Leader perceptions of higher education reforms in Armenia are examined in order to gain an insight into how they view the reforms, their role in the reforms and the roles of others. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with six Armenian higher education leaders and analysed in terms of the following five aspects relevant to leadership: policy transfer and diffusion; change knowledge; emotional intelligence; leadership approach; and causal attribution. The leaders spoke positively about the reform efforts but blamed teachers, government, students and society for the failure of the reform efforts in Armenia. The conclusion is that, irrelevant of whether the change is top-down or bottom-up, it is destined to fail if the change knowledge of the actual implementers is not taken into consideration, an active dialogue does not occur with the actual implementers of the changes and the implements of change are thus not involved in the reform process. (Contains 1 table and 2 figures.)