For a new leader, the first 30 days in the role are about establishing trust. Trust is built on consistency, compassion, competence, and communication. This checklist can help new vice presidents or managers assess their own skills and begin to set the groundwork for trust.

Higher education’s top leadership role has evolved and expanded—and today’s advancement leaders are finding partners in their presidents, chancellors, vice-chancellors, and rectors. Here, five pairs of leaders share how they work together with mutual trust and shared commitment to their institutions.

The average tenure for an advancement professional today is just five years. To keep staff on board, our workplaces need to be flexible, empathetic, inclusive, and transparent. Here, two researchers share what they’ve discovered about human-centered talent management and the key steps to retain staff: align talent to mission and values; engage the whole person; and recognize colleagues’ impact.  

Advancement professionals are diligently focusing on DEIB initiatives within their teams.  And more and more of them are beginning to look outward as well. Two advancement professionals with wide experience working in the DEIB space offer practical strategies to more effectively identify, involve, solicit, and steward alumni of color.

With the Great Resignation, many professionals find themselves leading as middle managers for the first time. They got there because they excelled in previous roles; however, many have not had the appropriate training to help them reach their potential as team leaders. Several newer managers share how they’ve navigated the transition to leadership, along with their best advice for those new in such roles.

What are advancement leaders doing to build better listening practices and improve their skills? How important is active, deeply engaged listening—not just when it comes to constituents, but when it comes to the internal workings of a team, department, or division? How critical are these habits to strengthening educational institutions?

In an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world, leadership stands out as one of the most important dimensions of any successful endeavor to transform lives and society through education. Leaders in advancement today must navigate high levels of uncertainty and ambiguity. What leadership requires now more than ever can be summarized in three interrelated domains: transparency, learning, and culture.

Logic alone rarely persuades people to act. An audience—whether it’s a committee, donors, colleagues, or leaders—has to trust you. The essential ingredients of this are craft, caring, and cause. Together, these three elements enhance people’s trust in your problem-solving skills, their belief in whether you have their best interest at heart, and—most important—whether they think you live up to their shared values.

How should development and alumni relations best work together? It’s an age-old question for advancement—more relevant now than ever, as institutions grapple with constant change. Ultimately, the fundraising cycle works best when it’s a shared responsibility: when both alumni relations and development teams work together to ensure the greatest potential for success.

Colleges and universities have been working on diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging for decades, but higher education leaders say the last two years have sparked a shift. The 2020 racial reckoning and Black Lives Matter movement, campus protests, and pandemic pressures have changed the conversation, expectations for, and nature of diversity leaders’ work. Here’s what advancement professionals should know about diversity leaders’ roles in higher education today—and the future of DEIB work for development.