The Advance HE 2023 leadership survey report highlighted some clear synergies and some startling divergences between the perspectives of ‘me as a leader’ and ‘my experience of being led’. This theme seeks to understand the systemic issues exposed by the survey and explores the resources, extent and scope for our institutional leadership and systems to develop the staff, well-being, and cultures required to address the challenges and withstand the pressures of 21st-century higher education.
These 'wicked’ problems can only be addressed through collaboration and an openness to explore. The three outputs for this theme seek to offer some new perspectives and evidence-based approaches that will enable novel thinking to support our institutions, leaders and communities to address these issues.
This project is relevant to: All members
Job functions: Academics, Lecturers, Tutors, Coaches, Programme Leaders, Learning Designers and Technologists, Middle Management and Senior Leaders.
Projects:
Decoding Pastoral Support
This work package delves into the systemic considerations of 'support' within HE environments. It considers how ‘support’ is accounted for, what it looks like and the impacts and value that it brings.
Leadership careers in HE Professional Services
This member benefit seeks to to prompt active thinking about this important part of the HE sector and explore what (if anything) is needed by institutions and individuals to enable progression and accelerate leadership careers. The output and that of the Academic Leadership project in 2022-23 will inform future work about what the sector wants and needs in this area.
Doing Leadership Differently in HE
How are we doing leadership in our institutes? Specifically, how is our leadership reinforcing or reshaping the ‘Western managerial models’ that dominate higher education, given their decreasing relevance to the complex systems and environments in which we operate?
Decoding Pastoral Support
Focusing on an often-overlooked aspect of higher education - namely, the informal structures, requirements, and pathways that come with providing support. The approach for this aspect involves a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, aiming to gain a deeper insight into how support is integrated into our systems and the potential advantages it can offer to both the system itself and its members.
Thought Leadership Piece
Explore the current data on support and supporting. How do we quantify, value and measure this quality and it's impact on our institutions?
Focus Groups
A series of focus groups were organised to gain an understanding of lived experiences of support and support in the sector.
Report
A summary report will be shared with the sector in June 2024.
Lead
Leadership careers in HE Professional Services
A provocation informed by evidence, examining data, existing practices, and perceptions, aims to spotlight leadership and management careers for professional services colleagues and share reflections and questions as a stimulus for thinking within the sector.
Read the blog here.
Blog and Provocation
This conversation starter seeks to evidence the need for further development of career pathways in professional services.
Focus Groups
A series of focus groups to explore the provocation and provide feedback and insights.
Focus Group 1: The evolving size and shape of professional services in HE
Date: 17 May 2024
Time: 11:30-13:00 BST
To discuss and consider this issue in relation to the provocation. We will challenge the focus group to consider the question ‘Is the current shape and size delivering optimal results for staff and students?’
Focus Group 2: What makes Professional Services Leadership distinctive?
Date: 20 May 2024
Time: 13:00-14:30 BST
To discuss and consider this issue in relation to the provocation. We will challenge the focus group to consider the question ‘Do we need to change our mindset about the boundaries of these roles in order to better support institutional sustainability?
Focus Group 3: How can we enhance leadership careers beyond boundaries?
Date: 21 May 2024
Time: 13:30-15:00 BST
To discuss and consider this issue in relation to the provocation. We will challenge the focus group to consider, ‘What are the most important questions that the sector/institutions should ask themselves about next steps for professional services leadership across the institution?’
Response from the Sector
Showcasing the response from the sector and from sector professional bodies and outlining further questions will be produced in June.
Lead
Doing Leadership Differently in HE
What would leadership in HE be like if explored through practices of stewardship, holism, citizenship and interconnection? And how would this help us work with the complex present and futures? How could it create places where people thrive?
This short inquiry is a series of open dialogues, grounded in recent practice and literature insights (including the ANZ leadership review and global leadership survey) aiming to prompt new questions, insights and choices to use in our daily leadership. Through a series of dialogues with different figures in and of the sector, in and of different cultural and practice backgrounds we explore different practices and approaches to doing leadership in ways that are complexity-consistent and ‘fit’ for our times.
What new choices and opportunities do we have for doing leadership differently?
In May and June 2024, expect to:
- Read a series of short blogs
- Hear dialogue and discussion
- Enjoy a brief presentation at the Sustainability conference on June 11th.
A Series of ‘In-Conversation’ dialogues
This series of dialogues with individuals inside and external to the HE sector aims to explore and unpack what it might mean to do leadership differently through different knowledge lenses and lived experiences.
Doing Leadership Differently series of short reflective thought-pieces
Supporting and drawing on the literature and dialogues, we will be writing a series of short reflections about some of the main provocations and ideas to emerge about how we might do leadership differently within HE, why this is necessary in the current context and what this might mean for changing the approach to leadership development.
Collaborative Conversations
A collaborative conversation at the Sustainability in Higher Education conference in June 2024 to present some of the ideas emerging and as a way provoking further dialogue in UK HE institutions and growing the conversation about doing leadership differently.
Lead
Joanne Coysh
Senior Consultant in the Leadership, Organisational Development and Research
,
Advance HE
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An Advance HE member benefit
Member Projects are part of Advance HE's member benefits for the 2023-24 membership year. Click below to see the full range of benefits available.