23 November 2017 
Markos Koumaditis, Acting Director of People and Organisation
Dr Markos Koumaditis is HR Deputy Director at London South Bank University. Here he reflects on leadership lessons learnt during the UHR’s Emerging Leaders programme, and 10 principles for good leadership.
This year I have participated in UHR’s Emerging Leaders programme at Roffey Park where 14 senior HR and OD Deputy Directors, from a wide array of UK Universities, came together to reflect, engage and build their leadership capability in order to help their institutions thrive.
On the first day of the residential, it became evident that most participants don’t see themselves as leaders. Is this lack of confidence an HR affliction?
‘Confidence’ means with ‘faith’ – we all want faith that we will be heard, and that our views will be respected.
I am relatively new to HR but I have studied, lectured and worked in UK universities for over 20 years and I believe that there is tradition among HR professionals to seeing themselves as the support function which shouldn’t challenge University leaders.
As every CIPD qualified HR professional would say, we are here to give advice and highlight risks when it comes to people management, but the responsibility rests with the managers to make their own decisions and accept the consequences.
I agree. But in the UK higher education sector of 2017, where commercialisation, competition, and different operating business models set to dominate, HR leaders need to step up and lead.
HR leaders need to lead on diversity and inclusion, deal with the incoming mental health epidemic, embrace work life balance and ensure that technology works for everyone. And I haven’t even mentioned Brexit yet!
We spent a lot of time discussing with my colleagues the challenge of HR leadership and here follows what I feel we agreed as broad principles:
People want to know who you are, what you measure yourself against, and how you live your life. For example, I am gay, I love travelling, I am married to my husband Garry, I have a west highland terrier named Benito, and I am striving to be a role model for LGBT and poor students coming from diverse backgrounds. That’s me, you get the idea.
There are countless articles on authentic leadership but take a look at the people’s disappointment with the politicians across the globe and its true meaning becomes crystal clear. HR is about people, that’s not a cliché. Staff will accept flaws, but not a phoney.
Make sure you clearly articulate your purpose to your team and celebrate the steps taken towards achieving it. That’s tough, I know, but do not blame others, if you don’t know what you are really set out to achieve.
Delegate, delegate, delegate to the right colleagues with clarity and full support. You don’t need to know everything and be good at everything to lead effectively. Create a culture where staff can disagree with you openly and feel able to give you honest feedback. If it gets uncomfortable, it’s meant to be.
Understand the diversity of your team, their aspirations, skills, styles and needs. Your job as a leader is to adapt your support and coaching to fit the individuals. As a new leader it is tempting to treat people in the way you like to be treated. Is this what they want? Check.
Do not recruit at your own image. Do not recruit people to fit in. Recruit the best talent available and create a sum that is more than the parts. When people really value and leverage the diversity in the team, and especially feel commitment and care for their colleagues, great things can happen!
Trust your team to do their job. Empower, don’t micromanage. Learning to let people figure out their own way to solve problems can be difficult. But interfering won’t help you in the long run.
It is remarkable how poor university leaders are in telling colleagues what they need. In the name of collegiality, they could invent all sorts of evasive ways of making requests, to avoid spelling out what it is expected to be done.
This is devoted to a colleague in our group who was recently promoted to the Interim HR Director. You are good enough. Other leaders also doubt themselves. Displaying a dose of genuine humility keeps you grounded. You listen and engage more and thus make better decisions. Congratulations!
A sense of humour may be the best friend (next to your mate) that you can have when the world isn’t working the way you would like it to. Besides, as I read somewhere, you can’t fix crazy, all you can do is document it!
Author: Dr Markos Koumaditis, HR Deputy Director, London South Bank University
