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young leaders

Transition to Leadership

Enhance your leadership skills and become an authentic leader.

Those entering leadership roles for the first time during these challenging times need to be fully equipped to do so, particularly when those roles involve leading academic teams and colleagues. Transition to Leadership (TTL) is an established programme that has three main themes:

  • personal leadership
  • team leadership and collaborating with others
  • leadership in times of change.

Find out more by downloading our information sheet

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Enhancing your leadership skills

TTL will explore your personal leadership, your team leadership and your change leadership style. By understanding your own resilience and how you can influence and inspire others you will learn new approaches to manage difficult situations and enable institutional change to happen. Transition to Leadership will allow you to develop:

  • Your role in supporting and delivering organisational change
  • Your capabilities as a team leader and builder, to optimise your team or project groups performance
  • Your emotional intelligence and influencing behaviours as a positive leadership role model
  • An understanding of leadership styles and skills, and apply this learning to your own context and sense of identity as a leader
  • Your self-awareness and reflective practice
  • Your personal coaching skills, including peer- and team-coaching to support achievement by others that you work with.
"It's been a really positive experience for me and I've learnt a great deal. I've particularly relished the opportunities to coach and be coached and the opportunities to partake in diagnostics and get specialist, leadership focussed feedback (e.g. MBTI)." Amy Norton, Senior Higher Education Policy Advisor, Higher Education Funding Council for England

Jean Chandler provides an overview of the programme

For those interested in taking part in the next cohort of the programme, co-facilitator Jean Chandler reflects on how the programme works and the benefits and confidence delegates see from participation and the shared learning experience and supportive environment it provides.

What are the programme outcomes?

The Transition to Leadership programme contains diagnostics, self-assessments and structured self-reflection activities, plus online discussions to help participants understand the differing perspectives of others, to better influence and lead. Participants are provided with the opportunity to explore a variety of leadership styles and discover ways to integrate different skills and preferences to create team cohesion. They will enhance their understanding of how to adapt to varying situations within and outside their team and developing their capabilities as a team leader, thus enabling them to optimise team or project group performance.

Facilitators

Jean Chandler

Key Associate
,
Advance HE
Jean Chandler
Jean is an Associate Consultant with Advance HE having previously held the role of Assistant Director Membership for Scotland until Oct 2018. Her career background includes General & Human Resources Management in the NHS Scotland and HE, latterly as Head of Staff and Organisational Development at University of Glasgow.

Stuart Hunt

Key Associate
,
Advance HE
Stuart Hunt TTL
Stuart has worked in the HE sector for almost 30 years as both a professional trainer and as a consultant, coach and facilitator, specialising in organisation and leadership development. He is especially interested in supporting cultural change across organisations, helping to support collaborative team working, and the transition of individuals as they become effective leaders.

How is the programme delivered?

Transition to Leadership has been restructured and adapted to suit current circumstances, there is a short introductory webinar on 24 February 2022, highlighting the aims and structure of the programme, how to navigate the online learning environment and the introductory tasks, followed by six online workshops, each of approximately 3 hours duration, covering the following topics:

Workshop 1

Personal Leadership

Leadership styles and how to apply this learning to your own context and sense of identity as a leader


Workshop 2

My Leadership Profile and Development: an Introduction to Coaching

What "the leader as a coach" means in practice and how to apply this approach with skill;

Workshop 3

Difference and Team Working

Recognising and responding to difference in order to make the most of a diverse team or project group


Workshop 4

Influencing Others and Collaborative Working

Emotional intelligence and influencing behaviours

Workshop 5

Leading in times of Change:

Your role in supporting and delivering organisational change

Workshop 6

Change and Personal Resilience

Maintaining personal resilience in the face of multiple changes and challenges.

The final module will conclude with a short reflective activity, including a consideration of continuing leadership development.

This programme builds on the very successful blended (a mix of online, on-the-the job and face-to-face learning) approach offered in the previous eleven national programmes.  Responding to the difficulty of providing face-to-face workshops, the course has been adapted to the online environment including a series of live webinars, online collaborative learning activities and discussion boards, self-assessments, work-based activities and reflection. These activities are supported by a rich set of learning materials that remain available to participants for a minimum of six months after the conclusion of the programme.

Interview with programme co-facilitator Stuart Hunt

Stuart Hunt, programme director for Transition to Leadership, in our recent interview, discusses the need for the programme in the sector and what participants will gain from attending. The topics Stuart covers in the below videos include; the current challenges facing HE professionals, what it means to be an authentic leader, Personal, team and change leadership styles and Personal resilience and dealing with difficult situations.

Who is the programme for?
What are the benefits of the programme?
The challenges faced by higher education professionals
What does it mean to be an authentic leader?
Personal, team and change leadership styles
Personal resilience and dealing with difficult situations

My learning experiences - transitioning to senior management

Ruth Seabrook

Making the transition from Head of Partnership to a senior leadership role for the Secondary PGCE programme at the University of Roehampton, Ruth Seabrook shares her thoughts on Advance HE's Transition to Leadership course she attended and the benefits gained since.

Read the blog
Ruth Seabrook
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