- 7 hours ago
- 6 min read
April 11, 2026
Read Time - 4 minutes
“Integrity is choosing courage over comfort.” ~ Brené Brown
The call came from above.
I had to let go of an employee. I had no part in the decision. And honestly, I didn’t agree with it.
But it was my job that day to sit across from this person — with HR in the room — and deliver the news. It was professional, uncomfortable, and over quickly. After the HR rep left, I got up and walked down the hall.
Then I knocked on their door.
I wasn’t there to explain myself, or defend the institution, or process my own discomfort out loud. I just said something close to: I know you need some time. But I want you to know I’ll do what I can to support your next steps.
They were upset — understandably. They said they’d think about it. I left.
A week later they reached out. I served as a reference.
I never shared that I disagreed with the decision. I didn’t defend what had happened. I just wanted this person to know that despite everything, there were people who cared about them — and would do what they could to make sure they landed on their feet.
I can guess that general counsel and HR wouldn’t have advised that. And some of you may be thinking: that was a bad idea.
You’re not entirely wrong.
It was a risk. One I made based on my relationship with this person and my own sense of what kind of leader I want to be. It’s one of the ways I try to stay true to myself in a role that can quietly strip that out of you.
I’ve had to let someone go more than once. And whether you agree with the outcome or not — it doesn’t get easier. These are the kinds of situations that have kept me up at night.
Which brings us to a question every academic leader faces eventually:
What do you do when your values and your role pull in opposite directions?
This Is the Job, Not a Failure of Character
Campus leaders at every level sit at a complicated intersection — accountable upward to administrators or a board who needs decisions executed, and downward to faculty and staff who expect advocacy.
Right now, those directions are colliding more than usual.
Difficult decisions about budgets, programs, and institutional values are trickling down, and somewhere on your campus a leader is being asked to carry a decision they didn’t make, may not agree with, and can’t fully explain.
Here’s what I want to say plainly: values conflicts in leadership are not a sign that you chose the wrong role or that your institution is irredeemably broken.
They are a structural feature of leadership in complex organizations.
The question was never whether you’d face them. The question is whether you have a way to navigate them without losing yourself in the process.
It helps to name what type of conflict you’re actually in. Most fall into one of three categories:
Values vs. policy — you believe in something the institution prohibits, deprioritizes, or ignores.
Values vs. role expectations — the job requires you to be the messenger, enforcer, or public face of decisions made above you.
Values vs. your people — doing right by the institution means disappointing someone you genuinely care about.
Most hard leadership moments are some combination of all three. Naming which one — or which ones — you’re dealing with is often the first step toward navigating it with some integrity intact.
How Academic Leaders Navigate Values Conflicts
1. Find Your Lane Inside the Decision
You often can’t change what the institution decides. But you almost always control something about how you carry it out — and that’s not a small thing.
Finding your lane isn’t about softening hard news or making excuses for bad policy. It’s about asking: within the constraints of what I have to do here, what’s still mine to decide?
Sometimes it looks like how you communicate — taking the time to have a real conversation instead of sending an email. Sometimes it’s what you say afterward: a check-in a week later, a reference letter, an honest conversation about next steps, to make sure the person in front of you knows they’re seen.
None of those things change the institutional decision. But they’re yours to make. The walk down the hall was mine. The institution didn’t ask for it. But I would have carried that moment very differently if I hadn’t made it.
2. Watch for the Drift — Before It Becomes Who You Are
You’ve probably seen it. An academic administrator whose conversations feel procedural. They reference policy more than people. They’re efficient, but not present. The human side of leadership is all but gone, replaced by a kind of bureaucratic numbness where people are names on spreadsheets, positions are resources to reallocate, and decisions that affect real lives are items on a to-do list.
Most of them didn’t start that way. What happened was slow. A series of small accommodations, each one feeling reasonable in the moment: this situation is unusual, I can do more good by staying, this isn’t the hill worth dying on. Those aren’t wrong thoughts. The problem is when they stop being conscious choices and become default settings — when you stop asking the question and just execute.
Ask yourself periodically: When did I last push back on something I disagreed with? Am I making excuses for decisions I’d have criticized five years ago? Do I still see the people in my decisions as people?
3. Know Your Threshold Before You’re Standing at It
If you find yourself in values conflict not occasionally but frequently — if the gap between what you believe and what the role requires has become the norm rather than the exception — that’s a signal worth taking seriously. The question shifts from how do I navigate this? to something harder: At what point does staying in this role cost more than I’m willing to pay?
This isn’t about leaving every time things get difficult. Discomfort is part of leadership development. But there’s a difference between discomfort and erosion. You don’t have to answer this publicly. But answer it privately, honestly, and before the pressure is on. What would it take for you to step back? What’s the version of this role you can no longer live with? Knowing your threshold isn’t pessimistic. It’s clarifying.
And in a moment when institutions are being asked to make decisions that test their own stated values, it’s not a hypothetical question anymore.
The Bottom Line
We are in a genuinely difficult moment in higher education right now. Decisions are being made — some inside your institution, some forced upon it from the outside — and the job is asking you to carry them forward with your name on them. That’s not going away anytime soon.
What you can control is who you are inside it.
Five years from now, you won’t remember every budget line or policy memo.
But you will remember how you treated people in the hard moments. Whether you knocked on the door or walked past it. Whether you raised the question when there was still time to raise it. Whether you stayed present when it would have been easier to be procedural.
Those are the things that determine whether you can look back at this season of leadership without regret — not ashamed of the decisions you had to make, even the ones you didn’t choose, because you made them as yourself. With dignity. With your integrity intact.
That’s what staying true to yourself means. You’re not going to agree with everything. Or win every battle. But carry yourself in a way that — five years from now — you recognize the person who made those calls.
Try This Before Friday
Think of a decision you’re currently carrying — or one you know is coming — that puts you in some tension with your own values. Set aside 10 minutes and ask: what’s in my lane here?
How do I communicate this — and does the setting, timing, or format reflect care for the person receiving it? What can I say that’s honest without undermining the decision? Is there a follow-up I can offer — a check-in, a resource, a conversation when they’re ready? What would make this feel more human for the person on the other side, even if the outcome doesn’t change?
Thanks for reading. See you next Saturday.
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