Our Strategic Leadership Programme is one of Advance HE’s flagship development experiences for senior leaders in higher education. Designed for Deans, Directors and senior professional services leaders, it equips participants to lead with confidence in an era of complexity and change.
Higher education leaders today face intense pressures: financial uncertainty, regulatory demands, global competition, and the shifting expectations of students and staff. This programme enables participants not just to navigate those challenges, but to drive meaningful transformation.
Participants leave the programme with a tested strategy addressing a live institutional challenge, strengthened skills in influence and governance, and a trusted peer network of senior leaders across the UK and internationally. They gain the confidence and credibility to take on the most demanding executive roles, equipped to deliver meaningful, measurable change.
Aims, outcomes, and impact
The programme comprises a blend of theoretical inputs, provocations, speakers, practical exercises, observations, and discussions. It will take a ‘systems thinking’ approach to considering strategic leadership.
One feature of this approach is that the SLP group itself becomes a ‘learning organisation’ to which all its members contribute. To that end, your preparation for, and active contribution to, the programme is an important part of its value. The Strategic Leadership Programme is designed to create opportunities to rehearse leadership approaches and is created around its participants: their willingness to engage, to share experiences, and to support each other.
The primary aims of the programme are to:
- Build confidence in the power of leadership to change organisations
- To disrupt complacency about the current operating model of Higher Education with a series of strategic “what if?” questions in order to create new models
- To challenge concepts of heroic individualised leaders in favour of distributed systems leadership
- To explore and develop approaches for leading in a complex environment.
At the end of the programme, we expect that you will:
- Better understand the environment in which your leadership is being enacted
- Have tested tools and approaches for influencing the systems and culture and of your organisation and the behaviour of others within it
- Have strengthened your confidence to lead well in situations of uncertainty, complexity, and disruption
- Have built a new network of fellow sector leaders who share a common language and understanding of the environment in which you are all working and who are able to provide generous mutual support.
One-to-one coaching
Participants will have the opportunity to work with a coach over two sessions at either end of the programme. One-to-one coaching offers a confidential, non-judgemental, reflective space to consider leadership impact, embed learning, challenge unhelpful mindsets, and try new ideas on for size.
Genuinely transformative
Paul Driscoll-Evans, Dean of School, University of Suffolk
Who is the programme for?
Our Strategic Leadership Programme is designed for those who are faced with a particular strategic challenge that would benefit from collaborative problem solving and practical solutions.
Participants typically hold roles in their organisations that combine leadership of a particular function or academic area with high-level responsibility for one or more issues of a pan-institutional nature (for example internationalisation, student or staff experience, external collaborations, regional or global partnerships).
Dates, application and booking
Application Deadline: Thursday 18 March 2027 – Application form here
All sessions are delivered online apart from the in-person residential.
Introductory Networking Session: Wednesday 15 April 2027, 15.30 – 16.45
Pre-programme coaching (bookable 1.5 hr 121 session): Monday 19 – Friday 23 April 2027
Module One – Engaging with Complexity: Monday 26 April 2027, 09.30 – 16.00
Module Two – Leadership Response to Complexity: Tuesday 27 April 2027, 09.30 – 16.00
Action Learning Activity: Thursday 6 May 2027, 9:30 – 16:00 (full or half day depending on final cohort numbers)
Module Three (Leading Complex Institutions) and Four (Influencing and Engaging Others) – Delivered as an in-person 2 day/1 night residential): Wednesday 12 – Thursday 13 May 2027
Post-programme Coaching (bookable 1.5 hr 121 session): Monday 17 – Friday 21 May 2027
Further information
If you would like further information or would like to speak to us, please contact us via the form below and we will get back to you.
Inspiring, enlightening and challenging in equal parts.”
Professor Chris Proudman, Head of the School of Veterinary Medicine, University of Surrey.
Testimonial video: Professor Miranda Horvath
In this video, Professor Miranda Horvath, Director of the Institute for Social Justice and Crime speaks about her experience on Strategic Leadership Programme.
Programme overview videos
The following videos provide an overview of the course, as well as providing information on aims and impact, and programme structure.
Overview
In this video, Lisa Sofianos provides an overview of the Strategic Leadership Programme.
Aims and impact
In this video, co-facilitators Alastair Work and Lisa Sofianos describe the benefits derived from participating in Advance HE’s Strategic Leadership Programme.
Programme structure
In this video, Alastair Work introduces the Strategic Leadership Programme, what takes place during the programme, and who it benefits.
Delivery team
Professor Karise Hutchinson
Professor of Leadership and the founder of Illuminaire Leadership
Karise Hutchinson is a Professor of Leadership and the founder of Illuminaire Leadership – a global institute providing high quality, research-led insight to leaders in private, public and third sector organisations. She is an award-winning researcher, author, educator, speaker, and strategic advisor to leaders in government, public and private sector, as well as not-for-profit organisations.
Lisa Sofianos
Associate, Leadership
Lisa is an author, leadership developer and executive coach working internationally and across all sectors. She works with senior and leadership teams to design and deliver interventions on change management, strategic leadership, creating collaborative cultures, organisational resilience, senior team effectiveness, and leading in complex environments.
Stuart Jago
Associate
With over 25 years Organisation Development (OD), HR and Career Development experience in Higher Education and a spread of industry sectors, Stuart coaches leaders and professionals on a range of leadership development programmes. Stuart enjoys coaching leaders from different organisational contexts, especially the contexts of growth, realignment or turnaround.
Leading in flux: strategic leadership for a changing higher education system
Finding her voice: how the Strategic Leadership Programme transformed one HE leader’s approach
