Academic leaders are, almost universally, promoted for excellence at something other than leadership. The strong researcher becomes department chair; the admired teacher becomes programme director; and both discover that the skills that earned them the role are not the skills the role demands. This accidental-leader problem is one of the great unaddressed weaknesses in higher education globally — and it is soluble through a needs-based approach to leadership development that begins well before you take the post.
This article sets out how an academic can prepare deliberately for departmental and academic leadership, diagnosing the specific capabilities the role requires, building them through targeted development, and — once in post — creating the succession pipeline that prevents the next chair being thrown in equally unprepared. The principles apply across systems, from a head of department in Lagos or Nairobi to a chair in Toronto or a programme lead in London, because the human work of leading academics is remarkably similar everywhere.
The accidental-leader problem
The academic career rewards individual scholarly achievement, then abruptly asks its best performers to manage budgets, resolve conflicts, handle underperformance, represent the unit upward, and hold together a group of highly autonomous professionals who did not elect to be managed. Nothing in a doctoral training or a research career prepares a person for this, and institutions rarely provide serious leadership development before appointment. The result is capable scholars struggling, and sometimes floundering, in roles they were given as a reward.
A needs-based approach treats leadership as a set of learnable capabilities rather than an innate quality or an unavoidable ordeal. It starts from the specific demands of the role you are moving toward and works backward to the development that will prepare you. For the wider context of academic service and leadership, see our Leadership, Service & Committees hub, which situates leadership within the broader landscape of institutional contribution.
Diagnosing your leadership gaps
Preparation begins with an honest audit of the gap between your current capabilities and the role's demands. List the actual responsibilities of the position you are approaching — budget management, staff appraisal, conflict resolution, strategic planning, external representation, managing underperformance — and rate yourself candidly on each. Most scholars find they are comfortable with the intellectual and representational aspects and distinctly uncomfortable with the interpersonal and managerial ones, which is precisely where development should concentrate.
Seek external perspective, because self-assessment of leadership capability is even less reliable than self-assessment of teaching. A structured conversation with a current or former chair, or feedback from colleagues who have seen you lead a committee or project, surfaces blind spots you cannot see alone. Record the resulting priorities as concrete development goals. Our leadership self-assessment guide provides a capability audit you can complete before your first leadership role.
The core skills chairs actually need
Beneath the many tasks of academic leadership sit a handful of core capabilities that determine success. The first is handling difficult conversations — declining a colleague's request, addressing underperformance, mediating a dispute — without damaging relationships, a skill most academics have actively avoided developing. The second is financial and resource literacy: reading a budget, understanding your unit's income and cost structure, and making defensible allocation decisions. The third is the ability to build consensus among autonomous professionals who cannot simply be instructed.
To these add the capacity to represent your unit upward and outward persuasively, to plan strategically rather than merely react, and to protect your staff's time and wellbeing while meeting institutional demands. None of these is innate; all can be developed through targeted courses, reading, and above all practice in lower-stakes settings before the full role arrives. AcademicStaff's workload calculator is a practical aid here, giving a new chair the evidence base to make and defend allocation decisions fairly across the unit. Our guide to difficult conversations works through the highest-anxiety skill in detail.
Mentoring, shadowing and stretch roles
The richest leadership development happens on the job, not in the seminar room. Seek stretch assignments before you need them: chairing a significant committee, leading a curriculum review, managing a project with a real budget, or acting as deputy to a current chair. These give you genuine leadership experience at manageable stakes, revealing your gaps while they are still cheap to address. Volunteering for such roles deliberately, rather than avoiding them, is one of the best investments a mid-career academic can make.
Mentoring accelerates everything. A relationship with an experienced leader who will let you shadow them, talk through real decisions, and debrief afterward compresses years of trial-and-error learning. Approach a chair you respect and ask explicitly; most are flattered and willing. Reciprocally, when you become a leader, offer the same to your successors. The Advance HE knowledge hub offers leadership frameworks and resources widely used internationally, useful whether or not you are in the UK system.
Building leadership pipelines in your unit
Once in a leadership role, one of your most important and most neglected duties is preparing those who will follow. The accidental-leader problem repeats endlessly precisely because chairs rarely develop successors; they carry the load alone and hand over abruptly to someone equally unprepared. Breaking this cycle means deliberately distributing leadership tasks, giving promising colleagues real responsibility with support, and talking openly about leadership as a shared responsibility of the unit rather than a burden dumped on whoever cannot dodge it.
Practical succession-building looks like delegating a genuine portfolio to a deputy, rotating committee chairs so experience spreads, and mentoring one or two colleagues explicitly toward future leadership. This is not merely altruism; a unit with distributed leadership capacity is more resilient, and your own tenure is easier when the load is shared. Document how the unit runs — its budget cycle, its key processes, its recurring decisions — so that transition does not mean starting from zero. Our guide to succession planning covers the mechanics.
Leading without losing your scholarship
The final, hardest challenge of academic leadership is holding onto your scholarly identity while doing the job. Leadership roles are voracious, and many chairs emerge from a term to find their research programme has withered and their publication record has a multi-year gap. Because most academics eventually return to a purely academic role, protecting some scholarly continuity through a leadership term is both a personal and a career necessity, not a luxury.
Defend it structurally: negotiate a genuine teaching and administrative reduction as a condition of taking the role, ring-fence even a single research half-day each week, and keep a minimal but continuous publication cadence rather than stopping entirely. Track what you do produce so the record does not vanish — the AcademicStaff publication ledger keeps your scholarly output visible even during the busiest leadership years, so returning to full academic life afterward is a resumption rather than a restart. Leadership done well is a profound contribution; leadership that consumes the leader serves no one.
The Academic Leadership Readiness Audit
A capability self-audit for aspiring chairs and programme leads, mapping the real demands of academic leadership against your current skills, with a stretch-assignment planner and a mentoring-request template.
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Frequently asked questions
How can I prepare for a department chair role before I am appointed?
Audit the specific demands of the role against your current capabilities, then seek stretch experiences that build the gaps — chairing a major committee, leading a review, or deputising for a current chair. Combine this with mentoring from an experienced leader and targeted development in areas like difficult conversations and budget literacy.
What is the single most valuable leadership skill for academics?
Handling difficult conversations without damaging relationships — declining requests, addressing underperformance and mediating disputes. Most academics have actively avoided developing this, yet it underpins nearly every hard part of leading autonomous professionals. It is learnable through practice in lower-stakes settings and targeted development.
How do I keep my research alive while serving as a leader?
Defend it structurally rather than relying on willpower. Negotiate a real teaching and admin reduction as a condition of the role, ring-fence at least one research half-day weekly, maintain a minimal publication cadence, and track your outputs continuously so returning to full academic work later is a resumption rather than a restart.
The AcademicStaff editorial team writes practical, evidence-based guidance for university staff — drawing on sector reporting, funder guidelines and the lived administrative reality of academic work. Every guide is reviewed for accuracy against current Australian higher-education practice.