It is clear from the new PSF guidance that the development of strategic leadership through CPD is important for Principal Fellowship. According to the Additional Notes for Applicants: “In the context of this descriptor statement Continuing Professional Development (CPD) recognises that you are still learning, irrespective of role, and this happens through a range of activities that you engage in that result in improvements to your practice….As a Principal Fellow this should also include activities that enhance your understanding and effectiveness as a strategic leader”.
This post is intended to provide some practical tips for colleagues who are thinking about how to develop their leadership for learning and teaching. It considers what sources they might draw on and how they might recognise development that has already been undertaken. In the style of my other posts on PSF – here are ten tips for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Leadership (SoTLL) with an emphasis on informal approaches. The post is introspective, but I hope the personal insights work to help others with their reflective framing of professional development.
1. ‘Why bother?’ Be clear about what the value of SoTLL.
Before engaging, or before articulating your development, consider why it matters to examine your approach to leadership as well as your approach to pedagogy. As an example, here are some of the reasons that I engaged and continue to engage in SOTLL.
- SoTLL helps to appreciate your own motivation to lead – this can help on the difficult days, but it can also help you to ensure that how you lead and what you seek to achieve is coherent with your own values; these may grow and change over time, so continual review can ensure that your practice is aligned to your values.
- SoTLL helps to understand the methods available to you when working in a leadership role; by exploring leadership as a topic, you can develop a bigger toolbox of approaches for your own work (e.g. work on systems thinking may help avoid isolated interventions).
- SoTLL can help understand the impact of your leadership; sometimes stepping back and reading and exploring ideas can help you better see your impact and influence.
- SoTLL can give a frame of reference for problem solving and decision making; helping see the bigger picture of what others are doing, shedding light on how the issue that you are addressing sits in a timeline of other events or in a global system; and, it can help identify where work has already been done that you may draw on.
Much of my work in this area began through my doctorate, through PFHEA and through NTF. Principal Fellowship should go beyond ‘just adding a few references’. Consider why SoTLL matters to you.
2. Read broad texts about leadership in higher education.
There are a number of broadly pitched books related to leadership and management and higher education. These texts can offer context and practical information, they provide different examples of ways of working, and can connect you into the experiences of others. I have found McCaffery’s The Higher Education Manager’s Handbook: Effective Leadership and Management in Universities and Colleges and The Practice of Leadership in Higher Education (Eds. Kendall Jarrett and Stephen Newton) to be useful desktop books. There is a new SEDA publication coming soon, which also sounds excellent (Perspectives on Teaching and Learning Leadership in Higher Education: Case Studies from UK and Australia by Josephine Lang, Namrata Rao, and Anesa Hosein (Editors).
3. Learn from social media.
Social media is full of leaders willing to share, whether it’s on Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, or other channels. Follow others and learn from what they do. Don’t just go for ‘big names’. Notice those who make a difference and who share similar values. For example, I noticed one colleague’s approach to embedding student engagement in all that they do – they appeared to use the philosophy ‘meeting students where they are’ – in coffee shops, out and about on campus and in study spaces. This has stuck with me. In another, I noticed high levels of compassion for colleagues and community as well as for students. Noticing others is a good way to learn about what approaches stand-out to you and what you might try. It can shine a light on your own strengths and deficits, and this can be a point of reflection (but it shouldn’t be a source of stress – simply draw on what is useful). Consider communicating a compliment though if something has inspired you – no one is beyond some lovely feedback.
4. Take time to read whole books.
Among the frenetic pace of life, SoTLL can often come in short bites of information; by contrast making time to read whole books can be deeply illuminating. I struggle to make as much time as I would want to read, so I now have an audio book habit instead. I can ‘read’ so much more – I read and walk the dog, or read and clean, or read and drive. I do read other things too, by the way, plenty of gentle fiction, and plenty of thrillers! By example, things that I have listened to that I found valuable from a CPD perspective, include Matthew Syed’s Blackbox Thinking, and also Rebel Ideas; Oliver Burkeman’s 4000 weeks; Kirsten Hadeed’s Permission to Screw Up; Caroline Criado-Perez’s Invisible Women, and Michael Barber’s Accomplishment. None of these are labelled as SoTLL – but they all have lessons that are relevant, and even better, they were all entertaining and interesting. Reading loosely relevant books with themes of leadership has been hugely valuable to me. I tend to avoid the ‘guru’ books as I do find them rather dull and often unrealistic [I lasted ten minutes of the 5 am Club – I’m an unshakable night owl].
5. Make targeted aspects of leadership a regular search.
For those of you undertaking regular searches online to update your knowledge in any field, I would suggest making leadership one of your regular search terms too. If you use library searches or social media searches to stay on top of certain topics, add leadership to your routine look-ups. So by example, I use TweetDeck to locate tweets on topics I’m interested in. I have permanent searches set up on key topics (unsurprisingly on “action research”, “authentic assessment” and more). One of those topics is leadership in higher education. I use Advanced or Boolean search parameters to spot anything with both leadership and higher education or universities in it. Advanced searches are necessary to filter information to a manageable level – searching on just leadership would bring a stream of information. Try to refine the search (e.g. use advance search on “leadership” AND (“higher education” or “universit*”) OR (pedagogy)). Because these searches have no global borders, this is a useful way of gaining international insights.
