Professors as academic leaders: the perspectives of ‘the led’

Most research and scholarship in the field of educational leadership and management seems focused on leaders and managers and their perspectives, while the perspective of an entire constituency – ‘the led’ – is generally overlooked and neglected. This article contributes towards redressing this imbalance. Located within the context of the higher education sector, it presents findings from one phase of a funded study whose purpose was to examine what non-professorial academics, researchers and teachers employed in British universities think of the academic leadership provided by their professorial colleagues. From data generated by over 1200 questionnaire responses, a wide range of views emerged on what professors should be doing in order to fulfil their leadership roles, and how effectively they are doing it. A key finding was that, whilst most respondents agreed that professors should be providing academic leadership to junior colleagues – typically, as mentors or advisors – more than half of the sample reported that they were not receiving the help and advice that they wanted or needed.