A Common Challenge for New Academic Managers Picture this: It’s your first few months as a line manager of academic staff. You’re leading a departmental meeting, and you notice one academic sitting back, arms folded,…
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Coach Yourself!: Navigating Your Path as a First-Time Academic Manager Congratulations on stepping into the role of an academic line manager! You’ve moved from being an excellent academic professional—perhaps an inspiring teacher, productive researcher, or…
Managing academic staff can be challenging, particularly if you’re a first-time line manager navigating the delicate balance between fostering autonomy and ensuring adherence to deadlines. Academics, driven by intellectual freedom and creativity, sometimes do not…
As a manager or mentor of a disruptive early-career academic with potential, you might face the challenge of navigating the fine line between encouraging their ambition and addressing problematic behaviours. This case presents a particularly…
As an academic, you are already juggling responsibilities like teaching, research, publishing, and administrative tasks. While your expertise is undeniable, the ability to manage these diverse responsibilities efficiently is just as crucial. Have you ever…
Stepping into an academic leadership role is an exciting milestone, yet it can also bring self-doubt and feelings of inadequacy. Imposter syndrome—characterised by persistent self-doubt and the belief that success is undeserved—affects many high-achieving professionals,…
For first-time line managers in universities, stepping into a leadership role often brings a mix of excitement and apprehension – how do I manage staff with more experience than me? This is especially true when…
A review of research literature is a useful thing to do. It helps us understand what the current thinking, developments and practices are with regard to a particular subject area. The process of creating the…
Really pressed for time? Download the full guide to creating more flexible learning materials. I’ve been part of higher education for over twenty years now, witnessing a number of changes that have each presented different…
Those that practice regular reflection, and have an operational system in place, witness some significant benefits in their development. At the very least, you will be more aware of how you behave – and while…
The Analytics component of ADVANCE helps us focus on understanding how to use measurements to their best effect. Lots of organisations produce data from their management information systems (MIS), and they spew out reports which…
In agriculture, cultivate makes us think of preparing the soil for planting and tending to crops. When we cultivate we improve something; we foster growth, perhaps by focusing on a particular situation, person or characteristic….
Asking questions of data can be hard work. We can often struggle to frame the ‘correct’ question, that will give us the answer we need. And while we have tools that can ‘drill-down’ and `slice-and-dice’,…
The question of branding is an interesting topic for higher education. What actually does it mean to ‘brand’ a department? In the commercial sector, we would expect a branding exercise to enable a product, product…
It was a snap decision. My weeks were packed with activity. The teaching and management challenges appeared to be increasing and I just seemed to have no time to engage in one of my core,…
I think that it’s fair to say that if you hear `performance management’ in an academic context, then it is referring to a negative situation. People tend to be ‘performance managed’ when their behaviour or…
For a long time the practice of ‘coaching’ has been associated with sport, and more specifically it refers to a role whereby a ‘coach’ assists a ‘coachee’ to improve their competitive performance. The coach offers…