ID154 Leadership as system design, not heroics

The Idea

Keele should explicitly reframe leadership as the design and stewardship of systems that enable others to succeed, rather than as individual heroics, visibility, or personal resilience. In complex organisations like universities, leadership impact is rarely created by exceptional individuals acting alone; it is created by the quality of the system within which people work. 

Too often, leadership expectations implicitly reward overwork, constant availability, confidence in the room, and individual problem‑solving. This disadvantages many capable leaders, reinforces exclusion, and creates fragility by relying on personal effort rather than sustainable structures. 

Committee work is one of the clearest examples of this leadership culture in practice: it is where decisions are shaped, responsibility is shared, and institutional priorities are translated into action, yet it is often insufficiently recognised as leadership work. 

This idea proposes a strategic shift in how Keele defines and values leadership. Effective leadership would be understood as creating clarity, reducing unnecessary friction, distributing decision‑making appropriately, and building conditions where diverse people can contribute and thrive. Success would be measured not by how much a leader personally carries, but by how well their systems function when they are not present. 

In higher education, organisations such as Advance HE have highlighted succession management and leadership continuity as strategic priorities, while case studies such as Deakin University (Enacting distributed leadership for educational transformation: a seven-year study of academic development in higher education) show how distributed leadership can support sustained institutional change. 

This approach aligns leadership with inclusion, sustainability, and delivery. It supports neurodiversity, different working styles, and varied career pathways, while strengthening institutional resilience. By focusing on system design rather than heroics, Keele can develop leaders who enable progress at scale and over time, rather than relying on individual endurance. 

Why This Idea Should Be Considered

The challenges facing universities today are too complex to be solved through individual effort alone. If reliance on exceptional people were sufficient, many persistent issues would already have been resolved. Sustainable progress now depends on collective capability, clear systems, and inclusive leadership practices. Reframing leadership as system design reduces burnout, improves decision quality, and enables a wider range of people to lead effectively. It aligns with Keele’s values around inclusion and positive culture, while strengthening institutional resilience, succession, and delivery in an increasingly uncertain and fast‑changing environment.  In practice, this would be visible in clearer handovers, more distributed decision-making, better documentation and knowledge-sharing, broader opportunities for staff to take on leadership responsibilities, and teams that are able to maintain momentum when individuals are absent or move on. 

Linking this proposal explicitly to strategic KPIs would strengthen its positioning by showing how distributed, sustainable leadership supports measurable priorities such as, successful change, improved staff engagement, inclusive participation in leadership roles, succession planning, workload sustainability, committee effectiveness, successful change delivery, and delivery of institutional priorities. 

How We Would Implement This Idea

Keele could embed this shift through four practical routes: 

1. Define leadership expectations. Leadership expectations should be explicitly defined around system design, clarity and enablement rather than personal workload or visibility. In practice, this would mean expecting leaders to create sustainable ways of working by clarifying decision-making, building effective delegation, sharing key knowledge, reducing reliance on particular individuals, and making inclusive leadership behaviours visible and valued. 
2. Develop leadership capability. Leadership capability would need to be developed through comprehensive training and support that recognises leadership as a continuous journey. A structured training offer could cover practical skills such as chairing, facilitation, inclusive decision-making, delegation, workload stewardship, psychological safety, handover and reflective leadership practice. Leadership development could also include shadowing, mentoring, peer learning and examples of good system-level leadership from across the University. 
3. Embed in management and workload structures. This approach should be embedded through existing management and review structures, including Faculty Executive Committees, School Management Committees, line management conversations, SPRE/PPRE and workload planning. Committee leadership, chairing, convening and contribution should be recognised as developmental leadership activity rather than treated as invisible citizenship work. This could include explicit workload categories for leadership development, leadership shadowing, committee leadership and system stewardship, with time allocated for preparation, reflection, handover and mentoring. 
4. Evaluate progress and accountability. Progress should be evaluated and reinforced through appraisal, promotion, accountability mechanisms, survey data, colleague feedback and review of barriers to taking on leadership roles. Where behaviours do not align, for example through over-centralisation, poor delegation, or reliance on constant personal intervention, these should be addressed through feedback, development and clear performance expectations. 

What Success Would Look Like

Success looks like leadership that is sustainable, inclusive, and effective at scale. Teams function well without relying on individual heroics, and leaders are judged by the health and clarity of the systems they steward. A wider range of people feel able to step into leadership roles, bringing diverse perspectives and working styles. Burnout is reduced, succession is strengthened, and decision‑making is clearer and more consistent. Keele develops a reputation for leadership that enables others to thrive, creating a resilient institution capable of responding thoughtfully and confidently to future challenges. 

Success would also include a clearer institutional route for colleagues to build leadership capability through supported participation in committees, working groups and decision-making forums. Rotation of leadership would be planned, recognised and resourced, with training, shadowing and feedback built in. Evaluation could draw on workload data, SPRE/PPRE conversations, staff feedback, committee effectiveness reviews and evidence of broader participation in leadership roles.