Leading Academics Programme – Case Study

Leading Academics Programme

The programme is aimed at members of staff who currently have a management role, or who aspire to take on management responsibilities for an academic team in the future.

 The aim of this programme is to equip academic managers with the skills, knowledge and contextual awareness to be able to perform effectively within their roles. It involves academic managers developing a heightened sense of self-awareness about how they manage and interact with others, both within their own area and across the University.

Each participant is supported by four x 1 hour leadership and management coaching sessions personalised to their needs with a qualified executive management coach.

 The Academic’s story 

Accessing coaching as part of the Leading Academics programme really helped me to develop in my role, which at the time was a new role for the university too. My one-to-one coaching sessions with an internal coach from the university, who wasn’t an academic member of staff, added a real dimension to the coaching.

It was so helpful to have someone with a different mind-set; someone who was removed from my work and was able to challenge me to think differently, to think outside of the box’.

‘The coaching gave me a real opportunity to reflect on myself in my role; it increased my self-awareness and challenged me to ask the right questions of myself and the faculty, and enabled me to work out, with the support of others what the focus of my new role was. It was a real opportunity to create some thinking space and set some clear goals. It made me much more confident and it provided excellent, non-threatening support as I developed in my role’.

 Andrea Bailey, Academic Quality Manager, Health Sciences