This short talk was given on 3rd Dec 2019 to staff at Manchester Metropolitan University, who have recently taken on a new management role. The slides are available here as a reflection on my leadership journey in the 2 years since I have been “Managing at Man Met Uni”. They cover my own rather winding path to an academic leadership position, my leadership philosophy as it has developed and what I have learnt in these two hectic, challenging and formative years.
Category Archives: MMU Reflections on Academic leadership
Learning Academic Leadership – Finding my feet
One symptom of just how busy I have been over my first 8 months at Man Met Uni has been my neglect of my blogging. I had great plans to continue my series of reflections as I began my new role at Man Met but these have been blown away by the speed at which I have had to learn to adapt to both a new Institution – full of new people, processes and ways of doing things – and to a new senior role.
So how has this last 8 months been and what have I learned that I could share with other academics in the same position?
Well, its been a bit of a roller coaster to be honest. I think I started well; I made my primary focus that of building really good relationships with people and concentrating on two key maxims of leadership – enthusiasm and integrity (John Adair). I made myself as visible as possible within the Faculty, built my Education team within the first 2 months, aimed for a couple of quick wins and Chaired my first Faculty committees. All of this was a massive learning curve; overwhelming at times but by focusing on each day in turn I made it to Christmas and then to Easter without any great mishaps or mis-steps. Continue reading Learning Academic Leadership – Finding my feet