No one agrees on what research leadership is, let alone how to do it well

Is there an urgent need to consider why and how leadership matters in relation to research? My sense is that the mass ranks of my academic colleagues across the country would recoil at such a suggestion. One of the main findings of the national review into research leadership that I led for the ESRC between 2018-2020 was that a strong cultural antagonism exists around any discussion of leadership.

The concept of leadership in HE has, for fairly obvious reasons, become firmly associated in the minds of most academics with the imposition of top-down controls, with bureaucracy and form-filling, and with highly political assumptions about managerialism.

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Research, on the other hand, is the part of the job that academics tend to enjoy the most, because it provides them with the most autonomy, independence and freedom from the external controls that any discussion of leadership is generally thought to imply. This might explain why the existing knowledge base on leadership as it relates to scholarly research is so ridiculously thin, to the point of being almost non-existent.

But is this situation really sustainable?

Can it really be healthy for the academy to have no common idea of what “research leadership” really is, and why it matters, let alone what “good practice” looks like?

Asking these questions is not to suggest that major strides have not been made in recent years. A vast sea of leadership-related fellowships, initiatives and investments now exist, but what’s often missing is any deeper and evidence-based understanding of exactly the sorts of talents and skills that need to be honed, apart from a broad emphasis on mobility. How these fellowships, initiatives and investments knit together to ensure long-term reciprocity and value is also unclear, while linkages beyond academe and into other research-related leadership initiatives remain undeveloped and little thought is given to “late leaders”, “lost leaders” or the “leadership lag”.

The evidence also suggests that scientists feel unsupported when it comes to leading research projects and teams. Although an emphasis on “learning by doing” might provide a rather traditional justification for how researchers “learn to lead” (themselves and others) it also smacks of amateurism – the horse and cart in the time of the digital superhighway.

The evidence for this argument is clear. The research, development and innovation “ecosystem” is changing rapidly. Research funding is increasingly being allocated to “team science” projects that are large and complex, that are interdisciplinary and problem-orientated, that embrace an emphasis on co-design and co-production, often have a consortium of funders and operate through a “hub-and-spoke” governance model.

Connecting and catalysing across the “ecosystem” demands a range of talents and skills that go far beyond traditional subject-specific expertise – it demands research leadership that is fit for the future rather than fit for the past.

As a starting point for discussion, how might we define research leadership, identify the problem and think about the research leadership opportunity?

Despite growing interest and investment in the topic, no clear and succinct definition of research leadership exists within the scholarly or professional sphere. The below seeks to address this situation and provide a starting point for discussion:

Defining research leadership

Noun.

1. The activity of supporting and facilitating the production of research in an inclusive manner that maximises the scientific quality and social impact(s) of that endeavour.

2. Relates to both individual development (self-leadership) but more commonly to the contribution of an individual to supporting and nurturing the research careers of others.

3. May refer to activities in relation to a specific project or programme of research, or to broader ambassadorial roles within research funding organisations, learned societies or academies.

4. Research leadership occurs in a number of organisational and professional contexts and is in no way restricted to academe. 

The definition provided here is clearly contestable. It aims to stimulate debate and refinement. But it does help us reflect upon the nature of the research leadership challenge that exists.

There is, of course, no single problem. There are multiple and overlapping issues that somehow need to be untangled and teased apart. The existence of cultural antagonism towards the notion of leadership has already been mentioned, as has the shift towards larger and more complex research investments that demand a more professional and supported approach to leadership.

But there is also a more systemic barrier or blockage that is almost hardwired into academic structures in the sense that incentive frameworks and audit metrics still tend to promote and reward an emphasis on the “me” and not the “we”. Spending time leading large grant applications (that may not be funded) or coordinating collaborative projects (that have been funded) is risky for the simple reason that it may not easily translate into “what counts” as the main academic currency (external research income and peer-reviewed publications).

And yet a scientific community that was really focused on being “fit for the future” would seek to nurture collaborative leadership skills that emphasised the capacity to work in teams and across traditional disciplinary, organisational and professional boundaries. Potential research users and professional research support staff would form key parts of “the team”, and the core intellectual emphasis would be on the we, not me. There are examples of path-breaking schemes that have embraced this approach – such as the Academy of Medical Sciences’ Future Leaders in Innovation, Enterprise and Research scheme – but they remain fairly remote islands of excellence on a rather barren landscape.

The research leadership opportunity should therefore focus attention on how the insights of such schemes might be scaled up, out and down for the benefit of the wider scientific community. It should also focus on disruptive thinking, recognising a range of talents, facilitating braided careers that make moving in and out of academe easier, the need for “whole of career” thinking, and on the need for higher education to seize the initiative at a systemic level in order to demonstrate ambition and agility.

In short, higher education urgently needs to understand what research leadership is and why it matters.

Matthew Flinders is professor of politics at the University of Sheffield and chair of the Universities Policy Engagement Network. His report, Research Leadership Matters: Agility, Alignment, Ambition, has just been published by the Higher Education Policy Institute.

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