Leadership Roles
Katy Vaughan
As an early career academic, you may be in a position where you are asked or encouraged to apply for a leadership role within or outside your own institution. Alternatively, an opportunity may become available that you are interested in, perhaps because you see this as valuable to your own professional development. Within a university, leadership roles can vary and may include those at the Department, School, Faculty, or institutional level. This could include roles such as: Programme/Course Lead, the Department Lead for Employability, leading a research group or leading on an aspect of the department’s research agenda such as impact, you may be the principal investigator on a research grant which involves leading a team, or you could lead a university level working group. In these roles, you may be required to design and deliver on department or course-level strategies, make decisions that impact the work of other colleagues, and foster and direct consensus within a team on outcomes that can be actioned. Advance HE summarises the role a leader plays within their institution as shaping and being shaped by ‘culture, vision and strategy,’ and as applying one’s attributes in the delivery of ‘outcomes (the measurable objectives of an institution)’; and ‘impact (what the institution brings to society’ (Advance HE, 2025).
Taking on a leadership role as an early career academic can be daunting but there are also many benefits. They provide an opportunity to influence change, they can be empowering and may be an important aspect of your own career development and promotion applications (O’Connor, 2024). My own experience includes assuming leadership roles within and outside of the university. A couple of years into my lectureship, I was appointed as the School of Law’s lead for Student Engagement and Student Experience, which is part of the School’s Senior Management Team. At a similar time, I assumed an external role and became a Co-Chair of the Christchurch Call Advisory Network – a network of around 50 civil organisations globally advising governments and tech companies on issues relating to countering terrorist content online in a manner that respects human rights. Whilst these roles are quite different, they are both in areas that I am really passionate about which was my main motivation, although at the time, I felt that as an early career academic, I lacked relevant skills and experience. I still believe I am learning new things about leadership – some of which are trial and error – but these experiences have also been some of the most rewarding in my time in academia.
Building on existing experience
As an early career academic, it can feel you have been given a role and it is assumed that you can carry out that role with little specific guidance or training. Your starting point should be the institution’s criteria for the role and any associated guidance, however little limited this may be. It is often the case that you will still feel as though you are “learning on the job” as many things are not written down. This is perhaps not too dissimilar to academia in general. Whilst you will be allocated a line manager and/or mentor and set and work towards probationary or professional review targets, in general, academics work within quite general criteria or parameters. We learn from and seek guidance from others. Similarly, in leadership roles, much can be learnt from working alongside senior colleagues who you can watch and learn from. You will not always be able to anticipate issues that may arise on daily or weekly basis. Yet it can be helpful, in managing your time and other responsibilities, to work from a yearly cycle of things that need to be done and at what times. Again, this is often a strategy we adopt in other roles, working on the basis of the academic year in organising our teaching, research, and administrative work.
Roles such as Course/Programme Lead differ from other roles such as module leadership or year lead in a number of ways. In my own experience, a key difference, which is a benefit and can also be challenging, particularly when starting out, is that a course leadership role is more collaborative. In the sense that you may be designing interventions in response to an identified need, and you are likely to need to deliver these through others. For example, as Year Lead on a course, you may have received student feedback through student reps that students would appreciate more guidance on finding and using sources to help with their assessment. So, you may then organise a session for the year group in conjunction with the library. In contrast, as the programme lead, you may have identified that the development of academic skills needs to be explicitly embedded across all modules in the programme. As opposed to organising and delivering sessions yourself, the intervention needs to be delivered through the entire teaching team. This requires skills and attributes you are likely to already be developing as an early career academic in roles such as module lead or as part of the course team, such as good communication, good working relationships, and decision-making.
Leading in academia – being “in the middle”
As an early career academic taking on a leadership role within an institution, it is likely you will be leading ‘in the middle’ of your institution with responsibility for delivering certain aspects of the institution’s mission or strategy (Allman, 2025). In an education leadership position, your role might include a review of the current curriculum across programmes/courses in your department, to deliver on an important aspect of the institution’s learning and teaching strategy. This would involve you following a direction from University Senior Leadership and then working with colleagues within your own department to implement. Thus, you can end up in the “middle” of department and institution-level priorities.
In this sense, leadership roles often involve advocacy, and championing and speaking out for others (Advance HE, 2025). You will need to both collate and take into consideration viewpoints of colleagues and other relevant stakeholders, which can involve synthesising vast amounts of information and differing viewpoints to identify the core of issues (Allman, 2025). You will then need the judgment to take appropriate decisions; some issues may need urgent intervention, whereas others can be addressed by longer-term approaches. It is worth putting thought into how decisions are communicated, depending on who is impacted or to whom the decision is being conveyed. Conveying a message on behalf of your team to Senior Management may require different approach than communicating decisions from an institutional level to colleagues in your own department.
Leading “in the middle” of the institution can be frustrating, and you may sometimes feel as though there are conflicting priorities, and perhaps even conflict between the demands of the role and your own personal objectives. There will be external and environmental factors that are beyond our control, which could impede some of your efforts. Thus, as you gain experience, acknowledge and learn to work within or around a number of limitations. Seek support or advice on navigating bureaucracy and organisational culture.
