Canadian medical faculty senior leaders: what skills do they need?

Many academic leaders have little formal leadership training, which can result in challenges to effective leadership, succession planning and burnout. This paper aims to explore the leadership skills needed to be an effective senior academic leader in a Canadian medical faculty.

An anonymous voluntary survey of needed leadership skills and supports was sent to 60 senior academic leaders at the University of Alberta. This was followed by interviewing a purposive sample, using open-ended questions based on a multimodal needs assessment of senior academic leaders. The authors used an iterative process to analyze the data; anonymized transcripts were coded and categorized separately by two researchers, and themes were created.

The "ability to influence" was the highest rated needed leadership skill in the survey. The interviewed leaders (n = 12) were unanimous that they felt unprepared at the start of the leadership role. The survey and interviews identified five major themes for leadership skills: Mentoring, Finances, Human Resources, Building Relationships and Protected Time. Networking and leadership courses were identified as major sources of support.

Although a single site study, the results were similar to another large Canadian medical faculty (University of Toronto, Lieff et al., 2013). While the survey had a 42% response rate (25/60), the survey responses were echoed in the interviews. Although the purposive sample was small, the interviewed leaders were a representative sample of the larger leadership group.

Academic leaders may benefit from a mentorship team/community of leaders and specific university governance knowledge which may help their ability to influence and advance their strategic initiatives.