Making a small effort to be more understanding and avoid being myopic on your own “busy” in September, will payback in a much happier and more effective year for senior leaders… no matter if they are extroverted or introverted, academic or administrative.

In September, it is unusually difficult to tell a colleague who is busy from one who is struggling, or from one who is quietly holding the place together. Everyone is visibly in motion: full calendars, late emails, meetings running back to back. From the outside, it all reads as full tilt, with very little nuance.

The obvious risk is that someone who needs support gets overlooked. The less obvious risk how lack of understanding harms connections between people.

When we stop appreciating others situations, conversations become transactional and motives may be misunderstood.

A delayed response starts to feel like indifference. Someone who cannot make a meeting appears disengaged. We begin forming assumptions about colleagues without really understanding what September looks like from their seat.

It matters particularly now because these are the same people we will soon need around the table to make decisions and support each other. Because, by October, the institution has its feet underneath it, and the adjustments level out and classes firm up. Then, forecasts become somewhat more reliable, and group challenges come to the forefront. Requests for supporting resources become harder to defer. Every conversation that ended with “let’s see how September goes” starts demanding an answer, usually with a clear action and a name attached to it.

Judgements begin to harden too. Who gets the benefit of the doubt, and who quietly stops getting it? Who gets additional resources, and who is expected to cope? Which problem is understood as structural, and which gets attributed to the person experiencing it?

Then Thanksgiving and reading week take two working weeks out of October, so five weeks of decisions get made in three.

Which means something important is happening before Snr. Leadership comes back together, and decisions are made. The quality of our teamwork will depend, in part, on how well we have maintained our understanding of and connection with one another through September.

Consider what September actually looks like from different seats around a university.

The President has almost no time to think. New expectations, public promises, and hard goals arrive when the institution knows the least. The Provost is unblocking other people’s decisions. Deans need answers on sections and hiring, Senate has restarted, and almost nothing in the queue started with the Provost.

A Dean is having the workload conversation deferred in April, during orientation, with a faculty council that could not meet in July. A Department Chair may have almost no room to move. By September, the timetable has already made many of their decisions, right down to which sections still have no instructor.

The Registrar is running add/drop, fee deadlines, and the enrolment count in the same three weeks. Almost every number the institution will rely on in October comes out of that office. The CFO is building a budget against numbers that are still moving, while telling people what they cannot afford after some have already made commitments to their teams.

The VP Research has fall grant deadlines and new faculty arriving at the same time, with a pipeline still described partly by intention because the applications have not been submitted. The VP Students has orientation, residence incidents, the first mental health surge of the year, and international students still arriving. The CIO gets every question created by the summer’s new systems, along with every process exception the institution never decided how to handle. What looks like a capacity problem is often a decision nobody made.

Almost none of this work is discretionary, but universities rarely appreciate that many don’t experience the same September. So, from another seat, It’s easy to misread the cause.

The Provost sees a delayed answer. The Registrar sees add/drop, fee deadlines, and the count.

The Dean sees Finance being cautious. The CFO sees a budget built on a number that is still moving.

The Chair sees hesitation. The Dean may simply be waiting for a body that has not yet met.

Everyone can be acting reasonably and still come away frustrated with one another.

That is how busyness threatens connection.

Misunderstanding has consequences. If I think you are slow when you are actually constrained, or disengaged when you are overwhelmed, I begin to change how I work with you. Perhaps I stop asking. Perhaps I work around you. Perhaps I become less generous in interpreting what you do. Small misunderstandings become small withdrawals, and those withdrawals matter when we eventually have to sit across from one another and make difficult choices.

One of the worst mistakes a university leadership team can make is to assume that academic independence makes a strong leadership team culture unnecessary.

They are not mutually exclusive. In fact, I think the opposite is true.

When people feel supported by the colleagues around the leadership table, they have more room to represent their own departments, faculties, and responsibilities with energy and integrity. They can argue hard for what matters without wondering whether disagreement will cost them trust. They can concede a point without weakening their position. They can ask for help without signalling that they cannot handle their job.

A strong leadership team culture does not require people to think alike, subordinate legitimate academic interests, or manufacture consensus where none exists. It creates the trust and understanding that allow strong, independent voices to work through real differences while preserving the relationships the institution depends upon.

Academic independence and a strong leadership team culture are not mutually exclusive. Done well, they reinforce one another.

That is why the erosion of connection during September is more consequential than it appears. The institution is about to ask these same people to reconcile competing priorities, allocate scarce resources, make decisions with incomplete information, and stand behind choices that will not make everyone happy.

Empathy tends to run short at exactly the moment we need more of it. The colleague who appears slow this month may actually be the person with the least room to move in the building. The unit that appears energetic may have three people quietly absorbing what the system will not, one of whom is already looking for another job.

Typical university culture try to stay out of each others way. It is seen as a burden. It doesn’t have to.

September is one of the few times when fluency is found cheap and has incredible value.

Do not underestimate the control and camaraderie that comes when professionals feel understood and heard. The health of your connections will determine how well you meet challenges, innovate, and embrace change.

The challenges are coming either way. Better to face them together, understanding one another, with the connections between you authentic and informed.