This blog from the Future Leaders Fellows Development Network is based on an honest and open discussion with speakers currently working in senior leadership roles within higher education.

Career progression is often seen as the natural next step in a successful research career. You may experience pressure, from yourself or from your institution, to move into more senior leadership positions. It is important to make these decisions proactively and to negotiate them on your own terms.

However, many people are unaware of, or unprepared for, the realities that can accompany these roles. These may include increased time pressures, greater political complexity, and strains on research activity, alongside new opportunities to influence culture, strategy, and institutional direction.

This resource is designed to help you reflect on what stepping into a senior role might mean for you within your own personal and professional context. It may also help you identify the kinds of questions you want to explore before deciding whether a more senior leadership role is right for you.

After reading, you might find it useful to arrange a few informal conversations or coffee catch-ups with colleagues working in different leadership roles. You could use some of the questions posed to the leaders who contributed to this discussion panel as prompts for those conversations:

• Your (senior) role: How you would describe your role and what it involves in practice
• Myth-busting: Assumptions you had (positive or negative) about stepping into a more senior role that turned out not to be true
• What you had to let go of: Things you needed to stop doing, delegate, deprioritise, or rethink in order to step up effectively
• Impact: Where you feel you have had the most impact, whether on your own career, your team, or your wider environment
• Advice: What you would say to your younger self or others (current research leaders) who are considering stepping into a more senior role
• Skills and capabilities: The skills or ways of working you find yourself drawing on most in your role