276: [Leadership Series] Avoid Being Sucked Into A Leadership Vacuum
Jul 1, 2025
Are you feeling overwhelmed in your academic role? You might be trapped in a leadership vacuum, where weak leadership above pulls you into taking on too much. This discussion reveals how mid-career academics can recognize and navigate these gaps, emphasizing the importance of setting boundaries. Learn strategies to protect your energy and maintain focus on your mission. Plus, discover a new program designed to support leaders and get a sneak peek at exciting upcoming writing topics!
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insights INSIGHT
Understanding Leadership Vacuums
A leadership vacuum occurs when upper admin lacks strong leadership skills or vision.
Competent middle managers end up filling these gaps, often without added compensation or power.
insights INSIGHT
Middle Management Vulnerability
Academic middle managers have high responsibility but little power over budgets or staffing.
This position makes them vulnerable to absorbing leadership roles left empty by weak admin.
volunteer_activism ADVICE
Set Clear Leadership Boundaries
Define and hold clear boundaries around your leadership role to protect your energy and focus.
Knowing exactly what tasks are yours helps avoid overextension and being pulled into extra duties.
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Are you constantly being asked to do more than your role requires because others around you aren’t stepping up? You might be getting pulled into a leadership vacuum.
In this final episode of the Leadership Series, I define what a leadership vacuum is and explain why so many mid-career academics—especially those in middle-management roles—get pulled into these gaps. Whether you’re a department chair, PI, or program director, it’s easy to start taking on responsibilities that aren’t technically yours, particularly when leadership above you is weak or absent. I share how to recognize the vacuum, why scholars are especially vulnerable to it, and, most importantly, how to set boundaries that preserve your energy, time, and mission-driven focus.
If you’ve ever felt overextended in your academic role, this episode is for you. Learn how to define your position and hold your boundaries with clarity and confidence.
Our 12-week Navigate: Your Writing Roadmap® program helps tenure-track womxn and nonbinary professors to publish their backlog of papers so that their voice can have the impact they know is possible. Get on the waitlist here!
Cathy’s book, Making Time to Write: How to Resist the Patriarchy and Take Control of Your Academic Career Through Writing is available in print! Learn how to build your career around your writing practice while shattering the myths of writing every day, accountability, and motivation, doing mindset work that’s going to reshape your writing,and changing academic culture one womxn and nonbinary professor at a time. Get your print copy today or order it for a friend here!
If you would like to hear more from Cathy for free, please subscribe to the weekly newsletter, In the Pipeline, at scholarsvoice.org. It’s a newsletter that she personally writes that goes out once a week with writing and publication tips, strategies, inspiration, book reviews and more.
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