For real change, we need educational leaders who are CHIC
Guest post by Colin Simpson, Monash University, Australia
In the field of faculty/academic development (or education technology or learning design) we sometimes feel the success of our work depends on the whims of our institutional leaders. While we bring a wealth of experience and knowledge to the job from diverse places, when it comes to working for positive change at scale, we can frequently only advise and hope that our guidance is followed. In a workplace where it is surprisingly easy for an academic to say “Actually, no, I don’t think I will do that” when it comes to new teaching practices, institutional transformation needs institutional drivers. This involves the kind of resourcing and political support that only comes from the people at the top, the Vice Chancellors, the Provosts, the Deputy Vice Chancellors (Education) and their ilk. Being human they all have their own quirks and what follows here is a discussion of the qualities of leaders in this space that I have found the most helpful for driving transformation.
I have had quite a few bosses in the connected fields of education technology, faculty development and learning design while working in tertiary education in Australia over the last 18 years. On occasion I’ve held leadership roles but for the most part I’ve preferred to be a worker. My work team is currently in the midst of a restructure and these are all general observations formed over many years, rather than just recently.
Looking for CHIC leaders
A couple of years ago I found an article in the Harvard Business Review (Chamorro-Premuzic, 2013) describing the most important traits of a good leader as having competence, humility and integrity, which really resonated with me. In our context I would add a fourth, courage, enabling a neat acronym, CHIC. If teaching is about creating opportunities for learning to occur, leading in Higher Education is about actively enabling the work that is needed to foster good teaching. Being CHIC seems vital in doing this.
Competence doesn’t mean that a leader must have all the answers. It means that they know enough to recognise the competence of their staff and combine this with their understanding of the issues, people, systems and culture of the institution to make things happen. Curiosity is a particularly encouraging part of this competence. The leaders that do think they have all the answers are some of the worst to work for, because they ask fewer questions of their staff, making it harder for them to contribute. A deeper understanding of current and emerging pedagogies and technologies can be valuable when trying to affect educational change. While we do look at a new leader’s educationally oriented research history for clues as to their interests, I don’t actually think this is the definitive measure of competence that some do, given that there are many ways to understand learning and teaching.
Humility can be a rare bird in a culture that almost mandates absolute confidence in your disciplinary knowledge above everything else, but it is a powerful indicator of genuine competence. A humble leader recognises that the people in their team spend most of their days thinking about the problems the leader wants to solve in very granular ways and have deep experience, knowledge and skills in this field, whether in academic or professional roles. They will also be open to changing their mind if presented with new information. A humble leader is happy to point at a place on the map and say “this is where we want to go: tell me what you think are the best ways to build the car, make the roads, ford the rivers and get us all there safely” and then let their team get on with the job.
Integrity speaks to the personal values of the leader and their behaviour in the role. Are they fair, kind, consistent and transparent? Do they share credit for successes and accept responsibility for failures? How do we recognise these values? Through working with these leaders, we learn whether we feel comfortable raising concerns with decisions or other aspects of projects and whether we feel safe bringing new ideas to them.
The literature (Sturm et al, 2017; Lee et al. 2019) emphasises these first three qualities- competence, humility and integrity- as key traits of good leaders. I argue that in Higher Education we should add courage. Courage in this context is about the willingness to take risks and commit to decisions that might be unpopular. Do they fight for their team against cuts and unrealistic workloads? How do they see themselves as a leader? Leadership in Higher Education is unusual in some ways as academic culture sometimes sees it more as a service rather than a vocation. There is an assumption that one will take on this leadership role, carry the responsibilities and enjoy the trappings but ultimately, they have an identity as a scholar researching and teaching in their discipline. This knowledge that they will eventually need to come back and be accepted by the body of their academic peers can be a powerful force against affecting the meaningful change needed in a Higher Education institution that will upset these peers. Courage is essential in making these decisions anyway for the benefit of the whole institution.
Higher Education culture can be unique and exhilarating but also terrifying, with many highly intelligent people working in a competitive space with a range of personal and professional goals. The prioritisation of independence and academic freedom can make the entire endeavour something like herding cats for leaders. As faculty/academic developers, learning designers, educational technologists and the like, we pay close attention to the qualities of our leaders, the things they say and more importantly the things they do in trying to divine how to best do our work and which of our own goals for better learning and teaching might realistically be achieved.
It can be rare to find anyone embodying all of the traits of competence, humility, integrity and courage but it is a joy when we do and we should let them know that we appreciate it. If you are in a leadership role, there may also be value in regularly reflecting on what kind of leader you are and how this affects the work that your people do.
Colin Simpson has worked in education technology in the tertiary sector since 2003 and is employed by Monash University’s Education Innovation team. Colin is a founder and co-convenor of ASCILITE TELedvisors (educator advisors) Network, a community of practice for learning designers, education technologists and faculty/academic developers with more than 500 members. For more from Colin, follow him on Twitter @gamerlearner.
This post is part of the “Around the world” series on faculty development. Watch this space in the coming months for more inspiration on professional development approaches in Higher Education from around the globe.
