How to be a Head

Part 1: in which our hero discovers some basic facts of human nature

This is the first of what might become an occasional series on academic management. It responds to a request from a friend and colleague who has recently assumed the role of Head of Department.

By writing on this topic I do not wish to claim any particular expertise, modesty forfend, but I have learned some lessons over the last 10 years, and I welcome an opportunity to reflect on them. Perhaps, ultimately, more for my own benefit than that of others. I have a suspicion that, were I to have received a formal training in management or were I to have read more about management, I would realise that almost all of what I have painfully and slowly acquired is widely known. Still, what I write here is personally experienced, and possibly the more valuable for that.

I start, naturally enough, at the beginning, with this observation: it is not possible to lead a department unless that department desires to be led. This may appear at first blush to be almost the negation of management though I will argue it is in fact a universal precondition.

Leadership, certainly in an academic setting, requires consent, not necessarily a wholesale willingness to comply, but at least a shared recognition that the situation in which the department finds itself requires change. This recognition does not need to be complete, in the sense that there is a wholly shared understanding of the situation, or of the desired direction of change, but there must  be some common sense of 'unease', for want of a better word. The recognition does not need to be universal either, there may, almost certainly will, be individuals who do not share it, but there must be, at least, a significant part of the department who hold this view.

It is important to understand that the desire to be led does not necessarily need to be openly declared. Indeed, in an academic setting, it is highly unlikely to be so. It is rather a 'preparedness' to engage with change and with strategic debate.

Without this precondition being satisfied a number of problems manifest themselves. First, direction by a manager appears arbitrary and unwarranted. Second, ideas for change do not get a chance to 'breathe', in other words they do not get the space for exploration and for testing and iterative improvement. Third, the knowledge within the department does not get deployed effectively in support of change.

Before agreeing to undertake an academic management role you will want to be clear whether the department wants to be led. In the event it does not, you may still want to take the role on but in that case the only item on the managerial agenda will be to reach the point where you have consent. Any other strategies are probably likely to fail.

I do not believe, certainly in a university, that a negative approach can work as a tool to achieve consent. Drawing attention to collective under-achievement will, most likely, generate defensiveness rather than an openness to leadership. Experience in academia has shown me that often such defensive strategies can be highly elaborated and difficult to shift. The alternative is a vision of a 'better place' which may be difficult to articulate in terms specific enough to be credible but are at the same time broad enough to achieve an initial consensus. If 'the vision thing' is done well however it can pick up an impetus and garner consent quickly, so the effort is certainly justified.

At the risk of a strange analogy (actually, those who know me might find it slightly less strange), leadership is like telling a joke or recounting an anecdote. The audience must in some sense want to laugh. A joke told without that, implicit, consent, is judged inappropriate or simply not funny. When an audience consents it almost wills the joke to be funny. So with leadership.