Introduction

The case studies seek to explore how interview participants present their careers unfolding over time and how they perceive themselves as leaders. Depending on what seemed relevant to the participants, cases also indicate their career aspirations, how they manage their careers, how they harness their resources to navigate power structures and how they manage work-life balance. Each case study reflects the participant’s presentation of their ‘career story’, which encapsulates the key theme, shape or direction of their career thus far. The approach taken here extends previous work that utilised in-depth case study methodology to explore careers (Acker, 2010; Duberley et al., 2006; Lane & Lee, 2018) and incorporates a narrative perspective (LaPointe, 2010). Flyvbjerg (2006) argues that case studies are useful for providing concrete, context-dependent knowledge. The emphasis is on what we can learn from the cases rather than proving theory.

Leadership Discourses

Interviews are interpreted as an act of self-presentation or a performance. This presentation is labelled as a leadership ‘discourse’ rather than the more commonly used term ‘leader style’Footnote 1 to reflect how interviewees talked about their leadership and what they chose to focus on. Categories of discourse in some instances contrasted with their leadership activities and/or their accounts of their job descriptions, while in other instances, the two were congruent (see Table 6.2 for a summary of interviewees’ discourses and activities).

Categories of discourse are drawn from the data and the literature, particularly Macfarlane (2011). These discourses were developed to reflect how academics talk about leadership, not necessarily how they enact it, although the discourses are often academics’ accounts of how they see themselves performing leadership. Considering only academic/intellectual leadership, Macfarlane (2011) and Juntrasook (2014) are limited in the context of this project that includes professional services staff. Here is an overview of the leadership discourses informed by the work of Macfarlane (2011) and Juntrasook (2014), which frame part of the analysis we present in this chapter (see also Chapter 2):

  • A relationship builder discourse focuses on the importance of initiating and managing ongoing relations with people in the workplace.

  • A people developer discourse refers to coaching, mentoring, supervising and motivating others.

  • The influencer/change agent discourse focuses on involvement in committee work and devising and/or implementing new systems or ways working in the institution.

  • The professional role model discourse refers to setting an example of inspiring and setting professional standards in the institution.

  • The situational leader discourse refers to adapting a leadership style in line with personal and/or project aims and the individuals being worked with.

  • The powerholder discourse emphasises leadership derived from structural and hierarchical positions.

  • The knowledge producer discourse majors on creating new information and insights about things that matter, most often via research.

The application of this framework in case studies, and the study more broadly, facilitates an empirical investigation that is inclusive of both academics and professional services women. This approach is useful because it can help us understand the particularities of HE as a context for leadership and delineate ideas of how leadership might differ according to the job role that leaders inhabit. We have also focused on leadership discourses in Chapter 2, drawing on examples from interviews and diaries of a wider range of women from our study.

Overview of the Cases

In this chapter, we provide case studies of women who we interviewed multiple times. The choice of cases is strategic and careful to ensure a range of perspectives, as well as a balance of professional services and academics. Naturally, we use pseudonyms, and the details of their work and lives are disguised, sometimes quite heavily, to preserve anonymity. We have chosen these to illustrate some of the most striking findings of this study, as well as the mixture of struggles and successes experienced by the women who participated. In doing so, we aim to make our findings and their implications ‘come alive’ for the reader. Each case ends with a brief commentary on what we think it demonstrates, although the reader may draw different conclusions.

These eight case studies (see Table 6.1) are based on interviews with Aurorans who volunteered to take part in this element of the research. Case studies were constructed only for those interviewed at least twice. Although the interviews were the main source of data used to construct the cases, we also drew on demographic data provided by Aurorans in their first survey return. Other survey data are included to provide an overview of interviewees’ responses to questions and changes in these responses over time where possible.

Table 6.1 Overview of case studies
Full size table

In the study we also interviewed a small number of mentors of our participants with the consent of both parties (see Chapter 5 for an analysis of the mentor interviews). Where we managed to do this, relevant material from those interviews is included in the case studies.

Women in Professional Services

In this section, we will learn more about four women members of professional services staff: Katherine, Julie, Farzana and Susanne.

Katherine—Learning How to ‘Play the Game’, Develop Relationships and Influence Upwards

Katherine is in her late 40s with children at primary school and works in professional services in an official leadership position based in an academic school. She enjoys her job and was positive about her leadership skills: especially understanding how the school works, having responsibility and solving problems.

In the first interview, Katherine talked about her line management responsibilities and how she encouraged a good work ethic in her team and engagement in opportunities that built skills and confidence. She saw herself as approachable and able to reflect on her practice. Despite not being comfortable speaking in front of many people, she challenged herself to do this. Previous and current bosses encouraged her to take advantage of challenging opportunities and valued her input. When prompted, she acknowledged that her attributes must have played a part in her being invited to do things. She felt she could ‘read’ other people and spot what they wanted. She believed that good relationships and data are both important. She used charm if she could, but if that failed, she became more forceful.

