I recently received my award for 20 years of service at the University of Leicester. January 2024 marked 20 years since I started my first lectureship, having come to the end of my PhD, and I started as an academic in the place I knew best. 20 years is a long time, but that does not reflect the full length of time I have been at Leicester, having started here as an undergraduate in (ahem) the 1990’s. It was never the plan to stay in one place for so long. Heck, it was never the plan to become an academic, never mind a Head of School (HoS). But despite the usual imposter syndrome we (especially those from a pretty poor secondary comprehensive) share, I took opportunities that interested as they arose, found out what I was good at, and found myself being asked to be Head of Leicester Law School. Having invested a lot of time and energy during my interim term (not least because I was dealing with the challenge that was the pandemic) I decided to apply for the proper four-year term, and was appointed.
Very few academics positively desire to be Heads of School. But every Law School needs someone at the helm to determine the direction of the ship and try their best to avoid the sectoral icebergs that frequently come our way. My mentor had told me, when I was a wet-behind-the-ears ECR, that if I ever wanted to become a Professor (which I couldn’t imagine at the time) I should expect to take on the role of HoS. In those days, it was the convention that the position of HoS would rotate between those who held Chairs. Whether or not those senior colleagues had the skills required for the role, that’s what happened. Things have changed, but my agreement to take on the role was motivated by a feeling of obligation, as suggested by my mentor. Once I had started in the role, I found to my surprise that I was rather good at it.
In 2017 I had completed a Future Leaders’ Programme, probably the best “training” programme I have done in a university. This helped me understand that being a good leader involved identifying my strengths as well as my blind spots, so that I could take them into account. It was a revelation that, as a Myers-Briggs type ISTJ (Introversion; Sensing; Thinking; Judging), I was not expected to change my basic personality to become a leader. I could work with those strengths to develop my own leadership style, and so long as I was conscious of my vulnerabilities so that I could counteract them, I could succeed.
As I step down and hand over the tiller to someone else (for the first time, an external appointment), I’m left wondering “what next”? Whilst I have found unexpected pleasure in leading a School through difficult times (national and local industrial action, a pandemic and the latest need to support the university as the “cash cow” in an otherwise financially challenged establishment), I don’t at this time feel a desire to take my leadership to the “next level” and enter University management at College level or above. However, although I started out thinking that much of my success would be down to me having in-depth knowledge of the Law School and the strengths and weaknesses within it, that is only part of the picture. I do not want the skills and knowledge I have developed as a HoS to go to “waste” in future, but at this point in time I’m just happy to return to my position as Professor of Law, getting a grip on where my research will go next, and otherwise settling back into “normal” life in terms of teaching and academic service. After a little rest, who knows?
PS – the “joke” picture above is of a Secret Santa gift I received more than 10 years ago at the Law School Christmas party. These days our gifts are “secret” in the sense of being a lucky-dip, and the person buying the gift does not know who the recipient will be. I think, though, that when I received this gift, we had identified who gift-givers were buying for. I do not know, to this day, who bought this for me but, in some ways, it was rather prophetic. That said, as members of CHULS will know, Heads of School have very little power at all, let alone absolute power!
Professor Sally Kyd, Head of Leicester Law School between October 2019 and July 2024