It is important to remember that your Leadership role is one part of your role that you will likely be carrying out alongside your teaching and research/scholarship work. This can seem like a difficult “balancing” act. Identifying tasks that are essential to deliver your role across the academic year, and from there consider what else you might seek to achieve within the time you have. Running this past another colleague/mentor can be a good way to think about how to manage your time and what to prioritise. This is easier said than done and will come with practice. Personally, I find that I need to block out chunks of time in my diary to dedicate time to certain tasks, after initially struggling to balance competing demands.
Leadership – values, mindset, and skill
There are many resources and studies on leadership in higher education which seek to identify the most important qualities such as being authentic, collaborative, inclusive, adaptable, and compassionate (Advance HE, 2022); and fundamental skills and attributes. You may find it useful to do some of your own research on this, and any that may be directly relevant to your own leadership role.
A fundamental skill relevant to most leadership roles both within and outside the institution, is communication. For me, this has involved lots of informal contact with colleagues, whilst at the time informal conversations may seem of little significance, they can be fundamental to you building working relationships, building your support network, and can be fundamental longer term particularly in building respect and trust often needed to lead and influence change. If there are colleagues across your Faculty or Institution in a similar role to yours, you may want to set up some informal coffee/tea catch ups.
Effective communication is also important in more formal settings, explaining decisions, listening and taking on board colleagues’ ideas. Leading meetings may be core to your role, and doing so effectively involves being able to facilitate discussions, building consensus, and being well-prepared (Vitae, n.d. (a)). It is worth stating that in creating spaces for discussion, don’t be afraid of conflict and disagreement, in my own experience, this can often lead in the end to better outcomes.
It follows that, when you start in a new role, take time to think about who you are engaging with and who you need to be engaging with. This may include colleagues within your department, across your Faculty and elsewhere in the institution, and Senior Management, students, or external stakeholders such as local organisations. As you are building working relationships, be aware that there are limits to what you can achieve, and you will not be able to “fix” every issue. Make space to think about what can be achieved. Vitae’s Research Leadership webpages provide some good advice in this respect, including: ‘never say “yes” in the corridor’ (Vitae, n.d. (b)).
Looking after yourself is also important, including thinking about your work-life balance. As we often do in academia with competing demands, you may feel like you are being pulled in different directions. Some useful advice that I often need to remind myself of is to remind yourself of your core values, be committed to those, letting them drive your decision making and how you prioritise the different aspects of your role.
Some academics thrive in leadership roles, and you may view leadership as key to your career trajectory. For others, assuming a leadership role may be time-limited (out of choice) and viewed as a part of being collegiate and making a contribution. Even so, the time in the role can present a number of opportunities to support the development of your research or teaching and scholarship practice. In your leadership role, you will be continuing to build your own network and will be engaging with a range of stakeholders within and outside the institution. This will likely lead to further opportunities to collaborate. For example, my engagement with external organisations in leading the Advisory Network has led to successful research grants and opportunities to produce impactful policy-driven outputs. My experience as the lead for Student Engagement and Experience has given me insight into areas to develop more pedagogically focused projects in partnership with colleagues across the institution.
Where Next?
Leadership roles within and beyond your institution mean that you will likely encounter opportunities to expand the range of Academic Communities and Networks which you are involved in.
Or
Leadership roles can be an important part of your academic career development, particularly when it comes to Promotion and Job Applications.
Where After?
In addition to seeking out support or training at your own institution, which may be formal or informal, in relation to leadership more generally – seeking support and advice from outside of your own institution can be useful. Networks such as the Association of Law Teachers, Connecting Legal Education, or research networks in your area of expertise provide great opportunities to meet like-minded individuals. You may also find building a network on social media, such as LinkedIn, helpful. There are a number of different groups seeking to build community, such as the Women in Academia Support Network Careers Support #wiasn (on Facebook).
Sources:
Advance HE, Learning and Teaching Scoping Study Report (Advance HE 2022) https://s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/assets.creode.advancehe-document-manager/documents/advance-he/AdvHE_LS%20Scoping%20Study%20Report_FINAL_1662384897.pdf
Allman, Z., ‘Supporting higher education’s emerging leaders’ (28 February 2025, WonkHE). https://wonkhe.com/blogs/supporting-higher-educations-emerging-leaders/.
O’Connor, R., ‘Navigating a student support leadership role as an early career academic: supporting yourself to better support others’ in Lydia Bleasdale (ed), How to Offer Effective Support to Law Students (Edward Elgar, 2024).
Vitae (a). ‘Influence and Leadership’: https://vitae.ac.uk/resource/your-research-communities/influence-and-leadership/
Vitae (b). ‘Doing research – research leadership’: https://vitae.ac.uk/resource/working-in-research/leading-research/doing-research-research-leadership/
Further Reading
George Hulene, ‘To Lead in Higher Education Feels Much Like Inhabiting a Shifting Identity’ (30 July 2025, WonkHE): https://wonkhe.com/blogs/higher-education-leadership-requires-multiple-versions-of-yourself/
