Universities are complex organisations, where teams and individuals often struggle with entrenched hierarchies and limited space for innovation. Building a culture where anyone can show leadership, and all voices are heard, demands new tools and methods.
The University of Edinburgh and Edinburgh Innovations, working with the University of Glasgow, the University of St Andrews and our delivery partner, the Centre for Participatory Leadership, developed and tested a practical model for embedding facilitation and collective leadership skills across three institutions. The project trained 95 participants across two programmes and built a 76-member cross-institutional community of practice.
Download the guide below, or get in touch with Claire Pembleton to bring this training or facilitation support to your team.
Collective leadership practices offer readily adoptable tools and processes: tried and tested ways to engage people with the questions and challenges they face. Applying these methods requires skill and confidence to design and facilitate spaces that are appropriate, effective and safe. Despite the value they offer, these methods remain little known and rarely applied in the university sector.
Why embed facilitation in Higher Education settings?
Facilitation equips academic, technical and professional services staff to lead purposeful conversations and navigate complex situations. In HR, it builds a culture of engagement and reduces siloed working. In technology transfer, it strengthens industry engagement and supports strategic objectives. In academic leadership, it builds leadership capacity and improves cross-disciplinary working.
The full guide covers what collective leadership and facilitation skills mean for higher education, how the project got started and what it delivered, three case studies of how facilitation skills were used in context, and a set of practical questions to clarify the purpose of any Higher Education organisation looking to embed a culture of facilitation and collaboration in their complex environments.
The approach
Claire Pembleton, Business Development Manager for Social Responsibility and Sustainability
What people say
The activities were genuinely well thought out, they got people talking openly and honestly, and helped us move from vague ideas into something concrete."
— Megan Cleary, Sustainability Innovation and Reporting Analyst and EDI Chair, Edinburgh Innovations.
The experience was so engaging and enjoyable...I gained a range of practical tools from each workshop and was able to reflect on past experiences or sessions with a fresh perspective. This shift in viewpoint immediately began to influence how I approach future situations, activities, and facilitation practice.”
— Workshop participant
The preparation and learning from the workshops greatly increased my confidence and made it much easier to design a purposeful and engaging networking session. Learning how to plan with a clear structure...was a truly eye-opening lesson.”
— Tabea Gerlach, Scottish Research Technicians' Professional (SRTP) Academy Coordinator.
Bring this expertise to your team
Claire Pembleton, Business Development Executive at Edinburgh Innovations, led the design and delivery of this project and with our co-leads in Glasgow and St Andrews and project partners Centre for Participatory Leadership. Together, they hold a bank of facilitation training materials, session plans, and trained facilitators, available to support your team or institution and to scale the project's impact.
We can help your institution, department or team with:
Get in touch with Claire Pembleton to discuss your needs and interest further.
The How To Guide was produced as part of an InFrame Culture Catalyst Fund project.
InFrame was funded by the Wellcome Trust Institutional Funding for Research Culture [grant number 228092/Z/23/Z], which is led by the universities of Glasgow, Edinburgh and St Andrews.
The How to Embed Collective Leadership guide is licensed by InFrame under CC BY-NC 4.0. To view a copy of this license, visit Creative Commons.
