaching, Executive & Leadership Coaching

Resource Topics:

Webinar, Mindset, Chief Master Coach, Coaching

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Webinar

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Webinar: Stuck in the Story: Exploring Forgiveness in Coaching Practice

Sue Brennick Babin — Thu, 20 Jul 2023 17:50:42 +0000

Author:

Brathwaite, Migdalia

Summary:

What do you do when clients find themselves stuck in a painful story? Exploring forgiveness as a path for getting unstuck and progressing towards goals can often be overlooked. In a world of irreconcilable differences, hidden offenses and overt unforgiveness, discovering how to move clients beyond blocks can prove to be a daunting task.

Forgiveness is not only about actionizing the self to restore inner balance, it can also liberate clients toward a personal evolution. When forgiveness is overlooked as an option for self-care the result can be unattended sorrow and deficits in worthiness. Incorporating forgiveness into coaching practices can mobilize individuals from being stuck by increasing awareness, personal responsibility, and self-belief. When individuals become unhinged from a limiting story, possibilities appear to be boundless.

This webinar is designed to introduce forgiveness as a tool to be used in coaching practices. It will aid in identifying, and unraveling personal forgiveness rules, and reveal how forgiveness can defuse barriers toward achieving success in accomplishing coaching goals. Join Migdalia Brathwaite, a behavioral health professional, international forgiveness educator and creative life strategist in discovering the value of incorporating forgiveness into coaching practices.

Content Type:

Video

Coaching Specialty:

Leadership, Internal/Organizational Coaching, Health / Well-being, Positive Psychology, Life Coaching

Resource Topics:

Forgiveness, Coaching, Webinar

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Webinar

The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever

IOC Admin — Thu, 29 Jun 2023 06:10:05 +0000

Author:

Stanier, Michael Bungay

Summary:

In Michael Bungay Stanier's The Coaching Habit, coaching becomes a regular, informal part of your day so managers and their teams can work less hard and have more impact.

Drawing on years of experience training more than 10,000 busy managers from around the globe in practical, everyday coaching skills, Bungay Stanier reveals how to unlock your peoples' potential. He unpacks seven essential coaching questions to demonstrate how--by saying less and asking more--you can develop coaching methods that produce great results.

Get straight to the point in any conversation with The Kickstart Question
Stay on track during any interaction with The Awe Question
Save hours of time for yourself with The Lazy Question, and hours of time for others with The Strategic Question
Get to the heart of any interpersonal or external challenge with The Focus Question and The Foundation Question
Finally ensure others find your coaching as beneficial as you do with The Learning Question

A fresh innovative take on the traditional how-to manual, the book combines insider information with research based in neuroscience and behavioural economics, together with interactive training tools to turn practical advice into practiced habits. Witty and conversational, The Coaching Habit takes your work--and your workplace--from good to great.

Buy on Amazon

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Book Summary

Coaching Specialty:

Life Coaching

Resource Topics:

Coaching

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Book

Positive Provocation: 25 Questions to Elevate Your Coaching Practice

IOC Admin — Fri, 12 May 2023 04:07:11 +0000

Author:

Biswas-Diener, Robert

Summary:

Hone your skills and strengthen your practice with this series of twenty-five fresh and provocative questions for reflection that challenge the conventional wisdom in the coaching profession.

Like any established profession, coaching is full of unexamined assumptions. These need to be regularly questioned and tested to keep the profession vital and valuable. Coaches need to engage in the same kind of scrutiny and self-examination that offers such powerful benefits to their clients.

In Positive Provocation, coaching thought leader Robert Biswas-Diener asks a series of twenty-five provocative and sometimes playful questions that take a fresh look at some of coaching’s most cherished beliefs. What if coaches had agendas? Why are ethics so boring? What’s so great about interrupting? Can we trust eureka moments? What if we used less empathy?

This is not an attack on the coaching profession—Biswas-Diener writes with a light, conversational, and often humorous touch. These are positive provocations, meant to stimulate your curiosity, engage you with the latest research, and invite you to see your practice with new eyes.

Biswas-Diener covers philosophies of coaching, communicating with clients, common coaching concepts, coaching interventions, and a big final provocation: should coaching be informed by science? This book will give you a richer understanding of the coaching process, make you more articulate about your own beliefs, and allow you to feel more engaged with the craft.

Buy on Amazon

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Book Summary

Coaching Specialty:

Positive Psychology, Life Coaching

Resource Topics:

Coaching Basics, Coaching, Coaching Culture

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Coaching with Lacan slide presentation

Sue Brennick Babin — Wed, 03 May 2023 21:18:07 +0000

Summary:

Slide Presentation to accompany Leslie Goldenberg's webinar Coaching with Lacan.