She engaged in some career management activities but was not clear what she wanted from her career in the longer term. However, Katherine did know that she wanted to be an expert and of service to her organisation. She was confident about asking for more responsibility but not about asking for career advancement or an increase in pay.

Despite not being very positive in survey responses about gender equality in her organisation, she believed that Athena SWAN had made a difference to women’s position in her school, with changes in the recruitment process having a positive effect on the percentage of women academics recruited. Her personal experience was that work interfered significantly with her home life.

A year later, Katherine reported being more focused on building networks and forming relationships with senior colleagues. In particular, she valued being a member of a small informal group of senior women colleagues who provided support and encouragement and discussed promotion opportunities together. Katherine noted that most leaders had both positive and negative qualities. She admired a leader she knows who made tough decisions but also praised and rewarded her staff. Previously, she thought of leadership as team management, but now she sees it as influencing upwards and thus requiring a different set of skills, notably knowing how to ‘play the game’—knowing when, where and how to speak.

She identified three key barriers. (1) cultural differences mean that academics in some disciplines do not consider professional services staff to be leaders; (2) those who select new staff favour applicants with experience in the same discipline, thus limiting the pool of jobs available to professional services staff; and (3) those with more senior jobs tend to be specialists, meaning generalists such as her are disadvantaged. She planned to move to a larger university with more opportunities for internal movement.

Katherine’s story shows that having young children does not preclude a desire to challenge oneself at work. With experience, more nuanced understandings of leadership are developed, and it is possible to exert influence and utilise contacts without being underhand or obsequious. Confidence is built up through experience, and reaching out to others for support can pay dividends. Even so, the structural and cultural features of the workplace can place limits on what can readily be achieved. A notable example is issues with being a generalist in professional services (Bacon, 2009) including how leadership roles tend to go to specialist rather than generalist candidates (as noted by Shine, 2010).

Julie—Career Success, Enabled by a Senior Manager, Despite Experiencing Major Stress at Work

Julie is in her 50s with caring responsibility for elderly parents. As an administrator, she led by influencing committees, making well-informed contributions in meetings and mentoring her team. For Julie, interpersonal relationships were key. In the first interview, Julie talked about her pleasure in seeing her mentees progress.

Key enablers for Julie were training programmes—including Aurora—and her informal and Aurora mentors. Julie and her Aurora mentor were friends prior to Aurora. During the mentor interview, the mentor described how Julie talked about wanting to undertake some management learning, but the university did not fund or allow time off for administrative staff to undertake substantial learning. This issue was a sticking point, as Julie was still contemplating starting a management qualification but was unsure whether she would have the energy to take on such a commitment considering the ‘exhausting’ nature of her work. Julie had experienced sexism in her current workplace but felt that by addressing the prevailing culture, she risked being labelled ‘a raving feminist’.

A year later, Julie had developed her career by focusing on a specialism within professional services and had taken a qualification in that specialism. Talking with her line manager about applying for a new job initiated promises of increased responsibility. However, her engagement in leadership was limited by not being heard in meetings by managers who were accustomed to getting their own way and by the lack of stable leadership. She had attempted to build relationships outside of meetings, which tended to be very heated.

Before Aurora, Julie was very enthusiastic about her future and could see a place for herself and what she wanted to do at her current university. In the 30 months after Aurora, she moved from Grade 8 to Grade 10 and obtained a Grade 7 qualification (Master’s level). However, in the third and final interview, she described bullying behaviour from a senior member of staff and an atmosphere of fear at work: ‘[It was like] …the night of the long knives… the Hand Maid’s Tale. A bit dystopian’. The loss of the new director who had plans for her and who was the team’s protector was a blow, and she thought that without a strong relationship with another department, her team would be vulnerable.

In the future, she wanted to be more emotionally resilient and to gain a higher-level qualification, update her CV and look for a post in another area of professional services. She saw the need for cultural change and a shared vision across the institution. During the previous two and a half years, she had learned more about the needs of younger women who balance work with childcare. While the university favoured presenteeism, she broke the rules and allowed flexibility ‘beneath the radar’ by enabling remote working, which pre-COVID-19 was unusual for those working in professional services roles. Aurora helped her better identify what people want to achieve and enable them to do this, built her confidence, taught her ‘to fake it until you make it’ and speak out.

Julie’s story shows evidence of both resilience and vulnerability when faced with challenging circumstances. Formal educational and personal development was very important to her sense of value and worth, although institutional support for this was very limited, exemplifying the generally negative perceptions reported by women in this study regarding collaborative and developmental culture. The organisational system did not always align with her values, which at times she found difficult. As a member of professional services, she was acutely aware of her dependence on powerful or influential others and turbulence in leadership had severe knock-on impacts on her career development. This was partially buffered by good relationships with her line manager.

