Senior Fellow (Leadership and Leadership Development) - Birmingham Leadership Institute - Grade 9 -

Position Details

College of Social Sciences

Location: University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham UK

Full time starting salary is normally in the range £51,034 to £59,135. With potential progression once in post to £77,108 a year.

Grade 9

Full Time

Fixed Term Contract to 1 February 2023

Closing Date: 8 July 2021

Background

The Birmingham Leadership Institute's (BLI) is being established with interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral focus on leadership embracing complexity. The most pressing contemporary challenges - local, national and international - are frequently characterised by complexity, difference, disruption and conflict. The Birmingham Leadership Institute exists to research and develop the leadership required to make progress on them. As part of The Exchange, the BLI seeks to make a particular contribution to the University of Birmingham's civic mission.

The BLI's mission is to:

Better understand, through research and practice, the leadership required at all levels to enable progress on complex organisational, social, political, environmental, commercial and economic challenges.

Educate, train and develop people with the knowledge, skills and capacities to practice this leadership.

Inform public debate and the public understanding of leadership.

The BLI approaches leadership as a normative activity.

We value:

Collaborative leadership across boundaries, sectors, organisations, spatial levels and areas of life.

Inclusive leadership that promotes, reflects and prizes diversity and seeks to develop the leadership of others.

Responsible leadership that seeks to enable positive and sustainable outcomes for people, places and our planet.

The BLI has three main strands of activity:

1. Provide new insights from our leadership research and reflection-on-practice.

2. Deliver leadership education, training and development.

3. Provide open access leadership resources and programming and participate in public debate on leadership.

The BLI's reach:

Local/Regional - leadership research and development to support progress on complex challenges facing Birmingham and the West Midlands.

National - leadership research and development to support progress on complex challenges around the UK and nationally.

Global - leadership research and development to support progress on complex challenges globally with the international community in Birmingham and through the University of Birmingham's existing global presence and networks.

Job Summary

The Senior Fellow Leadership & Leadership Development will contribute at a senior level to the BLI's range of research, teaching and public engagement activities including:

• developing and delivering undergraduate, postgraduate and CPD programmes
• creating and disseminating knowledge through initiating and conducting original practice-oriented research
• actively participating in public debate and informing the public understanding of leadership.

Learning, Teaching and Leadership development will include developing and delivering a diverse range of academic and CPD programming and supporting innovation in and dissemination of rigorous leadership development pedagogies.

Research will include pursuing practice-oriented research activity on leadership and leadership development through original research, scholarship and rigorous reflection-on-practice. This will include working with UoB colleagues to scope and develop an interdisciplinary research programme for the BLI.

Management and Administration will include playing a lead role on teaching assessment and contributing to major RTTs.

Main Duties

• Provide academic leadership for the development, design and co-ordination of Masters, CPD and other BLI programmes and RTTs.
• Teach, deliver, examine and assess a range of leadership and leadership development programmes including Masters, short and long-course CPD.
• Conduct research projects, including bidding for projects, contributing to peer-review and professional publications arising from these projects, and work on producing a broader BLI research agenda.
• To develop and lead in the preparation of proposals for leadership development projects and to present these to potential clients and to design and deliver leadership and development projects on behalf of the BLI, coordinating and overseeing contributions from a range of employed and associate colleagues.
• Lead the development of new and appropriate leadership development pedagogies and their dissemination to colleagues including the wider network of BLI Associates and Fellows of Practice as appropriate
• Actively contribute to the development and delivery of the BLI's public understanding of leadership activity including the BLI launch and ongoing programme of events.
• Act as an adviser for a) teaching and learning leadership theory and b) enabling leadership development through excellent practice and mentoring other colleagues.
• To promote and market the work of the BLI locally/regionally, nationally, and globally.
• To be responsible for the creation and/or maintenance of local and national networks relevant to specific areas of leadership and management and to use these to identify forthcoming opportunities for BLI development, teaching or research activity.
• To identify opportunities for seminars and conferences and arrange programmes to meet these opportunities.
• Make a sustained contribution to widening participation across the full range of the BLI activities (and leadership development activities across the University) contributing to realising our commitment to inclusive leadership that reflects and prizes diversity and seeks to develop the leadership of others.
• To deliver on specific income targets, as agreed with the Director.

Required Knowledge, Skills, Qualifications, Experience

Learning, Teaching & Leadership Development

Essential:

• First degree or equivalent professional qualification.
• Demonstrable ability to bridge leadership research and leadership practice.
• Successful record of leadership teaching and/or leadership development at the highest level in/with government, civil society, the private and third sectors.
• An excellent leadership teaching and leadership development profile and performance in terms of both impact and quality. The leadership teaching and/or leadership development quality demonstrated to be informed by an appropriate level of scholarship. Evidence of success under the following headings:

o High national reputation for the development of leadership teaching and learning excellence and development and delivery of world-class leadership development.

o Successful and sustained use of a range of appropriate teaching methods, leadership development pedagogies and assessment strategies that promote high-quality learning and leadership development. This should include learning that is flexible, distinctive and current and stimulates learners' natural curiosity and leadership development with demonstrable impact.

o Significant and sustained contribution to one or more of the following: strategic development of new programmes; approaches to learning and leadership development; the development of learning and leadership development resources.

o High quality and sustained contributions to fostering excellence in teaching and leadership development activities more widely, e.g. across sectors, professions and/or University Departments etc.