6. Look outside of HE.
There is much that we can learn from the private sector, healthcare, sport, media, technology, industries, and other areas. Consider subscribing to the feeds of people and publications outside of HE. So by example, I subscribe to Harvard Business Review, I follow Gartner, and Forbes. I follow individuals from different sectors (e.g. Steven Bartlett, Helen Bevan’s Twitter and I enjoy podcasts with insight e.g. Past Imperfect). All of these rich sources can trigger reflection. By using a range of source material, your inner dialogue is fed. Going beyond HE can be refreshing.
7. Invest in yourself.
A short story. I was in an interview, with a colleague in early 2022, on the topic of women in HE leadership. I was asked what drives me, and what drives other people. Without any thought, I said that I think everybody I know closely, who has an intense commitment to a leadership role, of any type, is a little bit broken. I thought a lot about this after, and I read about it too. It played on my mind. I discovered something called trauma informed leadership, and for me, personally it was an incredible discovery that helped me to understand my own attitude to work and much more. For reasons of emotional health and to simply help understand your own approach, your boundaries, how work and wider parts of your life intertwine and, to help maintain healthy approaches, it may be useful to invest in your emotional health. This may take you in to all sorts of spaces. Sources that I have valued include: Carolyn Swora’s recent The Path to Trauma Informed Leadership; and, Bessel van der Kolk’s classic, The Body Keeps Score. Your own journey may take you in to different places – common areas to explore may include: imposter syndrome, confidence, identity, ableism, toxic culture, rest, inclusion or something entirely different. We will each have our own dimensions to explore. This is linked to a level of self-awareness that impacts the strategies we can use in our professional life. Anecdotally, I am coming across more and more professionals who are finding value in becoming knowingly curious around their own well-being, with subsequent impact on their approach to work and leadership.
8. Networks.
Consider what professional networks exist not just for your discipline, but also the leaders in your discipline area or areas of responsibility. This is a way to get involved in the conversations happening which draw upon different institutional perspectives. It might be a digital network, or it might be a formal grouping (are there networks for librarians, for those with international responsibilities or for those working specifically on apprenticeship provision?). Advance HE Connect may be a good place to start. Get involved in events, go to conferences (and the dinners, even when a night of box sets sounds appealing), reach out and build networks. Networks are a useful way to stay abreast of policy, research, and current thinking. If you can’t make events, find out what the social media hashtags are and engage remotely (though some events insist on Chatham house rules so sharing may be limited).
9. Be a tourist in your organisation.
It is useful to explore your own organsiation – to make yourself a tourist and treat re-familarisation as a scholarly step. Look at where you fit into the picture of strategy and culture within your own organisation. Do you know your strategy(ies)? Can you describe the culture(s) with nuance? Which approaches to change are acceptable and which are unnecessarily antagonistic or disorienting? Understanding your own organisation in this way is essential to locate your work and maximise the impact you can have, by fitting in to, or knowingly challenging the ways of working in existence. Use reading around culture to help. I found Bergquist and Pawlak’s ‘Engaging the Six Cultures of the Academy’ helpful (though it is getting al little dated it is still a useful concept text), and Jonathan Grant’s New Power University is also valuable. Realising what type of organisation you working in will help you to understand why some things may take root and others not. Having a mental culture map where you can step back and see what might be going on the underneath the surface is important. From changing feedback culture or embedding new staff development programmes – culture and strategy will shape the approaches that will succeed.
10. Read quirky.
Consider where the cutting edge is; hunt it down and engage. For example, by the time a technology is talked about in an academic journal, it’s probably been talked about extensively in magazine publications. Likewise, primary school learning can be an inspirational source of pedagogic techniques. Student radio (such as RAW) or newspapers (helpfully curated by The Tab) can also provide unique insights into current campus trends. Think about where exciting, related and new practices are hatched, and where ‘right now’ news is happening, and subscribe.
PS. Don’t burn out!
If all of this is sounding exhausting, that’s because it is. SoTLL, may be layered on to SoTL or it may be the main feature of your scholarship. Either way, it’s important to avoid a deficit model where you spend time worrying about what you don’t know; with the risk of information overload try to maintain healthy SoTLL habits. Reflection, discussion and practice are all likely to provide learning moments – it’s hard to stay on top of everything, everywhere, all at once – so use 1-10 as a list of possibilities and not as a set of instructions. Remember that balance matters: Don’t always listen to an audio book – remember birdsong is good too; social media is a source of learning – but celeb news and sports scores [or whatever you like] are OK too sometimes. SoTTL matters but balance it up.
Thanks to my friend, and former colleague Liz Warr, who inspired this post.
Lydia Arnold 