Leadership, Are You Listening? The Case for a Reverse Town Hall This Summer

The ideas that would change your institution likely already exist. Summer is when you can finally hear them.

I'm not typically one who writes about leadership. I leave that to the many coaches I respect and do it for a living. But if there's one crossover between what I do and what they do that I want to highlight, it's this.

This one is for the cabinet.

For the VPs of enrollment who inherited a system that's been limping for three cycles. For the CMOs who are being asked to prove return on channels they didn't pick. For the presidents watching yield soften and wondering where the real intelligence is hiding. For the provosts who keep hearing the same programs underperform and cannot get a straight answer as to why.

The answers are in your building. You're just not hearing them.

And it is very likely that it's not be because you don't want to. More often, it's because there is no opportunity.

The space between an admissions counselor or a marketing coordinator and the president's cabinet can feel like an abyss. There is no obvious bridge. No standing meeting. No open door that feels truly open. Most of the time, the distance is simply too wide for an idea to make the crossing intact.

But inside that abyss are ideas that could change your yield, your funnel, your retention. Ideas that are hiding there because the structure never gave them a way out.

This is a structural problem. And summer is the window to fix it.

The information already exists. It just doesn't travel.

Every enrollment and marketing team has people on staff who know exactly what's broken.

These people are sitting on insights that would sharpen yield, tighten the funnel and save money. The information exists. It just doesn't travel.

It gets filtered through a director, summarized for an AVP, softened for a dean, pared down for a cabinet report. By the time it reaches the VP of enrollment or the CMO, it's been sanded smooth. The edge that made it useful is gone.

You are reading reports that have been written to make someone else look good, not to make you smart.

Enter: the reverse town hall

The reverse town hall. Companies outside higher ed have been using it for a few years, often under names like listening tours or skip-level meetings, but all variations on the same idea: leadership goes looking for unfiltered information because the regular channels don't deliver it.

The setup is simple. Instead of leadership standing at the front of the room presenting the strategy and fielding questions at the end, the format flips.

Staff present. Leadership listens. That's it. That's the whole idea.

Picture it at your institution.

Four times a year, cabinet leadership sets aside 90-120 minutes. Staff from across enrollment, marketing, financial aid, student success, IT and anywhere else submit two or three ideas each. Not polished proposals. Not business cases. Ideas.

A handful get selected for each session. Each presenter gets 10 minutes. They walk leadership through what they're seeing, what they think would work and why.

Leadership asks questions.

Leadership takes notes.

Leadership does not counter, correct or pivot to what they were going to say next.

That last part is the hard part.

The format falls apart the moment a VP uses the time to explain why something won't work, why it was tried before or why it doesn't fit the strategic plan. The point is to hear what's happening at the level closest to students. The analysis comes later.

Why summer is the window

Summer is when higher ed actually changes.

The academic calendar slows down. Search committees wrap. New leaders onboard. Budgets get finalized. Staff have enough breathing room to prepare something thoughtful. Cabinets have enough time to sit with what they hear. The next recruitment cycle hasn't started yet, which means there's still time to change it.

If you wait until fall, you will not do this. The admissions team will be in travel season. The marketing team will be deep in yield. IT will be firing-fighting class registration issues. The window closes fast.

The first session can happen in July. You have time to plan it in June. That's the whole runway, and it's sitting right in front of you.

What you will hear that you don't hear now

Things like:

• The reason a particular program's yield dropped that has nothing to do with the reason anyone has written up.

• The workaround a marketing coordinator built because the official process was taking six weeks.

• The question every admitted student's parent is asking that's nowhere in your communication flow.

• The reason a high school counselor stopped sending students your direction.

• The part of the visit experience where families check out and never come back.

• The search term your best program page is ranking for that nobody on the marketing team knows about.

None of that will show up in a dashboard. All of it is knowable in 10 minutes from the right person.

The benefit almost nobody talks about: retention

Staff retention.

The admissions counselors and marketing coordinators who leave higher ed rarely leave because of pay alone. (In my nearly 20 years, I have never once left for pay alone.)

They leave because they spent three years raising their hand and feeling like nothing landed. They leave because they watched the same problems repeat while their ideas went nowhere.

They leave because they stopped believing the work they did mattered to the people making decisions.

Ten minutes in front of a cabinet, twice a year, with their ideas taken seriously — that is not a small thing. That is a signal that what they see matters. That signal is worth more than most of what goes into a retention strategy.

How to run one without it turning into theater

A few things to get right if you try this this summer:

• Do not require polished slides. A person who spent three weeks building a deck is a person who just did another job on top of their job. Let them bring a page of notes and talk.

• Cross the silos. Let the marketing coordinator hear what the admissions counselor is seeing. Let IT hear what financial aid is hearing. Half the value of the format is in what the presenters learn about each other's work.

• Close the loop. If an idea gets implemented, credit the person who brought it. If an idea doesn't move forward, tell them why. Silence after the session is worse than not holding the session at all.

• Protect the format. The temptation to turn it into a presentation-back from leadership will be strong. Resist it. That is a different meeting.

But, the most important rule: Make it safe to present ideas that challenge current strategy. If the first person to suggest something uncomfortable gets publicly corrected, you will never hear another uncomfortable idea again.

When a presenter finishes, leadership can ask clarifying questions. That's it. No "we tried that." No "that won't work because." No "have you thought about." No pivoting to a different idea the cabinet had last month. No tactful pushback dressed up as a question.

Just questions to understand. What made you notice this? How often are you seeing it? Who else on your team is hearing the same thing? What would you want to try first?

This is the rule, and it is the rule for a reason. If one person presents an idea and watches it get lit on fire in front of their colleagues, nobody else in that room will bring a real one. Not that day, not next quarter, not ever. You will have trained everyone present that the format is a trap, and you will have done it in 10 minutes.

The bottom line

When was the last time you heard something about your institution that changed your mind?

Not confirmed what you already thought. Not added a data point to a decision you'd already made. Actually changed your mind.

If you have to think hard, that's the answer. The structures around you are filtering out anything that would do that. A reverse town hall is one of the cheapest ways to break that filter.

Four sessions a year. Ten minutes per presenter. Leadership in listening mode. First one in July.

You can do it, and I guarantee, you'll be better for it.