Leadership for Impact: Reflections from Our Recent Webinar

Thank you to everyone who joined our webinar on Impact Leadership, a rich, fast paced hour exploring what it means to lead within the increasingly complex and evolving research impact space. With more than 100 registrants and active chat contributions throughout, the conversation demonstrated just how many of us are negotiating similar challenges, opportunities, and questions. 

Setting the Scene: Why Talk About Impact Leadership? 

Impact has matured into its own sub domain in research management, far removed from the early days when dedicated impact roles barely existed. Today, as more professionals enter this space, often as sole practitioners within their institutions, questions naturally arise: 

• What does leadership look like in the impact space? 

• Which skills matter most? 

• Where can leadership opportunities be found, especially without formal authority? 

These questions framed our discussion with panellists Dr Andrew Wray and Dr Alyx Mattison, Research Impact Officer, University of Bradford who generously shared their journeys, experiences and insights.  

We also gathered participants’ views with a few targeted poll questions to broaden and enrich the discussion, including the deliberate opener – is being an impact leader different from being an HE leader in general? Spoiler alert – it's not but it is nuanced! 

What skills and knowledge are needed for impact leadership? 

Top responses included: 

• Communication 

• Collaboration 

• Project management 

• Trust building 

• Understanding of impact pathways 

Impact leadership webinar poll results - what skills or knowledge are required for an impact leader?

These themes echoed strongly in the panel’s reflections. 

Panel Insights: What Does Impact Leadership Require? 

1. A Wide-Angle View of Impact 

Andrew highlighted the importance of understanding the full ecosystem of impact, including commercialisation, public engagement, policy, community partnerships and more. A leader does not need mastery in all areas but must recognise how they connect. 

2. The ability to articulate your value

Alyx emphasised the need to: 

• Recognise the inherent leadership embedded in impact work 

• Articulate the value of impact roles internally 

• Demonstrate how impact practitioners contribute project management, strategic insight, evaluation, networks and culture building, even when job titles do not explicitly say “leader” 

3. Upward Management and Networks 

Both speakers reinforced key leadership behaviours: 

• Managing upwards when structural authority is limited 

• Building internal networks across communications, KE, commercialisation, policy and research offices 

• Making connections that others may not see but which enable impact to emerge and thrive 

Leadership in Practice: Personal Examples 

From Alyx 

• REF as a leadership arena: managing case studies, KPIs and senior working groups 

• Running an Impact Festival to raise visibility of impact culture beyond REF 

• Identifying institutional gaps, for example policy engagement, and stepping in to fill them proactively 

From Andrew 

• Sharing credit generously and protecting colleagues during difficult moments 

• Helping others see the bigger picture in policy, funding and strategy 

• Creating resilience by giving team members visibility and connecting siloed activities within the institution 

Barriers to Leadership: What You Told Us 

Our obstacle poll produced a wide range of insights, including: 

• Lack of global or systemic view 

• Institutional structure and silos 

• Limited recognition of expertise 

• Budget and time pressures 

• Lack of internal collaboration 

• Academics not interested in impact 

• “Systemic inertia” 

Reflections from the Panel 

• Institutional fragmentation is real and makes connecting the dots of impact work harder. 

• Work with the willing, but do not over rely on them. Alyx reminded us that doing so risks burnout and resentment. 

• Clear and persistent communication remains essential for addressing misunderstanding of impact. 

Opportunities for Leadership: What You Can Do Now 

Prioritisation as Leadership 

Given sector wide resource constraints, guiding colleagues on: 

• what to do, 

• what not to do, 

• and when to do it, 

is an increasingly valuable leadership skill. 

Make Your Own Opportunities 

Proactivity matters: 

• Seek strategic positioning for impact in restructures 

• Build cross institutional alliances 

• Engage in professional networks such as ARMA and regional impact groups 

• Participate in national and international conversations about impact culture 

Questions from Participants: A Few Highlights 

How do we manage senior leaders who want fully developed REF case studies now? 

Andrew advised: 

• Explain the inherent uncertainty in predicting impact outcomes 

• Emphasise that evidence gathering continues up to the submission deadline 

• Focus on assessing trajectory rather than certainty 

How do you run an impact festival when attendance is low? 

Alyx shared: 

• It is still worth doing 

• Senior leaders value it 

• Progress can be incremental 

• Tie festivals to existing institutional initiatives when possible 

A European Perspective on Professionalisation 

We were fortunate to hear from Esther de Smet at Ghent University, who described wider European efforts to: 

• Understand impact culture and its building blocks 

• Map skills and competencies of impact professionals 

• Share global experiences through the Voices of Impact interview series 

These initiatives help reduce isolation and build collective understanding across institutions. 

So, Is Leadership in the Impact Space Different? 

We revisited our opening poll question at the end. The group remained mixed, but as our discussion highlights: 

Leadership skills are not unique to impact. However, the way those skills must be applied is unique. 

Impact roles require navigating ambiguity, influence without authority, fragmented structures, high expectations and inconsistent understanding of the field. These conditions give impact leadership a distinct character. I came away from the discussion reminded that creativity – how one problem solves and makes connections - is an essential quality to work in research impact and one I think is under-recognised (under-rated?) both by practitioners themselves and their managers. 

For me the discussion reaffirmed that: 

• Impact is always a collective effort for those impact managers supporting it and those researchers working to make it happen. 

• Many impact managers work in isolation. It can be lonely – you need others to sense check and throw about ideas.   

• Leadership emerges in daily practice, through persuasion, connection, prioritisation and persistence. 

And that final point is key. Due to how Impact Managers need to operate across their institutional structures to achieve results, means they are often leading with a small ‘l’. They are demonstrating and using many of the soft skills of good leaders - excellent communication, empathy, collaborative skills, people management and many of the hard skills too - project management, budget management and strategic planning.  

Thank you again to all that came along. This is not the end of the impact leadership conversation. I will be exploring this further at EARMA Conference 2026 (Utrecht 5–7 May).  

Catch the full webinar recording on our resources page.