Author:

Goldenberg, Leslie

Content Type:

Presentation Slide

Coaching Specialty:

Life Coaching

Resource Topics:

Lacanian theory, Coaching

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Webinar: Coaching with Lacan

Sue Brennick Babin — Wed, 03 May 2023 21:12:29 +0000

Author:

Goldenberg, Leslie

Summary:

This webinar will introduce practical approaches to coaching inspired by the work of Jacques Lacan. Following a brief introduction to Lacan and his insights on the nature of human subjectivity, this session will focus on ways of applying two key elements of the Lacanian field: Attending to the unique patterns in a client’s speech and intervening as a coach through the use of language Exploring the nature and importance of desire, in both client and coach While the body of Lacanian theory is vast and has a reputation for being dense and difficult to understand, the aim of this session will be to distill a few kernels to stimulate practitioners’ thinking and offer ideas that can be immediately applied. This webinar will be useful even for those who have never previously heard of Lacan.

Content Type:

Video

Coaching Specialty:

Life Coaching

Resource Topics:

Lacanian theory, Coaching, Webinar

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Webinar

Are You (and Your Clients) Solving the Right Problems? Resources

Sue Brennick Babin — Wed, 05 Apr 2023 20:08:34 +0000

Summary:

Resources to accompany Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg's webinar: Are You (and Your Clients) Solving the Right Problems?

Author:

Wedell-Wedellsborg, Thomas

Content Type:

Presentation Slide

Coaching Specialty:

Race Equity and Inclusion, Leadership, Internal/Organizational Coaching, Health / Well-being, Life Coaching

Resource Topics:

Coaching, Reframing Method

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Webinar: Are You (and Your Clients) Solving the Right Problems?

Sue Brennick Babin — Wed, 05 Apr 2023 19:53:57 +0000

Author:

Wedell-Wedellsborg, Thomas

Summary:

A crucial aspect of successful coaching is to understand what problem the client is really facing - which is rarely the same problem that the client thinks it is. In this webinar, Harvard Business Press author Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg will share the method from his latest book, "What's Your Problem", showing how you can quickly and effectively work with clients (and yourself) to understand if you are solving the right problems. A key concept is the distinction between analyzing a problem, and then fully reframing it, providing a completely new perspective. The session includes five specific questioning strategies you can use to elicit new framings of a problem, giving you a powerful, systematic process for creating breakthroughs with both clients and your own challenges. Thomas's book "What's Your Problem" was recommended by Adam Grant, Amy Edmondson, and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. It has been translated in 14 languages, and his reframing method has been used by companies like Microsoft, Citigroup, Cisco, AMEX, Time Warner, and The United Nations.

Content Type:

Video

Coaching Specialty:

Race Equity and Inclusion, Leadership, Internal/Organizational Coaching, Health / Well-being, Life Coaching

Resource Topics:

Coaching, Reframing Method, Webinar

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Webinar

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Webinar: The Unspoken Rules Of Early Career Success

Sue Brennick Babin — Wed, 22 Mar 2023 18:44:30 +0000

Author:

Ng, Gorick

Summary:

Join Harvard career adviser and Wall Street Journal Bestselling Author Gorick Ng for a webinar on the hidden career maneuvers of the most successful early career professionals—and what you can do as coaches to help your clients start their careers off right. Based on over 500 interviews with professionals across geographies, industries, and job types, The Unspoken Rules is now used for employee and manager training and diversity and inclusion at companies such as Aon, GE, IBM, Kirkland & Ellis, Google, and others. It is also used by programs such as Questbridge, Leadership Enterprise for a Diverse America, Africa.com, and others. Harvard Business School has also given Gorick’s book to every MBA student to give them an edge in the labor market. Gorick Ng is the Wall Street Journal Bestselling Author of The Unspoken Rules: Secrets to Starting Your Career Off Right, a book published by Harvard Business Review Press named by Thinkers50 as one of the top 10 management books of 2022.

www.gorick.com

Content Type:

Video

Coaching Specialty:

Race Equity and Inclusion, Leadership, Internal/Organizational Coaching

Resource Topics:

Diversity, Career Coaching, Coaching, Webinar

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Webinar

Institute of Coaching - Coaching

Wise Mind Decision-Making and The Power of Coaching in Higher Education During Turbulent Times

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Living and Leading with Curiosity: A True Story of Discovery, Transformation, and Growth — How Curiosity Leads to Personal and Professional Success

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Webinar: Stuck in the Story: Exploring Forgiveness in Coaching Practice

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The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever

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Positive Provocation: 25 Questions to Elevate Your Coaching Practice

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Coaching with Lacan slide presentation

Webinar: Coaching with Lacan

Coaching Specialty:

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Webinar: Coaching with Lacan

Coaching with Lacan slide presentation

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Are You (and Your Clients) Solving the Right Problems? Resources

Webinar: Are You (and Your Clients) Solving the Right Problems?

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Webinar: Are You (and Your Clients) Solving the Right Problems?

What's Your Problem?: To Solve Your Toughest Problems, Change the Problems You Solve

Are You (and Your Clients) Solving the Right Problems? Resources

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Webinar: The Unspoken Rules Of Early Career Success

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