The future of higher education requires a new leadership playbook.
And I'm here to help you, your team, and your institution write one. As we work together, we’ll ensure that the changes you make are sustainable and that they help prepare you to meet the inevitable challenges your role or institution will face in the future.
Leadership has evolved. But the way higher education works has not.
Are you ready to explore a new perspective on higher education leadership for the 21st-century, one that challenges our field’s assumptions about success, productivity, and impact?
The standard operating procedure in higher ed is often at odds with true development and behavior change.
Having impact in higher ed is about developing people, changing our behaviors, and creating healthier norms.
We can’t continue to focus so heavily on “results, results, results!” in higher ed that those “results” come at the expense of the creation of a safe environment where belonging, experimentation, well-defined & healthy roles, and accountability are baked into the culture.
What it means to be a successful higher education leader is evolving, and it is clear that cultural and behavioral leadership norms that worked well in the past are no longer effective. Moreover, navigating the gap between past and present has created intractable tensions, undermining execution and leaving many higher education institutions stuck in a state of cultural inertia. This explains why so many institutions are slow, siloed, and densely hierarchical.
Many higher education institutions are suffering from a series of blind spots and are holding on to leadership behaviors that might have worked in the past but now stymie the talents of employees throughout their organizations.
Hi, I’m Jennifer.
Over the past 20 years, I’ve been seated on all sides of the table—the staff member, the faculty member, the administrator, the only woman on multiple leadership teams.
With all this experience, I know what it’s like to work in an environment where you feel seen, heard, and included . . . and what it’s like to work in an environment where you don’t.
I am passionate about serving higher ed leaders and their institutions in their cultural change efforts through coaching, training, and consulting so they can shift stuck states and address long-held cultural knots (“we’ve always done it this way”), open organizational healing capacities so they can move from being reactive to proactive, and achieve true transformation.
My perspective is at the nexus between interpersonal communication, design thinking, and organizational change, and I believe that better culture starts with better questions and conversations.
The suite of services at JSM are about higher education, reimagined.
Our signature programs help you make a deeper impact in higher education–whether you are an individual leader navigating the challenges of a current or new role, a team looking to improve their communication, or an institution who wants to be future-ready.
Individual
Through our Leadership Reset Intensive, Leadership Transition Intensive, or our Summer Institutes, you will have the opportunity to map out your individual journey of impact so you can move from feeling overwhelmed and reactive to empowered and strategic. Whether you are transitioning to a new leadership role or looking to make a greater impact in your current one, JSM can help you identify and develop the behaviors you need to have to be an effective and healthy leader.
Team
Through our Culture Design Accelerator, JSM can provide you with a process and roadmap that evaluates every element of your team culture—looking at what is working, what’s not, and how things can change for the better. Culture design is about creating the right environment so people can do their best work. Through a blend of coaching, consulting, and training services, JSM will support you and your team to create the right conditions and the right roles so you can engage your employees, improve communication and collaboration, and achieve greater results.
Institution
JSM offers a blend of coaching and consulting services to help higher ed institutions navigate mergers and integrations and build a succession planning pipeline or in-house leadership program so they are future-ready.
Want to learn more about how I can support you, your team, and/or your institution?
Let’s get on an introductory chat to discuss coaching and training options.