Farzana—Frustrated Career Development After Initial Progress

Farzana is a young Asian woman. At her first interview, Farzana worked in a research unit and provided research administration support to academic staff by managing research budgets and postgraduate students. She found herself crafting her job to make the most of her opportunities and to increase her visibility. One example of job crafting was leading on areas not within her remit, such as identifying funding sources for two academics and encouraging them to apply for grants, as her job security depended on such funding.

During the first interview, she identified her mother, who ran a business, as a role model. At work, she identified her supportive (male) boss and inspiring women academics as career enablers. She helped herself through identifying opportunities and making herself visible and through self-advocacy.

Key hindrances at work were the lack of progression and job security for administrators within HE. Farzana talked about needing job security and was unsure how she could progress in professional services. At the time, Farzana did not feel her gender or ethnicity hindered her career. However, she felt irritated by her colleagues’ attitudes and comments towards her choosing not to have children.

By the second interview one year later, Farzana had moved into central administrative services at a management grade. She attributed Aurora for giving her the confidence to make this move. She felt that while her university was working very hard to make women visible, some men were voicing that there were now too many women on some teams. She perceived the team she was a member of, comprising mainly women, to be rather inflexible, and the working culture was antagonistic and communication poor. She felt this was due to some personalities within the team, internal politics and pressures to deliver rapidly rather than to do with gender.

In the final interview, a year after her second interview, Farzana had been in a management-level role for two years. She felt frustrated that while she had honed her leadership skills, she felt stuck in her role with nowhere to go next. Despite her moving up the spine scale, her job title had not changed, and she felt she was invisible to others in terms of what she could do. She gave an example of taking the initiative to run a university-wide event for women, which was well received by her pro-vice chancellor, who is female. Despite this leading to another project, she was turned down for a pay reward by senior management, as ‘running the event was not within my job description’.

Although you move a spine point on the pay scale, having the same title means people outside perceive you differently compared to where you perceive yourself in your leadership journey. And this year I have really struggled with that as I have done a lot of work around the university that has a contribution to the organisation’s development as a whole and not necessarily just for my workplace.

Farzana felt that there was no scope for progression in her team because of the lack of posts between her manager and head of department or director. She thought that for most women, it is difficult to climb the ladder and to attract better pay without moving to another organisation.

Farzana’s case illustrates some of the problems professional services staff can face in identifying a career path and equipping themselves for it, and indeed achieving security in the present job (the latter also applying to casualised academic work). It is also another demonstration of the sometimes capricious and even perverse nature of university promotion and development processes. Informal ‘below the radar’ work, including leadership, which women frequently report doing, often goes unrewarded and unrecognised.

Susanne—A Story of Career Success, Despite Experiencing Bullying, Through Adopting a Strategic Approach to Career

Susanne occupies a senior role with considerable management responsibilities. With operational and strategic roles, she leads on various development projects, serves on committees and coaches her team for progression. In our first conversation with Susanne, she talked about seeking to change, develop and inform opinion; she was positive about her leadership capabilities and was comfortable with using power. She saw herself as tough, fair, assertive and empathetic. She sought to get to know her staff, build their confidence and develop them. In her view, a leader needs to build relationships. She was proactive in managing her career and was aspirational and confident about seeking promotion. Her line manager was a role model and had faith in her abilities. A male mentor helped her to stay focused on the present.

Susanne saw women as being the greatest hindrance (as well as the greatest help). Some women belittled others and felt threatened by or were unsupportive of women with children (even when they were mothers themselves).

A year later, she had been regraded and was about to start a secondment to a significant leadership role, which would involve staff and change management. Despite her career progress, she reported not being credited for her substantial role in developing, authoring and presenting an important report. She also dealt with some challenging staff situations, including ‘exiting’ some staff. She considered herself fair in such situations because she balanced staff and operational needs.

Susanne’s (woman) line manager supported, praised, encouraged her and allowed her autonomy. She had also encountered an authoritarian (man) project leader who was passive-aggressive, condescending, taking credit and apportioned blame inappropriately. She thought that leaders need resilience and emotional intelligence. She wanted her behaviour and attitude to be rewarded as well as achieving objectives and had asked for this to be included in her Performance and Development Reviews (PDRs).

Susanne spoke about the lack of career pathways for professional service staff and the need for sponsors. Networking to find sponsors was time-consuming and not something she enjoyed.

