Why a development program at LEAD?

In today's global knowledge economy, where mission-oriented research and innovation approaches are becoming increasingly widespread, groundbreaking and socially relevant research requires coordinated forms of collaboration within and between research teams with strong, complementary competencies.The research team is well-established as the central driving force when it comes to designing, securing funding, producing and disseminating research.

For these reasons, a skilled research leader promotes expertise by developing both an inclusive and focused collaborative environment at the team level.This often involves the ability to support collaboration across academic disciplines, scientific traditions, and special skills of ambitious employees with different cultural and national backgrounds. In addition, a skilled research leader should be able to lead upward, downward, inward, outward, and engage external partners and opportunities. Furthermore, a skilled research leader should be able to differentiate and therefore transition from researcher to research leader, including the transition from a research leader for a small group of researchers at their own university to leading large national and international research groups.

Being a research leader involves paving the way for value-creating joint actions in such tension fields. It involves lifelong work in clarifying and developing your research leadership space in a dynamic environment, developing your research group, and developing yourself.

The purpose of the network is to create inspiring spaces for conversations and learning processes for research leaders.The network offers a deep understanding of the dynamics and challenges that characterize research leadership and provides you with useful tools for dealing with the challenges you face in everyday life and a safe learning environment by cultivating good sparring relationships between members.

The network is driven byThomas Skovgaard,Torsten Conrad, and Just Bendix Justesen, who represent a unique blend of research and practical experience. We guarantee a network at a high professional level that combines insight into the latest theory and method in leadership and governance with a deep practical insight into the development of the research sector and our society.

● Get the latest and most effective knowledge about leadership in the research and university sector.

● Develop your own personal leadership.

● Be confronted with your leadership style.

● Avoid 'groupthink' decisions made due to a lack of critical evaluation during strategic consensus.

● Meet like-minded leaders facing similar challenges as you across research environments.

● Draw on your network colleagues' experiences, so you can avoid the same pitfalls.

● Present your own case and receive feedback from both experts and network colleagues.

● Have your strategic considerations validated or refuted before implementation.

● Help others reach their goals and apply their experiences in your own practice.

● Create collaboration across organizations.

● Try out new initiatives in your own practice, which have documented effectiveness.

● Expand your action repertoire through concrete tools and experiences.

The participants

This development program is aimed at research leaders with strategic responsibility for the development of employees, leaders or entire areas. Each group consists of 25 participants representing different disciplines and organizations. We assemble a group of passionate research leaders at the same management level who want to discuss and develop their own leadership practice.

We are all passionate about leadership and use this arena as an opportunity to reflect, discuss, and spar with each other without a predetermined agenda into each other's daily lives and leadership space.