If youâre working in UK Higher Education, this academic year may feel more uncertain than most. Student recruitment is unpredictable, finances are tight, and expectations from leaders and students are higher than ever.
What kind of leadership makes the difference in times like these? Itâs not the âheroicâ type that promises control, but the steady, human qualities that help teams navigate ambiguity and act with confidence.
The UK Higher Education sector is facing a critical moment, defined by financial pressures and market volatility. In 2023/24, many universities reported major deficits, and in 2025 the situation intensified, with the Office for Students forecasting that 43% of institutions will operate at a deficit for the 2024/25 academic year, marking the third consecutive year of financial decline.
In response, universities have been making redundancies and restructures that transform the working and learning conditions in their institution.
In this context of pervasive uncertainty, a senior university executive recently voiced an understandable, yet impossible impulse: âI just want to remove all the ambiguity.â
However, if they were to try to achieve that, it would more likely lead to disaster than success.
Yet it speaks to something many senior leaders in Higher Education feel right now.
This longing for control, predictability, and stability is strong. But chasing that rainbow is as effective as trying to stop the wind from blowing.
Trying to erase uncertainty will fail.
Instead, the kind of leadership needed right now in UK Higher Education is leadership that embraces uncertainty and complexity rather than fighting it.
When leaders or boards try to remove ambiguity, they often resort to a heroic, top-down leadership style. This involves actions like:
In that attempt to be the ‘leader we all need,’ the effect is often the opposite of what’s intended: anxiety rises, effort is wasted, and people withdraw or burn out.
The organisation gets busier, not better. Effort goes into managing fear rather than making progress.
Why do we keep falling into these traps? Because we are coded to respond to the fantasy of certainty a heroic leader offers. However, universities are complex systems. There isnât a single lever to pull or a neat restructure that will make the mess go away. This is precisely why the traditional model of leadership doesn’t serve the current needs of UK Higher Education.
Complexity demands a different response.
One of our ThenSomehow colleagues, Pete Burden, created this great slide that sums it up pretty neatly. Many of us are stuck on the older, dominant model of leadership that doesnât serve us well.
Fortunately there is an alternative. Instead of trying to control, predict the future, or rely on a single hero, leaders in Higher Education can learn to live with ambiguity and uncertainty, discovering how to roll with unexpected emergence, and practise working with others on complex problems with interdependent solutions.
Instead of telling us what to do, leaders might help us redefine our identity, build networks, access our agency, lead ourselves.
Thatâs a kind of leadership we get excited about at ThenSomehow. Leadership that is about what people do, not who they are. This approach is less glorious and messier. It can feel slow and not to the point, but ultimately it is more effective.
It establishes a model for people operating together to work through uncertainty, to adapt and iterate. It doesnât give a single answer, it offers a way to solve a problem – any problem.
Leaders who make the difference do quieter, harder things. They mobilise others, rather than hoarding control. They:
This means trusting your teams.
It also means using practical tools like consent-based decision-making, (ie âCan you live with this?â rather than âDo you agree?â) which helps teams move, learn and adapt without pretending a certainty that doesnât exist.
A great example of this in action was a Dean of Faculty we worked with who resisted calls to adopt a more directive leadership approach, and instead found ways to make time to speak directly to anyone in the faculty that wanted to talk to him. 15-minute meetings and bullet-pointed agendas in advance helped them to prioritise the right topics. People felt listened to and valued. This relational approach worked really well, delivering an almost painless reorganisation.
It worked because it paid attention to identity and belonging.
In our work with HE institutions, weâve seen how staff identify most strongly with their immediate teams: the people they sit with, solve problems with, and rely on. When change ignores that local identity, it cuts to the core. Engagement drops, trust erodes, and fear dominates.
The same is true for students: success and failure are identity experiences, not just metrics. If leadership doesnât see the human layers – life stage, values, pressures – it will miss what actually drives behaviour and resilience.
This is disciplined, relational work: setting direction, holding space for honest conversation, naming tensions early, and giving capable people the autonomy to respond to what emerges.
And this might look slow or introspective – but for the people doing the work, itâs rooted in action: do something, see what happens, do something more, adjust, adapt, keep moving.
The message is clear: you are not passive in this system waiting to be led. You are struggling your way through it together. Itâs the opposite of performative certainty.
At the start of this academic year, we believe this is what is needed in UK Higher Education: steady presence, shared purpose, spaces to think and act, and the courage to lead with complexity rather than against it.
The kind of leadership that matters is collaborative, adaptive, and deeply human.
Steady, relational, adaptive leadership isnât about heroic fixes. Itâs about practical steps, small experiments, and learning together. Try these three actions, see what emerges, and keep moving.
Ask your team: âWhatâs unclear right now, and how can we act despite it?â Make space for multiple perspectives without rushing to a single answer. Acknowledging the ambiguity is the first step in disarming it. Explore what you collectively feel matters most.
To move initiatives forward while respecting different views, shift your teamâs question from âDo you agree?â, to âCan you live with this?â This allows for forward motion and continued learning, rather than freezing the team until a perfect consensus is reached.
Identify where colleagues seem to be working well or where they are stuck. Get curious about the local habits, behaviours, and shared identities that shape your context. What does this tell you about what might work locally, rather than what is being mandated from the top?
If you’d like help making sense of uncertainty in your organisation – with practical programmes that can help, we are always happy to have a chat. It might just shift something important.
At ThenSomehow we help universities and other HE organisations build emotional literacy, increase empathy, and help you see the world differently, giving you practical tools to shift the stuff thatâs stuck.
If youâd like to discuss how we can help your organisation develop leaders and perform better, get in touch here.
