Talent Development for a Sustainable Academic Future
Duration3 hours
Team Professional Development
Talent development is about more than filling future vacancies. It is about creating opportunities for people to grow, perform at their best and build fulfilling careers while ensuring your team has the capability it needs for the future. This practical and reflective workshop explores how managers and leaders in senior positions can identify and develop talent, have meaningful career conversations, and create a sustainable pipeline of future expertise and leadership.
What will this session help you do?
Academic staff: support colleagues' career aspirations, identify future academic leaders and experts, and build capability within departments and disciplines.
APM staff: develop talented colleagues, create progression opportunities, and strengthen succession planning for key roles and services.
Technicians: recognise and nurture technical expertise, create developmental opportunities, and support knowledge transfer and continuity within teams.
Research staff: support the development of researchers at different career stages, facilitate progression conversations, and identify pathways for future leadership and specialist contributions.
You'll explore practical approaches to identifying potential, developing talent through everyday work, and creating fair and transparent opportunities for growth. The session will introduce tools and frameworks to support talent discussions, succession planning and career development conversations, helping you balance individual aspirations with team and organisational needs.
This workshop relates to the following competencies outlined in the UoN-Competency-Framework: Leading Others: drives performance, Communication, Innovation, and Planning and Organising.
Learning outcomes:
Strengthen your ability to hold effective development and progression conversations that lead to meaningful growth opportunities.
Identify and nurture future experts and leaders in a fair, inclusive and transparent way.
Recognise a range of development opportunities that can be used to build capability beyond formal training.
Apply practical tools to support talent development and succession planning within your team or department.
Balance individual career aspirations with organisational priorities and future workforce needs.
Please be aware that this workshop is a discussion-based session with individual reflection, paired activities and group discussions. You do not have to share anything you are not comfortable with, but you will be invited to reflect on your own experiences of development, progression and supporting the growth of others.