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Leading Departments allows for “the ability to work in a very focused way”

07 Feb 2023 | Advance HE Thomas Legge, Associate Head of Department for Business, Coaching and Education, at Hartpury University, reflects on his experience as a participant on Advance HE’s Leading Departments programme.

Leading Departments is a programme designed for new Heads of Department to support them to assess and understand the challenges involved in leading and managing academic or professional services teams. The programme supports each leader as they develop their own style of leadership and management, getting to grips with how to overcome any problems.

Interactive

Thomas Legge, Associate Head of Department for Business, Coaching and Education at Hartpury University, said his decision to go on the programme was because he wanted to do something that was highly interactive. "I was looking to not just learn about more leadership concepts, but work with fellow peers within other universities, and have a go at applying some of the learning we were undertaking,” he said.

Thomas was “blown away” by the programme because it gives participants the ability to work in a very focused way and apply the learning. He said, “Having the real-life simulation of tasks, working with fellow colleagues in small groups to unpick that task and then to actually apply some of the learning in practice with live actors was superb."

Live feedback

Leading Departments also offers the chance to get live feedback in the moment, allowing individuals to really focus on what they could do differently in their own leadership and explore how colleagues in other universities work through the problems as well.

One of the key takeaways for Thomas was the one-to-one coaching. "That allowed some level of reassurance of my own leadership reflections," he said. 

Watch the full video below.

Leading Departments

Participants on our Leading Departments programme benefit from the opportunity to explore the use and balance of intellectual, emotional and political intelligences in facing day-to-day challenges. Find out more here.

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