Leadership and management updates from HR

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We’ve already seen some of the new support initiatives for staff the HR team has been working on over the past few months. Here Bea Young, HR Partner – Organisation and Development, shares more about the updated core programmes for leadership and development.

“Flexibility in a time of great change is a vital quality of leadership”

Brian Tracy, Leadership Speaker and Author

Never has this been truer within the University and wider world than in the past six months. Our leaders and managers will continue to need to be adaptive, resilient, collaborative and emotionally intelligent as we face the challenges and opportunities of the coming years.

The Learning and Organisation Development (L&OD) team have been focusing on how we can continue to develop and strengthen these leadership qualities at all levels across the University.

Having successfully transferred the existing leadership and management programmes from face-to-face to virtual in the early days of lockdown, L&OD have continued to develop innovative ways for leaders and managers to connect, reflect and learn over the next academic year.

These include digital coaching and toolkits to support new ways of working and developing virtual peer communities through discussion groups and Microsoft Teams channels. These communities offer managers and leaders from across the organisation a place to ask for advice, share best practice and provide support and reassurance.

As the new semester begins, our core leadership and management development programmes will also launch with a new structure that enables more staff to enrol, a greater focus on individualised learning and increased focus on building a community of leaders across the organisation.

The three programmes available are:

Aspiring Manager  –  for  staff who are not in a management role but demonstrate the potential and motivation to develop into one.

Edinburgh Manager (formerly Introduction/First Steps to Leadership)  –  for staff who are people managers across all areas of the University.

Edinburgh Leader (formerly Senior Leadership Programme)  – for staff with significant leadership responsibilities including setting the strategic direction of their work area.

There are two entry points for all three programmes: October 2020 and February 2021.

Nominations are now live and full details can be found on the Leadership and Management Development webpages

Closing date for Semester 1 entry point is 28 August.

Interested in joining the Teams management and leadership communities? Join here: