PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: Growing into leadership as an academic

This post is part of the series PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: posts written for the Dutch academic career network AcademicTransfer, your go-to resource for all research positions in the Netherlands.

These posts are sponsored by AcademicTransfer, and tailored to those of you interested in pursuing a research position in the Netherlands.

If these posts raise your interest in working as a researcher in the Netherlands, even better – and feel free to fire away any questions you might have on this topic!

As we move through our academic careers, leadership becomes more and more important – and it is one of the key criteria for tenure and promotion at Delft University of Technology. In a previous post, I focused on how you can acquire leadership skills, whereas today I would like to shine a broad light on the very different forms leadership can take on in academia.

The narrowest definition of leadership focuses on taking more administrative roles in our universities, and in the narrowest sense again, this means becoming section head, department head, dean, and onward. There are more options though: you can take on various part-time administrative roles, such as serving on education improvement committees or working on improving social safety in the university. If there is a particular topic you feel passionate about, chances are that working towards tangible changes will bring you joy (and possibly some frustration along the way).

Leadership is, however, much more than administration. In research, leadership means taking on the role of coordinating proposals and research groups, organizing panels, liaising with industry and the government, and amplifying the reach of your research.

In education, leadership can be coordinating courses, seeking alignment with other courses, taking time to lead curricular modernization, and raise the bar in general. Leadership in education means working towards creating the best environment for our students to learn and grow. It also means doing the more quiet work of using our network to help them find opportunities for exchanges, thesis projects, and the next step in their career.

In technical committees, leadership means moving from being an active contributor to taking on more prominent roles – either by coordinating committee activities or technical documents, or by stepping up to serve as an officer. Once you become a committee chair, you may also need to lean more on others to move various activities forward. And, from technical committees, you may find yourself getting more actively involved in professional organizations from the administrative side.

All in all: leadership is more than just becoming the dean. As I have discussed in the previous sections, leadership happens when you start to go from executing your tasks to stepping forward. This process can happen very naturally, and can align very well with your personal preferences for topics and tasks. And, more than anything, it does not have to be loud. I’ll not get on my soapbox and give you a tirade about the patriarchal connotations of loud and bossy leadership, but let me just say that quiet influence, enthusiasm, treating others well, and a collaborative spirit can go a very long way.

How do you see leadership in academic careers?