Two and a half years after Aurora, Susanne was in a job two grades higher, although she did not attribute this to the programme. In this interview, she talked about an experience of being bullied, harassed and scapegoated at work and how this undermined her:

I questioned myself all the time. I couldn’t make decisions because I froze. I thought I must have done something wrong. I must be part of it. I was in a dreadful place. I became stuck. I stopped talking up. I questioned my ability. I was not focusing. I was delivering, but I was not happy with what I was delivering. I could never be good enough for the people surrounding me. I got into thinking I was a fluke, an imposter. …I became quite introverted, less optimistic and confident.

With the support of colleagues and self-help books, she came through the experience and gained insight into politics, better leadership skills, more resilience and empathy. Now she noticed people’s behaviour, asked if they needed help, but she did not take on other people’s problems or intervene as she used to.

In terms of her career development, she was now more strategic. She secured her current job by asking the head of her ‘dream area’ for an informal chat without knowing of a job vacancy. He was so impressed with her that he organised her transfer. This was a ‘huge boost’. ‘I am leading a very strategic project. It is very interesting, a fantastic opportunity…Aurora taught me how to make it happen – you have to ask if you want something’. She did not think that gender equality was an issue in universities until she reached a higher grade where she found fewer women, most of whom did not have children. She was worried about the possible repercussions of taking advantage of flexible working policies.

Susanne’s case reminds us of the complexity of the issues faced in the workplace, and how what might appear as straightforward career success from the outside obscures significant hindrances, such as workplace bullying. To a certain extent Susanne experienced tensions between what she wanted and the situation she found herself in—as a woman in professional services working at very senior levels with children to care for—balancing work and home became more difficult and next career steps were unclear. However, over time, Susanne had become more strategic and more vocal about what she wanted. Perhaps this approach had become necessary at that stage of her career?

Women in Academia

Here, we introduce you to Moira, Elizabeth, Michelle and Toni—four women academics ranging from mid-30s to mid-40s in age, two with and two without caring responsibilities during the period of the study.

Moira—Practising Leadership in Academic and Community Settings While Managing a Portfolio Career

Moira is an academic in her early 40s with no caring responsibilities. The scarcity of jobs in her specialism in her home country led her to secure a post at a university in the UK where most of her work was undergraduate teaching. She remained a resident in her home country and commuted periodically. She then won a substantial research fellowship that enabled her to be based in her home country while still staying in the UK higher education system. She reported that a few years earlier, she would have lacked the courage to negotiate this combination of roles.

Despite having some difficulty identifying her leadership skills, Moira talked about her enthusiasm and helping others to find solutions. She had gained confidence through talking about her research and was developing project management skills. Her mother had been nontraditional in her culture by being very supportive of women who pursued a career. Moira’s Aurora Action Learning Set was ‘fantastic’. Hindrances included financial problems in her home country that led to pay cuts and increased scarcity of jobs, as well as her own rather precarious health.

A year later, her work pattern and jobs were the same, but due to a lack of institutional administrative support she had taken on additional responsibilities related to her project. At the same time, her PhD work attracted much media and public attention. She did a small amount of teaching at an HEI in her home country and supervised a few locally based PhD students. She wanted a job in her home country when her fellowship was finished to organise research and support women and build their confidence, especially in research. Her academic area was both niche and multidisciplinary, so secure jobs were scarce.

In the third and final interview, Moira talked about how she had published a journal article during the year, although other writings and applications for further research funding were put on hold. She had developed her project management skills, informally mentored two academic staff members and gained a reputation as a source of knowledge and advice. Reported changes in herself reflected greater confidence in taking the lead and managing relationships. She was positive about the role that Aurora had played in her development:

Aurora is the gift that’s still giving. Understanding the processes, how universities work, where are the levers to get things done? Sometimes official channels, sometimes not. All this is totally transferable to [another] setting. Who do I need to talk to and what is the best way of doing it? Also, confidence – practical stuff about managing nerves, not listening to the inner critic. I’ve had a conversation along those lines with several other people. Go for it even if not fully qualified.

Moira’s story illustrates the impact that the lack of suitable academic positions has on an individual’s ability to enact leadership. Splitting her time between different locations and different roles was not something Moira saw as sustainable. Aurora helped Moira gain confidence and see herself as a leader, particularly in relation to broader social impact of research. Despite that, and although something of a trailblazer in her achievements and work choices, it took time for her to perceive much of what she did as leadership. When she did, she wanted to use her influence to help other women develop.

Elizabeth—Despite Uncertain Commitment to HE, Learning to Engage in Politics and a Desire for More Recognition

Elizabeth is an academic in her early 40s with children at school with some periods of part-time working during the study. At the time of her first interview six months after Aurora, leadership was not part of her job, but she practised leadership informally and planned for a more senior position. She led the redesign of courses and was active in supporting her colleagues and doing outreach work. She saw her leadership strengths as having vision and communication skills. She influenced and persuaded people in senior positions and sold her ideas. She said she was not good at detail but found other people who were and sought money to recruit additional people to make things happen: ‘making things bigger than me’.

