Leadership

In this episode of The Learning Curve, host Dr Shannon Babbie sits down with Dr Charlaine Simpson, Head of Postgraduate Taught Professional Learning. Moving beyond technical jargon, the discussion focuses on how Aberdeen’s Postgraduate Leadership Program prepares public and third-sector professionals to step into leadership roles in an ever-changing world.

 

The conversation challenges traditional, system-heavy management frameworks by placing ethical, compassionate, and social justice-oriented leadership at its core. Dr. Simpson outlines the program's unique structure, including work-based change projects and case-study "dilemmas" that empower students to build real-world confidence, analyse policy, and prioritize people over processes.

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TLC S1E10 Leadership
Shannon: Welcome back to the Learning Curve, friends. I'm Dr Shannon Babbie, and this is a University of Aberdeen podcast. Today we're continuing our exploration of specialized areas within the School of Education. Our focus today is on professional growth and shaping the leaders of tomorrow. We'll be exploring the post graduate leadership program. Joining me is the head of postgraduate taught professional learning in the School of Education, Dr Charlaine Simpson. Thanks for joining us.
Charlaine: Thanks very much. It's a pleasure to be here. Please explain to our listeners who you are and what you do here at Aberdeen. So I substantially teach her for more than twenty years. And then I worked with GTC Scotland for a bit and then moved to Aberdeen in 2022. I'm a senior lecturer and I've got responsibility for postgraduate programs and I teach mainly on leadership and an absolute privilege to teach on the internship program. And I get to do my favourite bit: primary science.
Shannon: Charlaine, what exciting projects are you focusing on right now?
Charlaine: So at the moment, I suppose I've got a couple of things. I'm thinking about social justice leadership and how compassionate and ethical leadership promotes transformation or transformative leadership, and then how that all grounds itself in social justice is one of my little things that I'm working on. I'm also working on a couple of other papers with a couple of groups. So I'm working with a couple of folks who also teach on into headship. And we're looking at almost like head teacher positionality and thinking about agency and thinking about how teachers are expressed through policy and what the roles should be, but then thinking about autonomy and professionalism and space to actually be the head teacher in any context.
So we're doing a little bit writing around that at the moment. And another one that I'm working on is Teacher Workloads. It's about how our time is managed by other people, and thinking about how that then either helps us or detracts from our being able to do professional learning. And then what sort of professionalism is being privileged through that sort of model? So that's another thing I'm kind of thinking about at the moment. I'll get to writing some of these things at some point.
Also, the academic secretary for the Scottish Educational Research Association and we support research across Scotland. We hosted the conference here in Aberdeen last year and that next year it's going to be Edinburgh Napier. So if you're interested in contributing to the research or listening to other researchers talking about education and its roundness, then please feel free to come along. We're on LinkedIn. You can find us there.
Shannon: Charlaine, I know that the Postgraduate leadership programme is designed to inspire ambitious leaders in the public and the third sectors, especially. My question for you is, how does this program help professionals grow their confidence and also build skills in leadership and, say, management theory?
Charlaine: So the leadership and Professional context programme, we have redesigned that over time. When I started in 2022 it was a very different programme. And what we've done is we have considered what sort of leadership styles are prominent now, especially post-COVID. And one of the things that we have moved into is talking more about ethical leadership and compassionate leadership, which is why that links in with my idea of writing about social justice leadership. And so we are considering both exploring yourself as a leader then under these lenses of compassion and ethical, because what we want to support our leaders to do is not just understand leadership process, but more importantly, understand who they are as leaders and then how that leads to their actions and responses from people they work with.
A unique aspect of this program, from my perspective, is that it is designed with work based projects in mind, and this allows students to apply theory directly to their own workplace. Can you give our listeners an example of how this works and why is it so effective? I think this is this is really an interesting question, because we end up with people who are doing leadership masters who are not just from the leadership program. And I think that really helps us get that wider field of leadership. I think in our program, we build the knowledge and the skill. And for me, probably the most important part is the curiosity about what type of leader do you want to be? And if that's what you want to be, how do you get there? What are the building blocks underneath any type of leadership?
