The Coordinated Science Laboratory
National Center for Principled Leadership & Research Ethics

Principled Academic Leadership: Resources 2025-2026

Principled Academic Leadership: Resources 2025-2026

Greetings and welcome to the Principled Academic Leadership (PAL) program presented by the National Center for Principled Leadership & Research Ethics (NCPRE). Our goal is to support your growth as an academic leader. The program will be offered through online group Zoom sessions augmented by outside readings and your reflections and analyses.

NCPRE creates and shares resources to support better ethical and leadership practices in academic and other professional contexts. Leadership—and particularly ethical leadership—is central to creating a culture that establishes healthy and productive professional interactions. We equip you with evidence-based tools to support intentional leadership development and institutional integrity.

 
General Reference Materials:

Session One: Leadership in the Academic Environment

The academic environment presents unique challenges and opportunities for leadership — we explore what leaders need to consider in academia and introduce the Decision-Making Framework, a tool designed to improve your ability to evaluate and respond to situations ethically and intentionally.

 

Session Materials and Resources:

This particular clip features a faculty member named “Professor Major” having a conversation with a new Department Head on his first day.  As you watch the scene unfold and the behavior of the characters within it, we invite you to think about what is really happening in this interaction. Please consider the questions posed within the video and write some thoughts down in the journal we have asked you to maintain as part of the program.

Homework Assigned:

  • We invite you all to take a look through NCPRE's Leadership Collection. This library of resources has been developed over several years, built on the experiences and wisdom of our experts in the academic environment. The collection includes Quick Tips, Executive Briefings and Annotated Bibliographies, as well as many video interviews with our experts themselves sharing their thoughts on a variety of subjects. During our second session we will ask each of you to share a couple of the assets you found most interesting or useful.
  • Complete the attached Testing Yourself exercise. We will discuss these prompts and share responses in our next session.
  • Fill out the AUDiT Dashboard developed by NCPRE to help assess the health of your department. Please note that this is meant as a tool for thinking about your unit in a structured way, rather than a quantitative assessment. The end score is less important than the process of thinking through the strengths and challenges of your unit.
    • Start by putting a number in each cell - the more the cell describes your unit, the higher the number should be. In the green and red columns, scores run from 0 to 5; in the yellow column, it is 0 to 3. When you are finished, add up your green scores and subtract the totals from your yellow and red scores. We will be revisiting this tool throughout the course so please keep the original with your journal.

  • Please watch the demo video of the Critical Friends protocol to prepare for our next session (found in the Session Two Materials and Resources below).

Session Two: Critical Friends & Group Problem Solving

It’s easy to feel alone when taking on a leadership role and one of the most important aspects of a cohort-based program is being able to call upon a community of other leaders. This session introduces the Critical Friends protocol, a structured method for leveraging the power of your peers for solving difficult problems.

Session Materials and Resources:

This video depicts a staged meeting discussing a variation on the case study we addressed in the first cohort meeting, using a protocol created by the Annenberg Institute known as Critical Friends. We will discuss the protocol, its uses, and do an abbreviated Critical Friends session during our upcoming meeting.

Homework Assigned:

  • Continue to reflect upon and prepare to discuss the AUDiT that you filled out for your unit.
  • Participate in a Critical Friends session with other members of your cohort (groups of 4-6), using either a real or hypothetical situation.

  • Review the attached Conflict Self-Assessment document. We find that reflecting upon the questions within to be a useful tie-in for the upcoming session. We suggest that you take the time to fill out this assessment and keep it with your journal.

Session Three: Vibrant Academic Units

What characterizes a vibrant academic unit vs. a dysfunctional one? Learn indicators of unit health and how to build an approach for addressing challenges while managing your own reactions.

Session Materials and Resources:

Homework Assigned: 

  • Create a ONE MINUTE or shorter elevator pitch for your unit, based in its purpose and mission.
  • Seek  a book to support your professional development and growth interests.
  • Look over the attached And Stance exercise in advance, so we can  discuss and work on it together during the session

    • The And Stance is a powerful tool that grows out of work on influence and persuasion at the Harvard Project on Negotiation. The idea behind the And Stance is that the word 'but' is a stopper word in American English. The And Stance is the practice of substituting the word 'and' instead of 'but' (or 'however' and 'although')—without changing your message. We will be introducing and practicing this tool in more detail next session.

Session Four: Difficult Conversations and Personal Scripts

Whether you’re navigating complex team dynamics, managing interpersonal conflict, or simply trying to find a path forward in uncertain times, knowing how to manage difficult conversations is a necessary skill. This popular session provides a collection of immediately applicable tools and skills for improving your ability to manage difficult situations while staying true to your values.

Session Materials:

Leadership Collection Resources:

Homework Assigned:

  • Practice applying the And Stance in your everyday life. First, try to   go one week without using “but” in an email, instead restructuring the statement with “and” to align with others.   Then, try to go 24 hours without saying “but” at all. This is a very difficult and worthwhile exercise that helps make you aware of just how often you use stopper words and where you can change your approach.
  • Revisit your definition of leadership   from the beginning of the program and update it, as appropriate.
  • Watch the "Sorenson as an Ally" scenario below. Prepare to discuss it at the beginning of the next session.

