Vice-Chancellor Professor Dame Julia Goodfellow gave the keynote address at an Aurora workshop on Core Leadership Skills in London on 27 February. The workshop was the first of four sessions around the country organised by Aurora, the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education’s leadership development initiative for women.
In her address, the Vice-Chancellor described her own philosophy of leadership as being about creating an environment that others want to be a part of. This needs to stem from an inner confidence and understanding of where we are, and where we are trying to get to. Leadership is not something that we suddenly just do, or suddenly master. Rather, leadership is learned throughout our careers; we begin acquiring leadership skills and exercising leadership from PhD onwards in the case of academic staff and at various career stages for professional services staff.
Leadership is about bringing people through change, but can only be achieved by finding champions, and giving others opportunities to lead.
Several times, the Vice-Chancellor emphasised the importance of clear communication, careful listening, and saying thank you. She offered very helpful pieces of practical advice for women at the early stages of taking on leadership roles. In particular, she encouraged participants to really get a handle on how our organisations work, what the wider HE environment is, and how people behave in organisations.
She advised participants to reflect on whether specific roles and projects are the right things to be focusing on at specific stages in our careers, and to ensure that we have full knowledge of what the longer-term consequences would be of those roles. She also emphasised the need to balance our inward and outward-looking roles so that we establish very strong networks of supporters, male and female, who really understand the contributions we are making, and can support us as we progress in our careers.
The Twitter feed #LFAurora was lively, with participants commenting on how inspired they were by the talk. One participant tweeted: ‘So refreshing & inspiring to hear Dame Julia Goodfellow sharing her career experiences in a lovely down-to-earth way’. Another said: ‘Great talk by Prof Dame Goodfellow on walking the tightrope: work/life, independent/team, talking/listening, research/leadership’.
The Vice-Chancellor will give two further keynote addresses at the Aurora events in Bristol and Manchester.