We know that Hargreaves talks about. You just put an adjective in front of the word ‘Leadership,’ and it becomes something new. So we try and tear that down and say, well, you actually might be good at distributed leadership, but also collegiate leadership and collaborative leadership, but you still need the authoritarian part as well. So using these, the terminology, but actually digging underneath what the words mean and actually about the actions and the behaviours. And then we use that in the master's project for people to put a small scale change, possibly into practice, and consider their leadership through that change.
So for example, we tend to have quite a few folks from NHS on the programme, and somebody last year was looking at thinking about how leaders interact with their colleagues and how their perception of time spent. Positive responses, feedback, and what that meant. And they took that view from their colleagues and then kind of worked out what type of leader does that demonstrate I am and what do I need to change to be the leader I want to be?
Shannon: This program helps shape future leaders. What makes this a top choice for someone who wants to take the next step in their career, and how does it prepare them for the challenges of leadership in an ever changing world?
Charlaine: So I think the course is really helpful for people to get underneath the big words of leadership. We're all very interested in leadership management, what's what, and we need definitions, and we need to understand all of these things. And yes, we do. It is important to have that vocabulary. But I think one of the things for me about this course is it helps us support our students to think about if they want to be a leader, what does that mean to them in their context? So if I had a pound for every time I say context, I'd be a very rich woman. But it's actually about understanding change and understanding processes of change.
And also, as a leader, what is your perspective on these and how do you help your colleagues move through that change process? We know change is difficult. We know that people feel change almost as a grief cycle sometimes. And so we need to, as the leader of the change, support that, understand that, ameliorate that as much as possible so that we are managing change well, but also leading the change. I think the course helps people almost rehearse some of the conversations and think about what challenges could come up.
And one of the things we've introduced into the new courses that we were talking about is that we've put dilemmas in. So in fact, they get an opportunity to go away and think about a very relevant dilemma, come back and have a group discussion about how they would manage that in their context. And in doing that, they also get to think about in different contexts, different things work. I know my context. Well, that wouldn't work for me. Or be a little magpie and steal lovely ideas taken to their own workspace. So I think that with the changing landscape of post Covid, but I think we definitely have to be far more people centred leadership that the course prepares people through that by doing that ethical, compassionate, also exploring yourself as a leader so that you are responding as well as leading and taking people with you. The most important thing.
Shannon: I love asking everyone this question. What do you wish I had asked you today and what would be the answer? And I ask you that especially because I know that you're really passionate about policy.
Charlaine: I am passionate about policy, but I think one of my really always a key moment for me teaching an internship is when we talk about policy and we start doing policy analysis, and we always get some students going, oh my God, is that what policy is? I never realized that. And actually getting that aha moment or that penny drop moment when people go, oh, I can actually do X, Y, and Z. Yeah, absolutely. And getting that feedback from them about the difference the courses make to them and their stance as a leader and as a head teacher. And, you know, you've done a good job when somebody runs at you in a conference and goes, My God, you've turned me into a policy geek. And I go, absolutely, my job is done, I love it.
I suppose one of the things that I think we need to always consider is, why do we need leadership? Do we need leadership? Why is leadership important? And I think that it is really important, talked about in so many different ways by so many different people, in so many different contexts, that we think there is an answer to leadership. And what we need to understand is it's not we're all leaders at different times in different ways. And I suppose for me, the importance of leadership is caring for people and trying to do the best you can with what you've got in whatever time frame you have.
And I think for me, being a leader in that sense is the most important thing about leadership. So it's about the people. It's not about the process, it's not about the systems. These are helpful tools, but it's actually about the people that you're working with. And how do you help make their existence job context easier. And through that, you'll also make your own easier. So I think it's that mutual dependency. And I think leadership allows you to do that. This has been a really insightful conversation.
Shannon: Thank you. Charlene, for sharing your experience on this really vital topic. I appreciate it very much.
Charlaine: Thanks so much for the conversation. It's always great to talk about leadership.
Shannon: Thank you for joining us in this discussion of the contested concept of leadership. Our next episode will be a few weeks away, but in the meantime, feel free to review what we've already posted. And until then, keep listening.