Kim Ansell, Advance HE Senior Consultant Governance and Leadership, shares sector responses to our ‘conversation starter’ and workshops exploring the leadership and management careers for professional services colleagues in higher education.
In April 2024, we published a provocation for discussion and debate by Dr Geraldine Harrison who put the spotlight on leadership and management careers within professional services intended to be thought-inducing and to prompt active thinking about this important part of the HE sector. Her work forms part of our Member Benefit Project 23-24: Growing the HE workforce for the future, Leadership careers in HE Professional Services.
We recognised that as we put the spotlight on professional services, the provocation would inevitably represent a limited lens on the issues at play in the sector currently. We therefore sought to establish a dialogue with members to enrich and enhance the conversation and to inform further work. We held three focus groups delivered in May 2024 with 30 institutions.
Participants of the workshops discussed three key themes:
- The evolving size and shape of professional services in HE and – Is the current shape and size delivering optimal results for staff and students?
- Leadership development priorities opportunity and necessity – can hybrid roles work and can they support institutional sustainability?
- Leadership Careers for Professional Services in HE – Where next?
The groups explored what resonated with them and diverged from their experience, what was missing in the provocation and the implications for both leadership development and cultural implications.
We also sought feedback from a number of member organisations in the HE sector and we posed similar questions. We publish these here on our website alongside a response from Advance HE.
Read all the responses here
Next steps
Much of our member insights work in 23/24 has pointed to the need to support our members as they are rethinking and reshaping their departments, services and institutions. We set out a reflective guide to create some of the necessary conditions for transformation in 2021: Transforming organisations from Student to Board
In addition to Advance HE’s professional development offerings for 24/25, there will be member benefits dedicated to looking at governing and leading through transformation and the work in this member benefit will form a part of that work. And our Global Leadership Framework will be published as a sector resource in late 2024 to provide support and guidance for leadership development across the breadth of HE levels and functions.
Kim Ansell has worked across higher and professional education providing support to groups at all levels including senior leadership teams and Boards, to facilitate change, strategic thinking, planning and performance improvement.
Leadership development
Explore our portfolio of leadership development programmes which can help professional service staff in their leadership journey. Find out more.
