Learning Leaders in times of change, the first study to systematically access the "insider's view" of different university roles provides fascinating insights into the perceptions and the reality of leadership and the gap between the two.

The project canvassed more than 500 Australian higher education leaders from 20 institutions from heads of program to deputy vice-chancellors, about the contexts and challenges they face and the key capabilities that underpin their work.

An extensive series of sector-wide workshops followed by a national forum were undertaken with a further 490 higher education leaders in Australia.

Professor Geoff Scott, Pro Vice-Chancellor (Quality) at UWS, said the study had taken place during a time of profound change for higher education and had demonstrated that the leaders surveyed are key players in figuring out what to do and how to make it work.

"It has shown, in particular, that a significant and previously poorly understood aspect of their work is to set key change priorities and make them work."

The study reveals what type of university culture hinders or encourages change, identifies how leaders themselves like to learn and shows that the best leaders in higher education have a strikingly similar profile to the best teachers.

It demonstrates that effective leaders of learning and teaching in universities not only possess up-to-date knowledge and skills in their area, they are also self-aware, decisive, committed, able to empathise with and influence a wide diversity of people, are cognitively flexible and are particularly deft at diagnosis and formulating strategy.

Recommendations are provided for reshaping position descriptions, the focus of performance management and development systems for different roles with the study revealing that while common titles are used they have widely varying meanings and accountabilities across the sector.

The study also calls for a new approach to professional development and for making universities more "change capable".

Professor Richard Johnstone, ALTC Executive Director, said the new report was exceptionally timely in light of the Bradley Review of Higher Education now underway.

"The study provides well-grounded research about the kind of institutional cultures that actively support change in addition to revealing important aspects about the characteristics of academic leaders," he said.

"This information should prove invaluable at a time when there are concerns about where the next generation of higher education leaders will be drawn from."

One of the authors, Professor Scott, said that as higher education is an increasingly volatile and competitive environment, the need to successfully put innovative change into practice is a high priority.

"What is becoming patently clear is that successful change implementation does not just happen but must be led - and effectively," he said.

"The sector is at a watershed and the times are changing far more rapidly than expected. Volatility is a feature of the environment and leadership of the sector is growing old. At the same time we have a higher education review that is coming to grips with a new vision for the sector."

Professor Scott said the study reveals the need to refigure our understanding of change as being a complex learning and unlearning process for everyone involved, rather than simply an event.

"It is a process in which the culture of a university can powerfully help or hinder engagement in the process," he said.

'Learning Leaders in times of change' can be downloaded from the ALTC website.