Higher Education Leadership and Management

HELM offers contextual and bespoke leadership and management programmes for emerging, middle and senior managers and leaders in universities that support their work performance, professional development and career advancement and contributes towards a context in which all can thrive.

Background

The Higher Education Leadership and Management (HELM) Programme is being implemented by Universities South Africa as part of the Department of Higher Education and Training’s University Capacity Development Programme.

When HELM was initially launched in 2002, it was conceptualised to offer Vice-Chancellors and senior management strategic insight into the specific challenges that exist within the South African higher education landscape.

HELM continues to offer valuable perspectives on the contemporary leadership and management context, complexities and challenges facing universities. The need has never been greater for HELM to provide all levels of university leadership with skills, strategies and insight into this ever-shifting terrain.

HELM has been reconfigured and repositioned to create cutting edge solutions that address organisational and individual capacity needs for leadership and management development. The objective is to ensure that the system is endowed with appropriately skilled academic leaders and managers who will be able to steer these institutions towards an invigorated and sustainable future.

The Higher Education Leadership and Management (HELM) Programme is being implemented by Universities South Africa as part of the Department of Higher Education and Training’s University Capacity Development Programme.

When HELM was initially launched in 2002, it was conceptualised to offer Vice-Chancellors and senior management strategic insight into the specific challenges that exist within the South African higher education landscape. HELM continues to offer valuable perspectives on the contemporary leadership and management context, complexities and challenges facing universities. The need has never been greater for HELM to provide all levels of university leadership with skills, strategies and insight into this ever-shifting terrain.

HELM has been reconfigured and repositioned to create cutting edge solutions that address organisational and individual capacity needs for leadership and management development. The objective is to ensure that the system is endowed with appropriately skilled academic leaders and managers who will be able to steer these institutions towards an invigorated and sustainable future.

The Impact of
our Programmes

“My predecessor warned that this is a very lonely position. I only realised it when I experienced the relief of being among peers in these sessions.”
– Executive Dean, NWU 2018

Our Purpose

HELM programmes have been designed to assist individuals and organisations to identify their capacity needs within their specific context and align individual leadership development pathways with organisational objectives.

The programme activities are directed towards the key challenges and contextual realities faced by individuals and universities and is geared towards addressing them more effectively in the higher education system.

The HELM outcomes will combine to strengthen university leadership, management and performance.

HELM interventions are evidence-based and one of the programme’s research projects initiated in 2018, is a book on leadership development for Deans in South African universities. Other focus areas for research in HELM will include women in leadership, management models in universities and student-centred administration.