Faculty

My observation is, and it is interesting you asked that question today because, I have actually had two opportunities to talk through leadership development today. So, it has been a bit of a theme today. My feeling is that we are not developing the leadership pipeline as strongly as we need to, and that when you do systemic succession planning across the University, you start to see some gaps. So, I am conscious that we are not really developing our leadership, the cadres of leadership that we need, say at the school level, tier one, tier two, and so forth. So, one of the things I am looking into at the moment is how we might develop a leadership development program for different kinds of faculty and staff, so that we start to develop a pipeline. And what that would involve is maybe identifying 30 or so people across the University—not guaranteeing them a leadership role but saying that we think you have leadership potential—and then putting them through a common program over time that would get them ready for a leadership role were one to open up. So, the question I ask myself is if someone became ill or a particular incident occurred, who is the person that we could insert into that role? In some cases, there is a ready-made successor, but in other cases, there is no clear successor. But regardless, we have a very narrow pool of people that we can put into those roles, and we need to expand that. We need to diversify. So, I am very conscious that a lot of people who could step up to roles are men, and it seems to me that what we—and I am very committed to this—that what we want to do is develop a much more diverse, both from gender and race point of view, leadership structure in the University. That means identifying and developing a cadre of people who are diverse and can take on roles and then giving them opportunities to rehearse and enact that leadership going forward.