She perceived some gender bias and was positive about the availability of flexible working and family-friendly practices but not about the way that part-time staff were regarded. She felt supported at work, although her survey responses indicated some negative work-life interactions.

A year later, Elizabeth was stressed about work. She described negative treatment of part-time staff and attitudes towards them, and lack of support from the Head of School. She was technically in the same job, but her duties had changed, which ‘nearly killed me’, mainly because some promised resources were not in place when needed. As a result, she had time off sick but returned to work in a strong position, as the Aurora input on ‘courageous conversations’ helped her to negotiate a reduced teaching load. Although she found her new workload manageable, she was looking to make a change and was applying for jobs both within the HE sector and within industry.

Nearly three years after Aurora, the period since the second interview had been a good one for Elizabeth as she had made some changes to expand her skills and experience for a better working environment and better lifestyle fit. A problematic senior person left, the new Dean was more collaborative in approach, and the institutional leaders seemed to be more interested in people now. Nevertheless, she reported feeling stressed. It would be easier to engage in leadership if she had a strategic steer about her priorities. She also wanted more recognition and formalisation of her leadership roles. Working part-time continued to be a challenge, although she could work at home one day a week and was aiming to reclaim the time she worked beyond her contracted hours. She did not have a clear career plan and was still considering options within and beyond HE.

Elizabeth was active in networks to address gender equality and those that offered mutual support, inspired by Aurora. Aurora, and particularly the session on Power and Politics, raised her awareness of the need to network and raise her visibility: ‘To make sure what you are trying to achieve fits with the values and mission of the organisation … to find your key stakeholders’. In discussions with her Aurora mentor, Elizabeth talked about upwards management and how she found the information she needed through contact with people other than her manager who was unforthcoming. The mentor reported a ‘really noticeable change …I don’t think she recognised how much she was changing…big leaps in how she was approaching things’.

Elizabeth’s story shows the impact different institutional leadership approaches can have on women in HE and how working part-time affects how you are perceived by colleagues and the development opportunities available. This story also illustrates how it can be a struggle to turn informal leadership activity into a focused and recognised role that has a chance of being rewarded. Aurora played an important part in helping Elizabeth address that issue, and encouraged her to engage more in influence and visibility. Although Elizabeth had not (yet) left the HE sector, she still might, and some others in our study in similar circumstances did.

Michelle—A Career Story of Changing from Academic Administration to Focus on Career-Enhancing Research and Publishing

In her late 30s, Michelle was an academic in a STEM discipline with no caring responsibilities. At the time of the first interview, Michelle had mixed views about whether equal opportunities were practised at work. She felt supported at work but was experiencing some interference between her work and her home life. She did not have an official leadership role but sought opportunities to engage in leadership. She rated her leadership skills, was proactive in managing her career and was confident and aspirational.

During the first interview, Michelle talked about her work setting up and running a new research lab, her activities supporting students and her membership in various institutional committees. Michelle identified her leadership skills as communicating and organising. She talked about how Aurora gave her confidence, as did undertaking leadership activities at her institution. Her Head of School gave her opportunities that she made the most of. Having a mentor at the university, collaborating with external contacts, winning awards outside of the university and being a perfectionist helped Michelle progress her career. However, she felt hindered by a lack of knowledge of the country’s HE system, by her academic workload and by her setting up a lab, which reduced the time available to publish.

A year later, leadership was more prominent in Michelle’s job, and there seemed to be a better balance between her work and her home life. At the same time, there was some readjustment of her work priorities; Michelle had reduced the time she spent on some activities, such as committee work, to focus on research, applying for grants and writing for publication, with a view of furthering her promotion prospects. She felt that she still had a long way to go until she was in her desired leadership role. To achieve this, Michelle targeted research management roles that helped her to engage in leadership while remaining close to her research agenda.

Michelle’s career story illustrates how academics come to perceive that progression into leadership is built on research successes. Institutional managers recognise the contributions that can be made by people like Michelle. However, important institutional activities and service take time and energy away from research work, which is key for promotion chances. Wanting to be of service to the organisation and to be a leading expert can be in tension, with rewards for academics being more for the latter than the former. Michelle understood this and adjusted her focus accordingly.

Toni—Ambition and Hard Work Leading to Promotion to Specially Created Senior Academic Post

Toni was in her late 30s, initially without caring responsibilities but had become a mother by the time of the third interview. Although leadership had been an official part of her duty in her role as an academic in a STEM discipline throughout our research—leading research projects and supervising and developing RAs, for example—Toni still needed to influence people over whom she had no control. For Toni, leadership was closely tied to research:

Leadership to me means managing, pulling things together, pulling people along and helping them to develop. I would see it as a failure if there was no continuity of funding. It hasn’t happened yet.

