The Wargo Group
Leadership Development
Developing the Skills Before the Title
Helping current and future higher education leaders build the judgment, confidence, communication skills, and leadership capacity needed to lead effectively at the next level.
Let’s Talk About Your Leadership Journey
Executive Coaching | Emerging Leader Development | Academic Leadership Mentoring | Succession & Leadership Pipeline Development
Academic leaders are often promoted because they are excellent faculty members, clinicians, researchers, or administrators.
But leadership requires a different set of skills.
Suddenly, the work is about difficult conversations, competing priorities, organizational politics, culture, accountability, decision-making, and leading people who may have once been your peers.
Most leaders are expected to figure much of that out while already doing the job.
The Wargo Group provides individualized leadership development for current and future higher education leaders who want to grow intentionally, navigate complex situations with greater confidence, and prepare for the next level of leadership.
Executive Leadership Coaching
A confidential thought partner for leaders facing difficult decisions.
Available for:
Deans and Associate & Assistant Deans
Department chairs
Provosts and vice presidents
Emerging academic executives
New leaders transitioning into larger roles
Topics include:
Executive communication
Managing up
Difficult personnel situations
Conflict
Organizational culture
Decision-making
Accountability
Leading former peers
Managing competing priorities
Preparing for the next level of leadership
Institutions may also sponsor leadership development for high-potential faculty and administrators as part of succession planning and professional development.
A Different Kind of Leadership Development
This is not a generic leadership course.
The work is individualized around the situations, decisions, and challenges you are actually facing.
After serving as a professor, regional dean, interim dean, and dean, I bring both the perspective of someone who has led in higher education and the lessons that came from getting some things right—and learning others the hard way.
The goal is not to tell you how to lead.
It is to help you become the kind of leader people want to follow.
Let’s Talk About Your Leadership Journey
I’ve sat in the chair
I’ve spent decades in higher education as an assistant professor, associate professor, full professor, regional dean, interim dean, and dean.
I’ve led through difficult personnel issues, organizational change, competing priorities, accreditation pressures, enrollment challenges, budget constraints, culture concerns, and the everyday complexity of academic leadership.
I’ve also learned that leadership rarely unfolds exactly the way the textbooks say it should.
I’ve made difficult decisions.
I’ve made mistakes.
I’ve changed my mind.
I’ve learned from all of it.
That experience shapes the way I work with leaders today.
Not theory alone. Experience.
How we work
1. Listen
Understand where you are, what you’re facing, and where you want to grow.
2. Explore
Work through the decisions, challenges, relationships, and leadership patterns shaping your current situation.
3. Develop
Build practical strategies, stronger judgment, and leadership habits you can apply immediately.
No generic leadership formulas. No one-size-fits-all playbook.