By Andrew M. Vasquez, M.P.A., PfMP, SHRM-SCP
Founder & Principal Consultant, AMV Consulting
Leadership. Systems. Execution. Momentum.
An unanswered operational question rarely stays operational for long.
A student needs an exception approved. Two departments disagree about who should respond. A manager follows up, receives a partial answer, and tries again. As the deadline approaches, the conversation becomes more urgent. Eventually, participants begin questioning one another’s responsiveness, commitment, or judgment.
The original problem was a missing decision. The resulting problem is a strained relationship.
In higher education, where work often crosses departmental boundaries, ambiguity can change how colleagues experience one another. Leaders need to examine that transition carefully. When recurring uncertainty becomes interpersonal tension, repairing the relationship also requires addressing the conditions that produced it.
When a Process Becomes Personal
Consider a hypothetical change to an academic program. Faculty have approved the curriculum, recruitment has begun communicating with prospective students, and student services is preparing to support the incoming cohort. Several implementation questions remain unresolved, including who confirms eligibility and when students should receive final instructions.
Each team proceeds according to its understanding. When those understandings diverge, colleagues may interpret the resulting delays as another department’s failure to follow through.
From within each unit, the frustration can be reasonable. People are trying to fulfill commitments while depending on decisions they cannot make. The difficulty is that no one has established a shared understanding of the remaining work.
A conversation about who caused the delay may bring temporary closure. A review of how the decision became stranded can prevent the next one.
Uncertainty Changes Participation
Repeated ambiguity can make people more cautious about contributing.
An employee whose decision was reversed without explanation may seek approval for matters previously handled independently. A manager who cannot secure agreement across departments may stop proposing improvements that require collaboration. A team that repeatedly receives conflicting instructions may wait for explicit direction before beginning work.
Leaders can interpret these responses as declining initiative. Yet the institution may have taught people that initiative carries unpredictable consequences.
This does not mean every hesitation is caused by organizational design. Performance, relationships, and individual circumstances still matter. It means leaders should investigate the operating conditions before concluding that employees have lost motivation.
The useful question is whether people can reasonably anticipate how a decision will be evaluated and supported. When they cannot, caution becomes understandable.
Responsibility Without a Path Forward
One particularly difficult situation occurs when employees remain accountable for an outcome but lack a dependable route to resolve the obstacles affecting it.
They can identify the issue, document its implications, and request a decision. They cannot determine when that decision will arrive or whether the person receiving the request has authority to act.
Meanwhile, students, partners, or colleagues continue asking for answers.
The employee becomes the visible representative of an unresolved institutional matter. Explaining the delay repeatedly can create tension even when the employee has acted responsibly throughout.
An escalation process should therefore do more than identify whom to contact. It should establish who owns the response, what information is needed, and when the matter will be reviewed. If an answer cannot yet be provided, someone should own the interim communication.
That arrangement gives employees a legitimate way to move the issue forward without making promises they cannot keep.
Trust Depends on What Happens Next
Clear instructions are useful, but trust develops through the institution’s response to actual situations.
If leaders delegate authority and then routinely override decisions without explaining why, the written delegation loses credibility. If employees raise a concern and receive no acknowledgment, the stated escalation pathway becomes difficult to rely on.
Consistency does not require identical decisions in every case. Different circumstances may justify different outcomes. What matters is making the reasoning understandable enough that people can apply it to future work.
A leader can explain which new information changed the decision, which boundary was crossed, or which institutional consideration took precedence. That explanation helps colleagues improve their judgment rather than simply become more guarded.
Over time, dependable follow-through makes coordination less dependent on personal reassurance.
Repair the Operating Agreement
When friction has already affected relationships, leaders should make room for both the experience and the underlying process.
Begin with a specific recurring situation. Ask where the work stalled, what each participant understood, and which decision or handoff lacked an owner. Avoid starting with a broad judgment about a department’s culture or commitment.
Then establish a workable agreement for the next occurrence. Identify the decision owner, the required input, the response expectation, and the point at which escalation becomes appropriate. Confirm that the people involved have the capacity and authority to honor that agreement.
Finally, revisit it after use. A process that looks clear in a meeting may still leave important questions unanswered in practice.
This approach does not erase disagreement. It gives colleagues a common basis for addressing it.
Leadership Beyond Reassurance
Encouragement and respectful communication remain valuable. They become more credible when accompanied by changes that make daily work more dependable.
Leaders should pay attention when the same tensions recur around approvals, exceptions, or departmental handoffs. Those patterns may reveal unfinished decisions that employees have been carrying into their relationships.
Addressing them is part of institutional stewardship. It preserves the willingness to collaborate, raise concerns, and exercise judgment on behalf of students.
People should be able to spend their attention solving the work in front of them with colleagues they can trust. A dependable operating environment helps make that possible.
Let’s build momentum together.
