ABSTRACT
The professorial level in UK universities is the reservoir for the majority of the senior manager appointments. These roles require considerable energy and commitment on top of continued academic effort to maintain research output and/or be able to keep updated with their department and faculty colleagues work and, therefore, push, encourage and assist progress and funding. There is a danger that our expectations of them are too high, so should there be more specialisation and sharing out of roles, with an alternative staff structure to mitigate against these unreasonable expectations? The communication and interpersonal behaviours and approaches described are however required across all roles and are those which can and are being practiced by many managers in HE and elsewhere and where they are not, they can become part of and, sometimes, be put in place of, existing ones. This chapter discusses conflict and culture, the need for a common purpose, for example, organisational structure, good and bad behaviour and helpful approaches to manage this. Important views related to, for example, assumptions about leadership and management by others offering insightful comment are followed by further expansion on factors leading to team success, additional approaches from other sectors and commentators on some topics considered in previous chapters, such as developing rapport, HR’s role and engagement and wellbeing. The chapter moves on with some further thoughts on employee engagement, on intimidatory behaviour and bullying, along with consideration of emotional intelligence, mentoring, generosity, dealing with conflict and on recognition and optimum culture.