In her first interview, Toni considered herself to have leadership attributes, was ambitious and active in managing her career, yet was neutral about seeking promotion and advancement. Importantly, women in senior roles in the HEI acted as role models for her. She had a positive view of her manager’s support, the clarity of promotion criteria and staff development review. Through discussions with her line manager, she secured an additional research assistant to free up time for writing to compensate for not having published many papers. Knowing the right people and being known were also helpful. She indicated growing confidence in her leadership abilities and being more comfortable with power.

A year later, Toni had married and, as a result, separated her home and work much more than she had before. Toni’s responses indicated that she was no longer experiencing any home-work conflicts or work-related stress. She was satisfied with her career, ambitious and confident about putting herself forward for promotion and a salary increase. She was very active in managing her career.

She applied unsuccessfully for a senior academic position and was advised that to advance, she needed to be included in the REF return and to secure funding from a wider range of sources. She was now teaching less, which freed up some time, but she was disappointed about losing so much teaching, especially as this was done without consultation. Toni had become more conscious of a lack of transparency and valued fairness more than previously.

She had experienced transformational leadership when a senior academic helped her develop. Volunteering for university-wide roles and involvement in cross-departmental activities had expanded her experience. She was supervising research assistants, applying for major funding and planning to apply again for a more senior post.

Two and a half years after completing Aurora, Toni had been promoted while on maternity leave to a post that the university had created for her in response to recent grant funding successes. In this role, she managed a medium-sized team of staff who worked in different functions. One member of her team told her that she was a role model because she was responsive, available and punctual. She adapted her management style to the needs of the person she was managing. She talked about her experiences:

My views on leadership have changed. It can be a bit lonely, but I am encouraged to consult senior management. You have to support people, and there is a lot of responsibility. You are never sure if you are making the best decision. Earlier in my career, I just had 3 people to manage, but now there is much more to do than I thought.

Her next career step would be to professor level, which she thought was unlikely at her current institution because her research publications were very applied, and not in the more highly respected scientific journals. However, she wanted to head up her department and was reluctant to move because she was comfortable at the institution. Now that she was a mother, maintaining a work-life balance was challenging. Although she had a supportive husband and family, she had to work at night when her baby was asleep.

Toni’s career story highlights the interrelationship between personal and professional spheres: tensions and stresses reflect the ebbs and flows of adult lives, which in this case encompassed marriage and becoming a parent. Toni’s career success is a story of research success, in particular the securing of research grant income. ‘Publications’ appear as another key player, either through their absence or the time resource needed to develop writing. As Toni progresses, teaching is side-lined (for her) and management of others becomes more prominent. A combination of circumstance and proactive career management has resulted in pivotal moves into leadership roles.

Cross-Case Analysis

The career case studies highlight how interviewees presented themselves and their careers and how their leadership activities and roles changed (or did not change) over the time they participated in our research. From these case studies, we discern two key themes. First, interviewees reported adopting a strategic approach to their careers, and second, they engaged in workplace politics and power, which many described as networking and relationship building. Less apparent, but present in some cases, are interviewees’ efforts to support other women and to promote change to enable women’s progression. Correspondingly, learning from and/or being supported by other women was often an important factor.

In terms of career management, Elizabeth negotiated a reduced teaching load and learned to relate her goals to those of the organisation. Michelle abandoned some administrative responsibilities to focus on research. It seems likely that a post was created for Toni because of her proactive career management and that Susanne secured a new job by impressing a manager when her intention was only to inquire about a desired area of work. Career self-management of these sorts has been consistently recommended throughout this century as the way forward in an era of ever-changing and unreliable organisations (e.g., Hall, 2004). Although the rhetoric runs somewhat ahead of the proven efficacy or reality of these activities and the ‘new’ career landscape (Bagdadli & Gianecchini, 2019), the case studies illustrate how important it can be to be proactive in promoting one’s interests rather than waiting for the organisation’s processes to take the lead. They also show the potential value of so-called planned happenstance, which means increasing one’s chances of being in the right place at the right time, even though the positive outcome might look like luck on the surface (Krumboltz et al., 2013).

Nevertheless, the case participants were not always successful despite their strategic career management. Farzana volunteered for opportunities, kept her work visible and was supported by her line manager but felt frustrated in her career due to lack of opportunities for professional service staff. Toni experienced success but had to make sacrifices to achieve it, and her future prospects were limited by the long-established expectation that academics should not only publish but also publish in the ‘right’ places. These cases act as a reminder that structure as well as agency is alive and well in the shaping of women’s careers in higher education (Maranto & Griffin, 2011). Not all of these problems can be overcome by shrewd career behaviour and trying hard (Acker, 2010).

