No matter whether the role is department chair, as it is called in North America, or head of department, the workload is the same. Much of it happens out of sight, underground, as it were, like the roots of a mango tree, quietly holding up the branches, leaves and fruit. Leadership courses may help but they alone rarely prepare you for the reality, which helps explain why the role attracts respect, sympathy and avoidance in equal measure.
Many faculty believe that becoming a chair slows down research, and this belief shapes how the role is perceived and why many hesitate to take it on. These concerns reflect pressures related to workload, time and institutional reward systems. However, they do not tell the whole story because many chairs maintain active research programmes despite the demands of leadership.
Becoming a chair and being a chair are not the same thing. Both can be positive and meaningful experiences if you accept the role with openness. Becoming a chair is learning to lead and solve complexity, standing between departmental colleagues and executing university policies and procedures. Being a good chair means accepting that you will make mistakes and that growth often comes through moments of failure. It is also being a good mediator between senior administrators, colleagues and students. Perhaps the hardest part is dealing with HR issues.
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Although often seen as middle management, the chair role is a leadership apprenticeship that involves working with budgets, policy, risk and strategy, and building systems that last beyond individuals. It involves documentation, shared leadership and succession planning. On paper, there are a lot of administrative tasks, including timetables, staffing plans, meetings and policy interpretation. In practice, chairship sits at the intersection of management and care. This work carries emotional weight, shaped by constant trade-offs and limited capacity, while much of the trust-building and concern for academic standards remains unseen.
During my chairship, I led a large interdisciplinary department supporting PhD, master’s and postgraduate programmes at a university of about 23,000 students across five campuses. I managed a core faculty of 22 alongside hundreds of seasonal teaching contract staff, balancing teaching, supervision, staffing and quality assurance. These responsibilities intensified during Covid-19 as the department shifted to online teaching, developed new academic and health guidelines and navigated institutional complexity. The unit operated as a traditional academic department as well as a service unit in teaching and learning.
Looking back on my time as chair, I want to share a few lessons for those considering the role and those already in it.
I took on the role with more self-doubt than confidence but I treated it as a call to service and a privilege to lead. Over time, I learned not to try to fix everything at once. The better approach was to slow down, listen and understand the people, culture and pressures involved. I realised that many challenges are human rather than technical, and that trust, context and patience matter more than leading and success or failure.
Small acts of leadership can have significant effects on others. Documenting decisions reduces confusion, explaining difficult choices maintains trust, and staying transparent and approachable encourages open conversations. Over time, everyday interactions rather than formal authority can build credibility among colleagues and the university.
Being a chair takes a lot of emotional and cognitive energy as you juggle people, programmes, contracts and institutional demands. The role quickly teaches you that authority doesn’t equal influence and power doesn’t buy trust, while credibility and care do. As with a mango tree, everyone admires the fruit but the roots do the hard work that keeps the whole thing standing.
Takeaways for aspiring academic chairs
Lead with understanding and care
- Listen before acting; trust grows through understanding, not speed.
- Seek a mentor early in the role; I suggest someone who was a former chair. In some places, this can be arranged through the provost’s office.
- Acknowledge the emotional and cognitive load of leading service-oriented units.
- Be aware that the chair role can change personal and professional relationships and may create distance between you and colleagues.
- Accept that you might be blamed for issues beyond your control because you sit between colleagues and senior leadership.
Manage pressure and complexity
- Expect pressure from all directions and plan how you will manage it. Reach out to counterparts and share challenges; seek mentor input.
- Avoid personalising setbacks; outcomes in complex systems are rarely about individual failure.
- Monitor your well-being. When you feel pressured seek help, take frequent breaks, do not take it personally, take long walks and pursue a hobby you like.
- Step down if the life or career impact is too great; this is responsible leadership.
Communicate and make firm decisions
- Communicate early and often, especially during change, even when messages are imperfect.
- Explain the reasoning behind decisions, not just the outcomes.
Build for continuity, not dependency
- Document decisions and use simple systems to support transparency and continuity.
- Build leadership capacity that will outlast your term.
- Identify potential successors and plan for transition early.
Chairship is not a minor administrative role but the institution’s critical leadership interface, where strategy meets practice and policy meets people. It operates like a line command in the military: at the front line of the academic mission, where leadership is tested through real-time decisions, judgement and trust. Effective chairship requires balancing ground-level realities with broader strategic perspective and aligning departmental needs with institutional priorities. Ultimately, it develops the capacity to navigate complexity, act wisely under constraint and lead with clarity and integrity.
Ben Kei Daniel is professor in artificial intelligence in education, research methodologies and edtech and director of the Centre for Teaching and Learning at the University of Northern British Columbia, Canada.
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