As I am working on the skills I need in my new role, I designed with ChatGPT a think day on skill development.

Here’s the template for anyone who wants to go through this exercise:

Think Day 7 — Skill Development

A 1.5-hour structured thinking session

Purpose
This session is designed to help you identify, prioritise, and plan the development of skills needed to grow into a senior academic leadership role (e.g. Dean of Research, Research Director) and/or to progress toward full professorship.

The structure moves from diagnosis → prioritisation → planning, ensuring that skill development is intentional, aligned with institutional expectations, and translated into action.

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0:00–0:10 — Setting the Frame

Objective: Clarify expectations and establish a baseline.

Reflect on the following:

• What are the formal and informal expectations of your current or aspired role?
• What are the promotion or advancement criteria relevant to your position (e.g. full professor, leadership role)?
• Where do you currently feel confident?
• Where do you sense friction, uncertainty, or underdevelopment?

Exercise

Create two columns:

• What my institution(s) expect
• Where I currently stand

Write freely and intuitively. Precision comes later.

Output: A first diagnostic snapshot of role–skill alignment.

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0:10–0:30 — Skill Inventory (360° Self-Audit)

Objective: Identify the full range of skills required at senior level.

Reflect on your skills across the following four domains. Use bullet points; do not self-censor.

1. Strategic Skills

Examples:

• Research strategy and portfolio design
• Long-term vision setting
• Navigating national and international funding ecosystems
• Translating institutional goals into research priorities
• Policy design and governance awareness

2. Operational / Managerial Skills

Examples:

• Leading research units, centres, or teams
• Financial literacy (budgets, resource allocation)
• Designing KPIs and performance metrics
• Delegation and decision-making
• Conflict management and negotiation

3. Academic Excellence Skills

Examples:

• Distinctive research profile and intellectual leadership
• Grant leadership at national or international scale
• Supervising and developing PhD/postdoc pipelines
• Research innovation and methodological depth
• Mentorship and talent development

4. Communication & Representation

Examples:

• Articulating research impact to non-academic audiences
• Institutional representation (ministries, industry, partners)
• Internal communication and alignment
• Public-facing academic narrative
• Cross-cultural or multilingual engagement (if relevant)

Output: A comprehensive personal skill map.

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0:30–0:50 — Gap Identification (Reality Check)

Objective: Move from listing to prioritising.

For each skill identified, assess:

• Proficiency: Low / Medium / High
• Urgency: Not urgent / Important / Critical

Focus areas

• Low + Critical → immediate development priorities
• High + Critical → protect, leverage, and make visible
• Medium + Important → plan gradual strengthening

Avoid perfectionism; aim for honesty.

Output: A prioritised list of skill gaps and leverage points.

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0:50–1:10 — Cross-Role and Cross-Institutional Alignment

Objective: Identify where skill development has maximum leverage.

If you operate across multiple roles or institutions, reflect on:

1. Skills essential for Role A (e.g. leadership position)
2. Skills essential for Role B (e.g. professorship or research excellence)
3. Skills that serve both simultaneously

Reflection prompts

• Which skills create overlap and efficiency?
• Which skills reduce duplicated effort?
• Which skills are context-specific, and why?

Output: A synergy map highlighting high-leverage skills.

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Synergy Map (Focus Area)

Select 3–5 skills that, if developed well, would:

• Strengthen leadership capacity
• Reinforce academic credibility
• Increase institutional influence
• Support long-term career sustainability

These become your core development focus.

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1:10–1:25 — Development Roadmap

Objective: Translate insight into action.

For each priority skill, define:

• Development method
  (course, mentoring, shadowing, practice, delegation, reading, applied project)
• Timeline
  (quarterly or 6–12 month horizon)
• Success indicators
  (what concrete change will show improvement?)

Keep plans realistic and integrated into existing work.

Output: A short, actionable skill development plan.

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1:25–1:30 — Closing & Anchoring

Objective: Prevent insight from dissolving.

Answer in writing:

• What becomes non-negotiable in my professional development?
• Which skill or behaviour will I stop neglecting from now on?

This anchors reflection into commitment.