For a few, career self-management demands considerable resilience. Susanne also experienced bullying, but through investigating a desired area of work, she secured a job change. Despite health issues, Moira managed to juggle two part-time jobs in different countries. Here, we are arguably dealing not so much with career management in the sense of influencing one’s sequence of roles but rather with staying afloat in difficult circumstances. Resilience has received relatively little attention in the careers literature (for an exception, see McDonald & Hite, 2018). Rather like stress management, expecting (or even training for) resilience creates the ethical dilemma of putting the onus on the individual to cope with pressures created by the organisation (Spangler et al., 2012).

An important difference between academic and professional service work is that the former has a much clearer standard career path, with performance and experience expectations attached, than does the latter. This has been noted in the literature (e.g., Wild & Wooldridge, 2009). It is also evident in the case studies. Professional service women had to determine what might be possible as well as what they wanted. Additionally, if they thought they might want to work in a different function (e.g., moving from Estates to Student Services), they needed to find out about their aspired-to function as well as figure out if such a move would be allowed. Academic women knew a lot more about the career roadmap, and their dilemmas tended to concern meeting arbitrary criteria that did not necessarily accord with their own priorities.

Many of the participants acknowledged the role of other people, particularly their line managers, in enabling them to engage in leadership and advance their careers by helping them develop essential skills such as networking and prioritising and encouraging job applications. A few more significant examples suggest very active interventions. For example, a post was created for Toni, and Susanne was ‘headhunted’. Perhaps more troubling is some participants’ sense that they needed the protection of people in power. Julie, for example, regarded her director and the Registry as protectors in a hostile environment. Overall, this finding suggests that line managers of women in academic and professional services might need the full range of psychosocial and career mentoring functions identified long ago by Kram (1988) to support them fully.

Relationships and networking seemed important to these women, and some explanations demonstrated their active engagement with power structures. Elizabeth used networking and contacts to find information she needed and to gain access to people in power; and Katherine learned to influence upwards. This demonstrates that terms such as relationship building and networking tell only half the story. Encouraging women (or men) to engage in these activities can be meaningful only when the purposes of doing so are explicit (Bierema, 2005). These purposes will differ substantially for different people. The motivation of these women to make changes to enable other women is also apparent in some cases. Elizabeth and Katherine were active in promoting women’s position and power as a collective through women’s networks. Moira was keen that participation in her research project might empower the women involved. Their efforts to secure change were not always effective. Overall, the case studies suggest that attention in the academic literature on how women can create mutually supportive networks (e.g., Greguletz et al., 2019) tells only part of the story. Other ways of promoting the interests of women in higher education include acting as mentors one-to-one, as a key part of another woman’s developmental network, or as role models or trying to correct structural inequalities (Brabazon & Schulz, 2020).

Leadership Discourses and Activities

All but one case used more than one leadership discourse during the series of interviews (see Table 6.2), the most being used by Moira, who presented five different discourses. Having more than one discourse may indicate breadth and adaptability, with some women developing additional discourses after the first interview, indicating increasing exploration of leadership and the development of their understanding and perception of self as a leader.

Table 6.2 Discourses of leadership by case
Full size table

The most common discourses are of relationship builder, people developer and influencer, particularly for those in professional services roles. Powerholder and situational leadership discourses are not used by any of the cases examined. In addition, the fact that knowledge producer and professional role model discourses are not present for professional services women at all suggests that the configuration of leadership for this group in HE does not foreground these aspects. Therefore, further investigations of the limits of the discourses in HE leadership proposed by Macfarlane (2011) and Juntrasook (2014) are needed to better reflect the experiences of those in professional services roles (although we also acknowledge that this issue is not surprising, as these discourses were developed with more of a focus on academics). Our analysis also points to a particular kind of HE leadership discourse that circulates in academic careers around being a knowledge producer and professional role model, which reflects the idea of certain activities—especially research—being crucial for academic career success (e.g., Bolden et al., 2012; Coate & Kandiko, 2015). The pattern found in the case studies raises questions about what happens when women in professional services roles, such as Farzana, do not include the people developer/influencer/change agent discourses or when academics miss knowledge producer/professional role model aspects, such as Elizabeth? Do they perceive more issues as they engage in leadership activities or experience more barriers to career progression? Reading Farzana and Eliabeth’s cases in detail, we can see some indications of this. However, as Farzana is the youngest woman in the cases examined since she was in her early 30s, we might also anticipate that the people developer/influencer/change agent discourse is introduced into the way she talks about her work as she goes on in her career. A further observation is that the broader range of discourses evident for academic women and greater variance between the academic cases point to the possibility of a broader conception of leadership being interpreted and defined within academic careers. However, this idea requires further investigation.

