How to improve Leadership in Higher Education Institutions

This study explores how leaders in higher education (Directors, Principals, Vice president and President) in Kurdistan perceive leadership and the leadership skills required to make them effective. It also examines the challenges, which leaders face in leading and managing their institution and how to improve their leadership. Knowledge sharing is acknowledged as the most significant resources for competitive advantage and the key to improving innovation. The knowledge management and the promotion of knowledge sharing among the members of an organisation are a vital part of the learning process as they help to convert the tacit knowledge. This research has an interest in understanding research participants’ subjective experiences as well as their general perception of the participative leadership. In order to decide on the position as a researcher to adopt differing ontological, epistemological and methodological assumptions that underpin each paradigm in turn or ways of viewing by educational research. The aim is to accomplish this in a way that influences me to position myself philosophically as a researcher that mixed an interpretivist with positivist. The study data analysis is based adopted an interpretive approach and attempted to address the research questions through developing a structured interview and questionnaire guide to facilitate the collection of data. This is because some of participates (23) they have accepted questionnaire only. The sample in this mixed methods case study is to investigate the perspective of the small cohort of 15 leaders comprising ten males and five females currently or recently holding senior positions in the HEls in Kurdistan in two state and five private universities, and they were accepted face-to-face interviews. The finding showed that the nature of leadership for leaders in higher education are complex, demanding and requires a combination of leadership skills and management. This study captures insights the four aspects that define leadership, which are: leadership is distinct from management; Leadership relates to leaders’ characteristics, leadership is about influencing and leadership requires a vision. Correspondingly, leadership skills required for future university leaders to make them effective such as communication skills, and the four main challenges based on the findings, which are: difficult to share the leader’s vision, poor communication skills, lack of self-confidence and lack of motivation. Finally, the ways in which leadership of university leaders could be improved such as length of experience and highlights the possible inadequacies of formal leadership development for leader-academics in higher education in Iraqi Kurdistan.