  • This 8-minute scene follows the actions of PI Jules Sorenson when her lab manager, Loretta, approaches her with concerns about an encounter between one of their postdocs and two faculty members in the mailroom. While Jules is a successful and established lab leader, she is not the department head, and has no direct or formal authority over the faculty members.
  • Capture your reactions in your journal. Consider what elements from our programs relate to the scenario and how Jules Sorenson prepared for and navigated a difficult conversation with a colleague.

Session Five: Leading in Times of Change

Guest speaker, University of Illinois President Emeritus Robert Easter, shares his thoughts on leadership and change in the academic environment that he has gleaned across his long career in all levels of university leadership: department head, dean, provost, chancellor, and president. He is joined by Professor Nicholas Burbules, NCPRE Education Director, who brings a wealth of experience from the faculty perspective, including longtime leadership in university governance and policy.

Session Materials and Resources:

Homework Assigned:

  • Re-visit your definition of leadership  and reflect on your strengths; how will you play to them? What would you like to focus on going forward?  Record your thoughts in your journal.
  • Do you see a  paradigm shift  in your field or institution? How will your leadership help your colleagues prepare for or react to it?  Record your thoughts in your journal.
  • Read the attached case study, "Are You the Doormat?" to prepare for our upcoming session on Negotiation. We will be discussing this case in breakout sessions.

Session Six: Negotiation

Whether you’re working out the details for a collaboration or deciding where to go for lunch with colleagues, negotiations are all around us. In one of our most popular programs, we explore how negotiation skills can be used to enhance your problem-solving capabilities at work through influence, persuasion, and dealing with conflict.

Session Reference Materials:

Leadership Collection Resources:

 

Rob Rutenbar, Senior Vice Chancellor for Research at the University of Pittsburgh, talks about the use of data in discussions with decision-makers.

Homework Assigned:

  • Consider interactions you have that you now see as negotiations: what can do you do to improve your preparation for these conversations? Record them in your journal. 

  • Send us topics of difficult conversations around feedback you find challenging. We will use some of the suggested topics to shape our next discussion.

Session Seven: Giving/Receiving Feedback

Giving and receiving feedback is one of the most important skills to master in a collaborative environment. In this session, we review best practices and suggest practical steps for giving and receiving clear and honest feedback. We provide samples you can adapt for your own voice and situation.

Session Materials and Resources:

This video  shows a department head navigating a situation where a member of staff asks about her recent performance evaluation. We ask that you pay particular attention to how he steers the conversation and addresses her concerns. We will be discussing it and seeking your analysis of how the chair handles it during our session. In particular, please assess what good or bad feedback practices you see in this video.

 

A second  optional  video is available that shows the third point technique in giving feedback, demonstrated by Kendall Zoller in a role play. This advanced tool for giving feedback builds on the upcoming program and is available as a resource for you and will be briefly touched upon during the session.

Leadership Collection Resources: 

LC Section: Maintaining Processes for Managing Careers

LC Section: Handling Difficult Situations

Homework Assigned: 

  • Use your Critical Friends to work on difficult feedback situations, whether giving or receiving. (Feedback is a gift.)
  • Reflect on skills learned so far: practice them! Make notes about their usage in journal.
  • Revisit the Professor Major video below; we will open next session with a discussion of the scenario in the context of bullying.

Session Eight: Bully-proofing Academic Units

How can you address bad behavior and reinforce a positive working culture for your group? What do you do when you have a rogue personality in your environment? In this program, we unpack how bad actors twist the environment around them in their favor, and how to prevent them from dominating a unit.

Session Materials: 

 

Homework Assigned:

  • Review the second version of the Professor Major video below. Make note of your thoughts on what the department chair learned in this program. What changes did he make to the interaction and its outcome?
  • Meet in a group to develop a list of skills you’ve acquired through this cohort program that you see being applied in the second version of Professor Major. Be prepared to report at our next session.
  • Meet in a Critical Friends group: use an issue a member of your group is facing.  If you would like a case study to discuss, please contact us and we will provide one for you.

Meet Professor Major, Version 2 

 

Session Nine: Leading in Times of Uncertainty

Today’s world is full of volatility and uncertainty. In an adaptive program, we set aside space for open cohort-based discussions around challenges facing the academic environment and the core foundations you can fall back on as a leader.

Session Materials:

 None to note!

Homework

  • Use the attached capstone case study to develop a plan to address the scenario. Your task is to describe how to navigate the difficult process before you as effectively and constructively as possible. Each group will present their approach to the full cohort in a 5-minute informal presentation.
    • You are welcome to use slides, a document, or any other approach for making your presentation. We will have flip charts available in the room as well.
    • Be prepared to field questions from the NCPRE team and your peers following your presentation.
    • If you are unable to attend the final session, you are still encouraged to participate in preparing the capstone case with  your colleagues.
  • Review your journal and make notes about specific action you can take or plans for how you will continue your growth as a leader.

Session Ten: Capstone Case and Closing

Using skills built throughout the entire program, participants work in small groups to present approaches to a capstone case study to the entire cohort and reflect on what you’ve learned over the year.

Session Materials: