From Head to Dean: Academic Leadership

The ‘why’ is very important in academic leadership. First, as a head of department you need to find your own leadership purpose to fully accept your role; your own academic activities are less important than the activities of those you lead. Second, purpose – understood as the rationale for action – is essential; communicating ‘the why’ is key to success. Leadership training is important for success. You must accept dual loyalty: to the department when with senior management and to the senior management when with the department. The dean has seven key challenges: to select the right heads of department, to delegate managerial tasks, to coach the heads, to facilitate a dialogue on the performance of the department, to allocate resources across departments, to manage boundaries between departments, and to co-create the ‘why’ with the heads of department – that will also make it easier for them to assume the dual loyalty.