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What helps an Early Career Researcher (ECR) become an independent researcher rather than simply a more experienced one? Two recent publications offer an interesting perspective. A study by Cui et al. published in Science in May 2026 analysed the work of more than 12.5 million scientists publishing between 1960 and 2020. The study, subsequently highlighted by Lenharo in Nature in May 2026, found that researchers’ contributions tend to change over the course of an academic care

The 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer reports that seven in ten people worldwide are unwilling or hesitant to trust someone whose values, information, approaches to solving problems or cultural background differ from their own. For business, the implication is clear. Organisations cannot make progress only with people who think alike. Leaders must bring together different experiences, perspectives and priorities. They must also help people work constructively across those differen

In my work with academic leaders, I often notice that the pressure is not only about workload. It is about interpretation. A policy changes. AI shifts what students can do. Staff raise questions about quality, fairness, workload, ethics, and trust. People want clarity, but the situation itself is still moving. That is now a central part of academic leadership. EDUCAUSE’s 2026 report on AI and higher education found that 94% of respondents had used AI tools for work within the

Many leaders reach management because they are good at solving problems. They know the work. They move quickly. They care about quality. When something becomes difficult, people turn to them. And they usually know what to do. Then the role changes. The leader is no longer responsible only for producing excellent work. They are responsible for creating the conditions in which other people can think, decide and perform well. That transition sounds straightforward. In practice,

A recent global conversation about the future of work has reinforced something many leaders, educators, and employers can already feel in practice: technical skills matter, but they are not enough. As work continues to shift, the human capabilities that help people stay grounded, adaptable, relational, and effective under pressure are becoming even more valuable. That should not only shape hiring or training decisions. It should also reshape how we think about leadership deve

From the outside, academic life can look flexible, autonomous, and deeply meaningful. In many ways, it is. But that picture hides something important. For many academics, university work is no longer just about teaching and research. It is teaching, research, publishing, grant pressure, supervision, marking, administration, pastoral care, committee work, stakeholder management, and constant adaptation to institutional change. That means a lot because the challenge in academia

Many principals aren’t burning out because they’re “not resilient enough”. They’re burning out because the leadership load is designed to leak into everything: repeated decisions, constant escalation, unresolved conflict, and no cadence that holds under term pressure. I’ve written a practical 60‑day reset for principals and SLTs: Clarity. Agreements. Load. Momentum. No glossy initiative. Just a term-friendly way to reduce friction and protect wellbeing while keeping standa

When you’re good… but (informally) not yet “leadership material” You can be excellent at your job and still feel invisible in the rooms that matter. You bring the detail. You deliver. You do the thinking. And then, in the senior meeting, you hear yourself doing one (or more) of these: over‑explaining to prove you’ve done the work speaking quickly, filling silence, softening your point backing down too early when someone senior pushes saying nothing… and kicking yourself after