Accentuating the Positives of being a Head of Department
Heads of Departments (or Schools) play critical roles in higher education. They have to respond and interpret the demands of changing external environment and senior university leaders, whilst balancing these with the needs of their Departments, their staff and the wider university. In many universities, the Head of Department role is a permanent appointment, however in others it is a rotational role where academics take on the role for a fixed term period. Academic heads takes on a greater range of academic and administrative responsibilities, including staff and academic leadership of sometimes very large departments, and consequently have much less time to devote to personal academic activities such as learning, teaching and research.
In an article published in the Times Higher Education on 31st October 2019, Navé Wald, and Clinton Golding, from the Higher Education Development Centre, University of Otago in New Zealand commented that becoming a head of department is often seen by academics as more of a curse with a few benefits, rather than a blessing or opportunity.
Becoming a head of department is often seen as more of a curse with few benefits, rather than a blessing or opportunity.
They found that most of the existing literature focussed on overcoming the challenges of being a Head with little written about the benefits of taking on the role of Head of Department. They found this quite surprising, given the pivotal importance of the role in most universities. To redress the balance and to inspire academics to consider the roles, they decided to take a closer look at the advantages of being a Head of Department, speaking to former heads for an article published in Studies in Higher Education entitled “Why be a head of department? Exploring the positive aspects and benefits” in February 2019.
In summary the following benefits were expressed and cited by Wald and Golding in their article:
1. The ability to improve and develop the department - changing mindsets, making changes, the introduction of longer planning horizons eg for research, hiring good people and changing the culture.
2. Increased focus on staff – development of the people in the department through mentoring, helping to further staff careers and raising morale and wellbeing.
3. Personal benefits to the Head included learning and using new skills- taking on new responsibilities and challenges. Becoming more efficient as a researcher and writer, out of necessity. Understanding more about how the university works and expanding personal networks of colleagues.
4. Career development-opportunities to take on wider, different roles. Improved opportunities for promotion.
Reassuringly several benefits and positives of being a Head were expressed through the survey.
Navé and Golding observed that many universities have responded to the negative perceptions around heads of department roles by promoting the benefits of leadership development opportunities. In my experience good quality leadership development for Heads is crucial, particularly given their important roles in the current, unprecedented period of change for universities.
Responding directly to this need, NCEE has developed Entrepreneurial Heads, a series of three linked interactive study days introducing Heads to the concepts of entrepreneurial leadership and change management and how to implement these concepts in practice. Entrepreneurial Heads is designed to enable heads to respond positively and innovatively to the changes and challenges, brought about by uncertainty and to succeed in their roles.
Good quality leadership development for Heads is crucial given their important roles in the current period of unprecedented change for universities.
From personal experience earlier in my career and listening to others, I think there are very many positives to being a Head of Department and, whether the role is permanent or temporary, it seems important for Heads to seek opportunities for leadership development to benefit both themselves the success of the department and the wider university.
For more information about NCEE Entrepreneurial Heads and also Entrepreneurial Leaders, please make contact with me or check out our website below. Many thanks for reading this blog.