Academic Leadership

Academic Leadership: Fundamental Building Blocks

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Ensure and Establish Your Credibility

Credibility is an important foundation for persuasion. Without it, it is very difficult to be

persuasive. To ensure your credibility as an Academic Coordinator you should be well

informed about your students, your program, the courses that it contains, university

policies and procedures and any relevant professional accreditation issues. You should

also be well informed about whatever it is that you are trying to persuade others to do,

the need to do whatever it is you want done within the context of the program and the

likely impacts of what you intend to do. This will earn you trust and respect and give you

a degree of authority. It will also ensure you are in a strong position to use rational

persuasion to influence members of your program team as well as your supervisors to

do what you want them to do.

In order to establish your credibility in the short term it also helps if you show you are

self-assured. Adopt a confident posture and use a steady tone of voice when

communicating what you want others to do and why.

Activity

Think of someone you think of as having a high level of credibility.

How have they established their credibility?

What can you learn from them?

Know What You Want

• If you are to persuade others to do what you want, you need to be, and sound
  confident.


• You must be clear about what you want to achieve.


• Think carefully about what exactly you want to accomplish.


• Can you break this down into several individual components?


• Who will be responsible for what parts?

Present Strong Evidence to Support Your Position

You will need to explain why what you want is important. The responsibility for building

the case is yours. While it may seem obvious to you it will not necessarily be so for

others. You will need to be prepared to provide strong supporting evidence for your

case. A logical, reasoned argument does not guarantee a positive result, but you will be

much more likely to succeed if your case is based on facts and rational argument rather

than if it is based on supposition and assumption.