We consider that the emphasis on relationship building, plus the absence of the powerholder discourse in the cases, reflects much literature about gender differences in leadership styles, where women leaders tend to be seen as more participative and concerned about individual well-being and development than men (e.g., Paustian-Underdahl et al., 2014). However, as highlighted by Pullen and Vachhani (2021), it is important not to reduce this to the notion that women enact leadership in a ‘touchy-feely’ manner because having concern for individuals and seeking to influence and develop them is not reducible to one of reason (masculine) or emotion (feminine). However, this finding is in line with our quantitative finding that our participants rated their relational leadership skills and activities higher than their assertive ones (see Chapter 2). On the other hand, the difference was not very large, and assertive leadership still scored high; thus, the absence of powerholder discourse is more surprising. The answer may lie in the influencer/change agent discourse, which might be considered both relational and assertive. It has frequently been argued that women tend to seek to lead through influence (most definitions of leadership refer to influence; see Northouse, 2021: 6) rather than the unilateral use of power, which is allegedly more characteristic of men (Schuh et al., 2014).

An analysis of the longitudinal data suggests that the participants may have developed their perception of the importance and value of relationships over time through experience and reflection. An increased use of the influencer discourse may also have been shaped by taking on new roles or an increased awareness of their capability as influencers and their association of influencing with leadership. Here, the slightly increased prominence of influencer as opposed to relationship builder may be a manifestation of the small but statistically significant increase in assertive leadership scores over time in the quantitative data, as well as a realisation that it is possible to be a destabilising force in male-dominated leadership networks (Fitzgerald, 2020).

Seven of the eight case studies (Moira is the exception) refer to the facilitating or occasionally blocking role of staff in management roles higher up the chain of command. This aligns with the quantitative findings on the importance of line manager support in achieving leadership positions (Chapter 2) and career satisfaction (Chapter 3). In general, it appears that both in the case studies and in the data more generally, the attitudes and actions of line managers were experienced more positively than in other research involving women working in higher education (e.g., Fernando & Prasad, 2019). However, the term ‘line manager’ might be too narrow and/or rather ambiguous when considering the facilitating role of bosses. For example, on occasion, it was a Dean who played a key role, and it is not clear whether he or she would be regarded as the line manager by any given person or whether, for example, he or she would be a departmental or group head. In addition, then, of course, there are mentors, who are often one step removed from a person’s line management. Although we employed the term ‘line manager’ in the quantitative aspect of this research, case studies indicate that other senior people who know the protagonist personally can equally well act (or decline to act) as buffers against, or even antidotes to, wider organisational processes and cultures in influencing women’s leadership opportunities (Heffernan, 2021).

Finally, these case studies highlight the importance of self-awareness and situation awareness—of women knowing their strengths as leaders, applying those strengths and focusing on what matters to them, while taking into account the needs and motivations of others. The absence of situational leadership discourses points to influential ideas that have emerged in leadership development programmes that have (thus far) not taken hold in leadership discourses in our study data, despite the importance of adaptability to leadership (Heifetz et al., 2009; Mwagiru, 2019; Randall & Coakley, 2007). Self-confidence seems to have been important in enabling women to take up challenging opportunities and to expand their sphere of influence to arenas with more potential for impactful change, such as moving from team management to university-wide projects. Others have also noted the prominence of self-confidence in women’s evaluations of their efforts and achievements in leadership (Zenger & Folkman, 2019). In our quantitative data, we found that the variable we called career confidence had less apparent influence than we expected on leadership and career outcomes. This variable referred specifically to confidence in putting oneself forward for opportunities and rewards at work, and it may be that the kind of self-confidence in seeking and taking on leadership is more like what has been referred to as ‘Core Self Evaluations’ i.e. a generalised positive yet realistic view of self (Chang et al., 2012) than context-specific behaviour.

Conclusion

The case studies presented in this chapter allow for a more holistic analysis of the way career and leadership experiences are experienced by women in HE. The data illustrate the complexity of individual career stories to add nuance to the quantitative data presented in other chapters in the book. In particular, we focused on the expression of leadership discourses, how these discourses evolved over time and how they vary between participants in the study. We identified key absences of powerholder and situational leadership discourses in how all the cases talked about their work, despite the prominence of power in traditional ideas of leadership and innovations in leadership development that highlight the importance of being adaptive. Rather, a focus on building relationships was the leadership discourse that came through most strongly for the participants. To a certain extent, we can interpret the analysis of leadership discourses as demonstrating the resilience of gender stereotypes regarding styles of leadership. We also identified different configurations of leadership discourses depending on occupation: professional services women being more strongly aligned with a people developer/influencer/change agent/relationship builder recipe. Knowledge producer and professional role model discourses did not appear for women in professional services, suggesting that these discourses represent a distinctly academic flavour of HE leadership. These findings are based on a small number of cases, and the findings presented here should be read in conjunction with the broader analysis of leadership presented in Chapter 2 and elsewhere in the book.