PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of leadership roles on the quality of services provided in higher education.Design/methodology/approachDrawing upon a sample of 134 faculty and administration members at the Technological Educational Institution (TEI) of Larissa, a structured questionnaire is developed to measure leadership roles and quality in services and internal processes. The competing values model is adopted to operationalise the eight leadership roles.FindingsResults indicate that different leadership roles are linked with different dimensions of higher education service quality. The importance of the innovator and monitor role in explaining the variance of two out of four teaching quality aspects is confirmed, while the broker and facilitator roles are strongly associated with both dimensions of administration quality. The producer, director and coordinator proved to be the most prevalent roles among administration staff, while the director, coordinator and mentor roles dominated among faculty members.Research limitations/implicationsThe possibility to generalise the results to other countries with different characteristics (e.g. regulatory framework, economic development) needs to be verified, by executing similar research projects.Practical implicationsUnderstanding the nature of the association between leadership and higher education service quality would enable academics and administrators to pursue or cultivate these roles and behaviours fostering both the quality of teaching and administration.Originality/valueThe research led to the diagnosis of the leadership role profiles of both administration and faculty members. Findings also highlight the importance of specific leadership roles in explaining the variance of different aspects of higher education service quality.