Academic Leaders Are Now Sensemakers

In my work with academic leaders, I often notice that the pressure is not only about workload. It is about interpretation.

A policy changes. AI shifts what students can do. Staff raise questions about quality, fairness, workload, ethics, and trust. People want clarity, but the situation itself is still moving.

That is now a central part of academic leadership.

EDUCAUSE’s 2026 report on AI and higher education found that 94% of respondents had used AI tools for work within the previous six months, while only 54% said they were aware of policies and guidelines meant to guide that use.

Its 2026 Horizon Report also describes higher education as facing pressure around value, trust, and transformation, and identifies AI as reshaping trust in information, student-instructor relationships, teaching and instructional design, academic support, and assessment practices. These are not just technical changes. They are human changes.

When I coach leaders in academic settings, the question is rarely, “How do I have all the answers?”

It is more often:

• How do I think clearly when others are looking for certainty?

• How do I communicate without over-explaining?

• How do I hold standards and humanity together?

• How do I avoid passing my own pressure on to the people I lead?

This is where I think sensemaking has become one of the most important leadership capabilities in universities.

Sensemaking is the ability to pause, sort the noise, and help people understand what is important. It does not mean pretending that everything is clear. It means distinguishing between:

• What is known.

• What is still uncertain.

• What needs a decision.

• And what needs a better conversation.

That distinction plays a crucial role because academic environments are built around complexity. Research is uncertain. Learning is uncertain. Institutional priorities evolve. Good academic leadership is not about removing all ambiguity; it is about creating enough shared understanding that people can keep doing thoughtful work.

This is also why calm is not a soft skill.

When a leader can regulate their own response to pressure, others have more room to think. When a leader can name uncertainty without dramatising it, speculation reduces. When a leader can separate a temporary experiment from a permanent change, resistance often becomes easier to understand.

Recent wellbeing evidence makes this even more important. The Australian Universities Census on Staff Wellbeing surveyed nearly 11,500 staff from 42 universities and found that 44% of respondents were in very high-risk psychosocial safety environments, compared with national benchmarks of around 11–12%.

For me, that reinforces a simple point: academic leadership cannot only be about strategy, performance, or compliance. It also has to protect the conditions that make serious scholarly work possible, such as attention, judgement, trust, recovery, and honest conversation.

Coaching can help academic leaders notice how they respond under pressure, where they are carrying too much alone, and what kind of clarity their teams actually need from them.

Academic leaders do not need to have all the answers before they lead.

But they do need to help people find direction without pretending the situation is simpler than it is.

That is sensemaking.

And right now, it may be one of the most practical leadership skills universities need.

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