Heads of department (HoDs) are commonly made responsible for implementing gender balance change in academia. Research has found that they are often reluctant to take ownership of this problem. Our study found that department heads in Norway did take on a lot of ownership for gender balance change and we divided their leadership approaches with regard to gender balance into uncertain, collegial and heroic. However, such approaches did not distinguish much regarding what they were able to do in practice, partly due to restraints from being in a middle-management position. Thus, there is a unexploited potential for HoDs taking a leading role in gender balance change if they are granted more autonomy and more support from above leadership.