Faculty of Social Sciences and Public Policy at King’s College London
Empowering new leaders to lead effectively and with confidence
A leadership development programme to empower new Heads of Department.
The Faculty of Social Sciences and Public Policy asked us to develop a programme for new leaders, to enable them to be better equipped for their role.
A plan for supporting new leaders
The Faculty of Social Science & Public Policy (SSPP) is one of the largest, most diverse and international communities for social research and education in Europe. Through their work SSPP seeks to understand global, social, technological and economic changes and to shape transformations through education and research.
Background to the project
The Faculty had recently appointed a number of new heads of school and departments. People who would be in leadership roles for the first time.
The Faculty wanted to support this new leadership cohort, especially as leadership roles are challenging. If you’re new to it, there’s very little in academic life that prepares you for taking up a leadership position. They are complex jobs that involve dealing with people, bureaucracy and systems. Head of Department roles also require people to step out of their peer group to lead close colleagues, which presents a specific set of challenges. For many, this is a big change from their usual work of teaching and research.
Academic Leaders needed a different kind of learning and development
The holders of these leadership roles traditionally have not received training or development to enable them to be effective. While some training was available, access to the programmes was limited. Plus they did not cover the relational component of leading others or other ‘soft skills’ that support communicating effectively, dealing with conflict well or building confidence.
Designing the programme
Together with the Faculty, we co-created a programme of support to help the cohort of half a dozen new Heads of Department:
- Understand the expectations of their role.
- Build confidence to work effectively at department, faculty and college levels.
- Work collaboratively with professional services and academic colleagues.
- Manage their increased workload.
- Help them navigate difficult situations and challenging conversations.
- Develop their leadership and managerial capability, and self confidence.
- Establish a network for peer support.
This was an opportunity to develop a new cadre of leaders in SSPP with the confidence to lead more skillfully, more collaboratively and more creatively.
How we helped
We put together a programme that enabled participants to support each other, and that gave them core soft, transferable skills covering:
- having difficult conversations,
- delegating effectively,
- listening well,
- leading with authenticity.
The programme was based on the following elements:
- Regular workshops focused on building leadership and management skills.
- Action learning sets to establish peer-to-peer support behaviours.
- Individual coaching sessions to enable personalised support and self reflection.
- Multi-source feedback to identify individual strengths and areas for development.
We began with a benchmarking survey to assess levels of confidence, self assessed capability and to identify what support participants most desired.
The idea was to combine skills-based learning with reflective spaces to talk about the live challenges that people had.
We wanted them to develop their coaching skills, and build rapport and trust across the group.
Critically we encouraged members to support each other, establishing shared reflective spaces, as well pair coaching and to one-to-one support.
It meant that they were not alone on the journey of discovering the scope of their new role.
The programme was run in an agile way, responding to the needs of the group as they emerged, with workshops flexing to meet those needs
We supported the cohort throughout their first year and helped them:
- navigate all the new challenges,
- deal with the volume of workload,
- cope with the emotional burden of dealing with people who need help.
It was a successful programme. The cohort learned and felt supported, and it made it much easier for them to take their time to lean into their new role.
What’s next
Together with SSPP we are planning another programme for emerging leaders: people at an earlier stage in their career who are starting to take on leadership roles and engaging with the wider institution for the first time.
