Thick skin? Then head for the top

If you've set your heart on the vice-chancellorship, you need to know a few things, says Harriet Swain. Research will have to take a back seat, you'll benefit from clear goals and you must be willing to grin and bear anything

Summer time, and surely there must be easier ways to make a living than struggling through all this boring research. Why not bin the books and go for high office instead?

Certainly, if you want to head for vice-chancellorship, research will have to give, says Peter Knight, vice-chancellor of the University of Central England for more than 20 years and due to retire at the end of the year.

"Once I realised I wasn't good enough to be a professor of astronomy or astrophysics, I thought I ought to climb the greasy pole (to a vice-chancellorship) unimpeded by any other ambition," he says. Academic prowess is not nearly as important in the top job as it once was and it is increasingly difficult to pursue if you are busy developing the other experiences needed to become vice-chancellor.

On the other hand, you will probably have to continue working in a university. While there are some moves by headhunters and institutions to look at candidates from business or other organisations, most vice-chancellors follow the traditional route of head of school, dean of faculty and pro vice-chancellor on the way to the top. "You have to be confident not only that you can do this but also that you can enjoy it," Knight says.

Paul Cox, president of the Association of Graduate Careers Advisory Services, says you should have a personal development plan and clear goals. You need to research opportunities thoroughly and be prepared to take risks. You must make sure as you progress through your career that you are part of the relevant networks. It is useful to develop some kind of profile should any headhunters happen to be watching, he says.

Imogen Wilde, head of education at head-hunters Norman Broadbent, says you will need to be able to convey to an appointments committee your strategic-level experience, vision and ambition. Experience of cross-university roles is very important, while successful experience at pro vice-chancellor level will give the committee confidence that you can do the job. You will need to be able to demonstrate that you have run a project or team of people, have significant management experience and have had to take difficult decisions, she says. Experience as dean of a large faculty with a big budget will help, as will experience of heading organisations that may be constituent parts of a university but provide opportunities to demonstrate strong leadership and management.

She says you will also need to demonstrate good presentation and communication skills - the ability to hold an audience - and that you can command the confidence of staff in the university as well as external stakeholders. "In my experience, academics are the worst offenders when it comes to giving structured presentations that keep to time," she warns.

Ewart Wooldridge, chief executive of the Leadership Foundation in Higher Education, says: "The ability to command the confidence of a range of communities within the institution seems crucial." He says the role also demands a blend of academic, strategic and corporate leadership.

He says vice-chancellors become a role model for the institution, so they must have a high level of self-awareness and awareness of their impact on others. They must also have a well-developed sense of how to manage change and be able to read the culture of an organisation and to know where obstacles to change are likely to appear.

International experience and contacts are also increasingly important, as is experience of different kinds of institution in the UK. Wooldridge says the Leadership Foundation also encourages prospective vice-chancellors to work in another sector for a time, even if only on secondment. "If you look at the CV of someone putting themselves forward for the vice-chancellorship, real diversity of experience is important," he says.

Knight says it is useful to have some contact with national policy-making "to find out how the world actually works". "If you are looking for a vice-chancellor, ideally, you want to appoint a candidate who knows how the system works at national level," he says.

To do all this you will probably need to be prepared to drag your family around to different parts of the country, or even abroad, to take advantage of the best promotion opportunities. If you are a woman it may be best to avoid having a family altogether. Recent research by Glynis Breakwell, vice-chancellor of Bath University, and Michelle Tytherleigh, research fellow at Bath, into the characteristics of heads of universities found that only 56 per cent of women had children compared with 79 per cent of men. Nearly a third of the women were neither married nor living with a partner.

It is best not to be too young, either. The same research found that the mean age for a vice-chancellor in the past nine years has been 54. Knight recommends learning to age gracefully. "The tradition now is to appoint people who look as though they have gravitas," he says.

Even then, you will have to rely on the right job appearing at the right time, Cox says. In any organisation, the business of what people go for is very much an individual thing and depends on the priorities of an individual institution at any particular time, he says. "Your career may have developed in a way that would fit you for some positions but not for others."

Wilde says this makes it essential to think hard about what the particular university wants and to tailor your application - and subsequent presentations - accordingly.

And if your career path to vice-chancellorship does not run smoothly, it may be good preparation for the job anyway. Being a sensitive soul is no good, says Knight. Being vice-chancellor is always about dealing with the most difficult problems and having to make decisions. "Skin of Kevlar is essential!"

TOP TIPS

• Be prepared to downscale your research
• Set clear career goals
• Be a good communicator
• Get different experiences
• Be tough

 

• Further information: The Leadership Foundation, www.lfhe.ac.uk The Association of Graduate Careers Advisory Services, www.agcas.ac.uk , Norman Broadbent headhunters, www.normanbroadbent.co.uk