The Researchers' Newsletter – April 2025

A decision table for the research active academic leader

A challenge for many research leaders is that you often have at least two, and often multiple, distinct roles.

 

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A decision table for the research active academic leader

A challenge for many research leaders is that you often have at least two, and often multiple, distinct roles. One is the (“formal”) headship of an academic unit, centre or research group that requires certain things to be done and relatively set policies, protocols and ways of working. The other is as a researcher and usually a research leader. Professionally and personally navigating those two roles is a challenge. Especially given other roles including as administrative leads, Education leads, and managing significant institutional change or a large personal research workload.

 

Manage the priorities…QED

The theory goes that you identify the priorities, set out a plan and then work through it. Doesn’t generally work like that for most academic leaders. This has been illustrated to our coaches many times, including a diary exercise where a group of heads of areas in a faculty kept a log diary of how they spent their time over a couple of weeks. They were stunned at where they lost their time, and how little control they actually exercised over this loss.

 

These experiences underscore the need to alter the systems around your workload, because you will generally not have control over the day to day workload itself.

 

Priorities management is part of it, of course, and so is managing your energy. Energy management is what you have in place around your workload to ensure that you are not draining your energy on low value activities and on too many activities, without any time to recharge. Priority setting and energy management is also about who you can get to work on your behalf or directly on your work. This requires some focused thinking and some altering of the systems around your workload.

 

A decision table for heads

RCA wrote a tongue in cheek matrix a few years back as a way for leaders to think more selfishly about what they will and won’t work on and what they should look to delegate. It is not the “Important-Urgent” matrix, but the “Important-how good am I at it” matrix. You can also create an “Important-Do I enjoy it” matrix and get rid of the stuff to others that tends to destroy your energy. After all, you have a responsibility to assist others who need to strengthen their administration track record in their CV…

A different type of matrix...		How good are you at it?
		POOR	GOOD
How important is it?	NOT Important	Eliminate or delegate	Coach others to do it or eliminate
	VERY Important	Get some help, ASAP	Do it yourself and involve others so they learn it

 

Next steps: This matrix is not going to solve your research leadership and headship issues, but it is a creative way of thinking differently about your workload – the main thing is to spend sufficient time thinking about how you may alter the systems around your workload and involve others in doing the work, for their benefit too.