Desirable:

• PhD or other higher degree in a relevant subject area.
• Track record of substantial and sustained high value impact on the enhancement of the student and/or participant experience, and/or employability.
• Mentoring and expert advice which develops the skills of colleagues in teaching leadership and leadership development.
• Experience of developing interventions to address equality and diversity issues.

Research

Essential:

• Track record of leading or contributing to robust practice-oriented leadership research.
• Desirable:
  
  
  • Track record of peer-reviewed research publications.
  • Sustained high value impact knowledge transfer and enterprise.
  Management and administration-related requirements:
  Essential:
  
  • Successful and sustained performance in significant administrative/managerial role(s).
  • Successful and sustained development, bidding for and management of significant leadership development programmes.
  • Actively promotes equality and diversity to internal and external stakeholders.
  Desirable:
  
  
  • Significant and sustained high quality innovative contributions to the management/administration of the Department/School/College/University or similar.
  • For informal enquiries, contact Christopher Pietroni - c.pietroni@bham.ac.uk
    Letter from the Director
    
    Dear Applicant
    
    I'm delighted that you are considering applying for the Senior Fellow position at the Birmingham Leadership Institute.
    
    As you will see from the one-page outline below, the BLI has a compelling purpose: to make a substantive contribution to developing leadership at all levels capable of making progress on some of the most pressing challenges we face. We think that 2020 has amply demonstrated that the need for really effective, evidence-based leadership development has never been greater.
    
    The BLI is a major new initiative of the University of Birmingham. Still in our start-up phase, we have been laying the foundations over the past year, developing a business plan and recruiting key staff. We launch in Autumn 2021 and will be based in The Exchange - a new city centre campus for the University of Birmingham designed to facilitate engagement with the city of Birmingham, its citizens and the wider world.
    
    We describe the focus of the BLI as leadership embracing complexity. This means that we are particularly interested in understanding more about and developing leadership that is capable of enabling change in this context. Our starting position is that leadership is a practice rather than a position. We are as interested in community-based or activist leadership as we are in the leadership of CEOs.
    
    The Senior Fellow role is critical for the BLI over the next 18 months. Because we are deliberately interdisciplinary and boundary-spanning, the successful candidate could come from a variety of leadership-related disciplines. We are looking for someone committed to the substance of our work who will help shape the direction of our research, leadership development and public programmes. The role is roughly split across the following focuses: 50% teaching and leadership development, 30% management and administration, 20% research. We are particularly interested in candidates keen to contribute to evidence-based leadership development pedagogies, acting as programme lead for our new MSc Systems Thinking & Leadership Degree Apprenticeship programme.
    
    We are a leadership development Institute in a Russell Group University, equally interested in research and practice, rooted locally and with national and global reach. If you can see the exciting opportunities this creates and are drawn to the dilemmas and tensions it throws up, then we would love to hear from you.
    
    Christopher Pietroni
    
    Director &. Professor of Leadership Practice
    
    Leadership Embracing Complexity: The Birmingham Leadership Institute at the University of Birmingham
    
    The most pressing contemporary challenges - local, national and international - are frequently characterised by complexity, difference, disruption and conflict. The Birmingham Leadership Institute exists to research and develop the leadership required to make progress on them.
    
    In addition to its own staff, the BLI draws on the University of Birmingham's specialist research centres, international research community and communities of practice to ensure that the most up to date thinking and the most skilled leadership development practice is made available.
    
    The BLI's mission is to:
    
    Better understand, through research and practice, the leadership required at all levels to enable progress on complex organisational, social, political, environmental, commercial and economic challenges
    
    Educate, train and develop people with the knowledge, skills and capacities to practice this leadership
    
    Inform public debate and the public understanding of leadership.
    
    We believe that leadership always reflects values. We value:
    
    Collaborative leadership across boundaries, sectors, organisations, spatial levels and areas of lif
    
    Inclusive leadership that promotes, reflects and prizes diversity and seeks to develop the leadership of others
    
    Responsible leadership that seeks to enable positive and sustainable outcomes for people, places and our planet.
    
    We have three main strands of activity:
    
    Provide new insights from our leadership research and reflection-on-practice
    
    Deliver leadership education, training and development
    
    Provide open access leadership resources and programming and participate in public debate on leadership
    
    Our reach is:
    
    Local/Regional - leadership research and development to support progress on complex challenges facing Birmingham and the West Midlands
    
    National - leadership research and development to support progress on complex challenges around the UK and nationally
    
    Global - leadership research and development to support progress on complex challenges globally with the international community in Birmingham and through the University of Birmingham's existing global presence and networks
  • Valuing excellence, sustaining investment
    
    We value diversity and inclusion at the University of Birmingham and welcome applications from all sections of the community and are open to discussions around all forms of flexible working.